Adrian Smith could have taken the easy road. After decades with Iron Maiden, the man has earned the right to kick back and let the legacy do the work. Instead, he’s teamed up with Richie Kotzen for Smith/Kotzen, a blues-infused rock album that leans into the swagger and soul of their mutual influences. “We just hit it off,” Smith says. “By the end of the first day, we had three songs. When you get chemistry like that, you run with it.”
It helps that their chemistry is rooted in a shared love of bands like Deep Purple, Free, and Humble Pie—the kind of 70s blues-rock outfits that plugged into Marshall stacks and never looked back. “That music is in my blood,” Smith admits. “It’s what made me want to do this in the first place.” He credits Machine Head by Deep Purple as the album that changed his life, but he’s equally reverent about the blues players who inspired those British rockers. “BB King, Albert King, Freddie King… I remember seeing Albert Collins in Texas back in the 80s. He was in the parking lot, playing with this long guitar lead, and the whole crowd followed him back inside. He was unreal.”
Smith/Kotzen isn’t strictly a blues album, but the DNA is there. It’s in the raw vocals, the swaggering riffs, and the lyrics that wrestle with the past while searching for something new. “The song ‘Scars’ is about the things you go through in life that really leave a mark on you,” Smith explains. “You start to see how those things shape the way you look at the future.”
There’s a theme of moving forward on the album, of not being weighed down by history. “You reach a stage in life where you stop clinging to the past so much,” he says. “It’s like the blues—getting something off your chest, so you can keep going.”
And where better to get a little perspective than paradise? Smith and Kotzen wrapped up recording in Turks and Caicos, a location that may seem at odds with the album’s stormy, guitar-driven intensity. “It’s a beautiful place, but you don’t escape who you are just because the sun’s out,” he says. “The music is always with you.”
The pandemic may have delayed their plans for live shows, but Smith is hopeful. “We had gigs lined up, but we’ll see. I think we’ll be ready to go on short notice when the time comes.” The idea of mixing Smith/Kotzen material with deep cuts from their past is especially appealing. “We’d need to bulk out the set with some stuff from both of our back catalogs, and I think that’d be really interesting.”
One thing’s for sure: Smith isn’t slowing down. “I’ve wanted to make a record like this for a long time,” he says. “Now I just want to get out there and play it.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
