Zack Kirkorian Opening for Richie Kotzen

Event 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.

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 and Don Henley as two legendary songwriters he respects and looks up to both of whom he takes cues from for inspiration.

The muse struck Kotzen in a much different kind of way when he got together with his longtime friend and confidant Iron Maiden guitarist/backing vocalist and songwriter Adrian Smith to lay down nine galvanizing tracks for March 2021’s collaborative triumph SMITH/KOTZEN in addition to its follow-up four-song Record Store Day EP released later in the same year November 2021’s aptly rousing BETTER DAYS. What both these hard-charging S/K releases reveal is a creative relationship previously only hinted at through their shared musical brotherhood.

In addition to that creative benchmark and his ongoing role as the frontman of the quite formidable rocktastic three-piece band known as The Winery Dogs Kotzen is an avowed inveterate solo artist with 22 albums released to date under his own name. None of them are more personally affecting than his February 2020 three-disc retrospectacle 50 FOR 50 released via Kotzen’s own Headroom-Inc. label. Ostensibly intended to celebrate his 50th birthday at the front end of that fateful year Kotzen found the genesis of 50 FOR 50 by combing through his personal archives to hone in on 50 tracks in various stages of almost-completion in order to come up with the right finishing touches to get them across the finish line. In the process many of these songs took on a much bigger weight than the songwriter had perhaps initially envisioned.

About

Zack Kirkorian a captivating original artist whose mastery of modern production techniques and blistering guitar combine into one mesmerizing must have in my playlist. Zack is a marvel at pulling the right sounds out of his guitar and synthesizers. His songs are so infectious you can’t help but sing along the after the first chorus.

Born disabled Zack didn’t take to sports but found his outlet in music. Zack’s musical education began at the age of five with violin and continued throughout his life culminating in graduation from the Grove School of Music.

Zack recalls his fondest memories of touring the country and playing the Sunset Strip in the days when Gazzarri’s The Roxy and Whiskey a Go Go ruled. A highlight of that time lead to Zack’s role as keyboardist for International Recording Artists Warrant.

As the vibe died on the Sunset Strip Zack had to reinvent himself landing a technician’s position at Steinberg GmbH one of the world’s leading musical software companies and developers of Cubase a popular music recording arranging and editing software used in digital audio workstations.

Zack’s tenure at Steinberg gave him the mastery of studio techniques drawing the attention of Leon Russell who hired Zack as his in-house engineer.

In 2019 Zack Kirkorian achieved a career milestone and was placed on the Official Ballot for The Grammy Awards by The Recording Academy for the single ‘I’ve Got Plenty of Reasons’ for Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song.

Today Zack brings all his experience back to creating music for mass consumption. Compared to Frank Zappa Beck and The Tubes all rolled into one audio experience not explored by today’s sample based artists.

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