Smith/Kotzen is a musical collaboration between Iron Maiden guitarist, Adrian Smith, and The Winery Dogs frontman, Richie Kotzen of The Winery Dogs. Their self-titled debut album was released on March 26, 2021.
Guesting on the X5 Podcast, Kotzen told the story of meeting Smith and how their collaboration came to be.
Kotzen: “They (Smith and his wife) had a party one night, and we were in their jam room. Taylor Hawkins was playing the drums, Robert Trujillo was playing the bass, my wife Julia grabbed the bass, I was singing, Adrian was playing the guitar, and it was just this great, fun night. Someone took a picture and put it on the internet and people were talking about it, and Adrian’s wife Natalie, she had the idea and said ‘You two should try to write something together.’ So, he came over to my house and we wrote a couple songs, and (we thought) ‘This is too easy, let’s write a few more. There’s something going on here.'”
Earlier this year, Neil Turbin spoke to Richie Kotzen, Julia Lage (Vixen) and solo artist Audry Lagiou at this year’s Rock For Ronnie charity event for Canada’s The Metal Voice. In the chat Kotzen and Lage reveal a new Smith/ Kotzen album in the works.
Says Julia, “I play bass on Smith/Kotzen which is an amazing project. So if you want to talk about new stuff they also wrote an album and I don’t know when they’re going to be releasing (it) but there’s something coming probably in the future.”
Richie Kotzen adds, “Julia played some songs with Adrian. I think we’re still in the infantile stages of figuring it out but it looks like there will be some stuff coming in the foreseeable future so I’m excited about that.”
