Richie Kotzen at Tupelo Music Hall

Name: Richie Kotzen at Tupelo Music Hall
Start: 2024-10-17T21:00:00-04:00
Location: Tupelo Music Hall

Schedule

Thu Oct 17 2024 at 09:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Tupelo Music Hall | Derry, NH

Richie Kotzen at Tupelo Music Hall
When: Thursday, October 17, 2024 at 8:00 PM
Price: Early Booking for Members is available. Tickets go on sale for the public on Friday, May 17, 2024 at 6:00 AM EST
Details: Richie Kotzen has always been on a clear, laser-focused mission as an artist. While he is rightfully acknowledged worldwide for being a stellar guitar player, an emotive singer, and, frankly, a balls-out dynamic live performer to boot, Kotzen is quite aware he must maintain an ever-vigilant eye on ensuring one particularly important creative arrow in his artistic quiver continues to be properly nurtured — and that is his songwriting.
“My whole existence has been driven by songs,” Kotzen admits. “I realized when I was very, very young that if I didn’t have a song to sing that, was mine, I probably wouldn’t have much of a future as an artist. That’s where I come from. It’s like I get to live my dream scenario, because my job is doing what I love to do, which is making music. It’s how I live.”
Good songs are indeed Kotzen’s creative stock in trade, and the man has spent decades making sure he delivers the goods on a consistent basis. As a vocalist, Kotzen’s impassioned style exists at the crossroads where the likes of Paul Rodgers, Terence Trent D’Arby (better known these days as Sananda Maitreya), and Rod Stewart meet. All that primal vocal energy also feeds into his love of great songwriting. To that end, Kotzen cites Daryl Hall, Elvis Costello and Don Henley as a few legendary songwriters he respects and looks up to, and of whom he takes cues from for inspiration. “I’m more of a conversational writer,” Kotzen explains. “I don’t write about aliens and spaceships. It’s more about what I’m thinking, and what I’m feeling. Here’s the thing — I wait. I wait until I have something to say — and usually, that’s when it all comes together. When something strikes me, I’ll sing it into my phone, and then it’ll either live there and wait until another day, or I’ll work on it and it’ll end up on an album. That’s my process.”
With new music recorded and his new single ‘Cheap Shots’ already streaming he’s now set to return to the live stage with a vengeance in the power-trio format he loves so well, starting in May of 2024 with two Southern California warm up shows and then heading to Europe June 2nd for a 6 week run of dates. This will be followed by an extensive North American Fall tour. After all, playing his music live is what brings everything together. “I like the flexibility in the level of improvisation I can do in that trio format. I go to that place in my head where I know what I’m feeling when I’m singing onstage, and I connect with it,” Kotzen observes.
Understanding the imprint of his own global artistic reach ultimately brings Richie Kotzen full circle with the feelings evoked by the music he cherished during his own youth, not to mention his regard for the musicians who made it. “Thankfully, I’ve been very lucky in that way,” he concludes. “People tend to gravitate toward others who are carved out of certain like-minded stones, and then you figure out how you fit into each other’s orbit. Me, I like to do that with my music.” Considering how the impact of Kotzen’s ever-expanding catalog stretches to the literal edge of the Earth, we expect the shared orbit of his songs and what they mean to his listenership and fanbase at large will only continue to widen.