Better Days

The Zoo Crew has got a real one on the turntable tonight, and the Zoo Freaks are going to want to lean in for this. "Better Days" is the title cut from Smith/Kotzen, the partnership of Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen, and it is the kind of record that smells like warm tubes, worn denim, and a long highway after a hard stretch. It landed in late November 2021 as a four-song EP on BMG, pressed up as a limited 12-inch for Record Store Day's Black Friday run, and it still plays like a postcard from two guitarists who had finally been let back in the same room. You can catch the whole spin, and a lot more deep-cut rock like it, over at THE ZOO.

The story behind the song is almost as good as the groove. Smith and Kotzen had already cut their self-titled debut in early 2020, holed up at a place called Windermere on Turks and Caicos, writing and playing like two old friends who had finally been given the keys to the house. Two leftover tracks from those island sessions, "Hate and Love" and "Rise Again," ended up on the Better Days EP. The title song, and its running mate "Got a Hold on Me," had to wait. Lockdown kept the pair apart until April 2021, when Adrian came back out to Los Angeles and they set up at The House recording studio. Richie has said that once they started throwing ideas around, the new songs came quick, and that "Better Days" almost seemed to write itself. Adrian walked in with the riff. He was looking for a reaction, the way the old Grey Whistle Test crowd used to judge a tune, and he got one. There was a spark. They built the chorus melody together, passing the ball back and forth the same way they had on the first album, like building blocks. Adrian later called it slightly different from the debut, heavy but melodic, and said he was really excited about it. They produced the EP themselves and handed the mix to Kevin Shirley, the same set of ears who had shaped the first record.

The video shoot tells you a lot about the mood they were in. Behind-the-scenes footage from the making of the clip has Adrian joking that he is the driver of the Winnebago, co-lead singer, co-lead guitarist, and driver, baby, while the two of them work with director Jeff Wolf and try to get the thing finished. It is loose, road-worn, and a little sunburned, which fits a song whose chorus keeps circling the same ache. The lyric has the singer stuck in place, blood moon burning, north star shining, still waiting on better days and longing for yesterday. A little later, when a French rock writer asked Richie whether two years of pandemic had him believing better days were actually on the way, he kept it simple. He likes to see the good side of things, and he tries not to be a downer. That is the whole temperature of the track. It is not a victory lap. It is a sturdy blues-rock promise that the weather will turn if you keep the engine running.

The partnership itself started the way a lot of good rock stories start, which is to say sideways. Richie has told the straight version more than once. He was out driving around Los Angeles with a friend, ducked into the little bar at the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood, and got talking with a woman who turned out to be Nathalie, Adrian's wife. She was already a fan of his records. They stayed in touch. When Adrian came out to the coast, the two guitarists were introduced, and over a few years the hang turned into jam sessions at the Smiths' place out toward Malibu. Adrian has said his wife is the one who pointed him back toward what Richie had been doing, after he had already dug an older Kotzen album, Mother Head's Family Reunion, and thought it was fantastic. Eventually somebody, and Richie figures it was Nathalie, said the obvious thing. You two ought to try and write something. They did. No outside producer in the room, no committee, just two players building a song from a demo until the demo became the master.

If you want the long view on how each of them got to that room, the roads could hardly be more different, which is probably why the records work. Adrian Frederick Smith came up in Hackney, East London. Around fifteen he bought his first album, Deep Purple's Machine Head, and not long after that he met a neighborhood kid named Dave Murray. They started a little outfit called Stone Free, Murray on guitar, Smith on vocals, a friend on bongos. Watching the attention Murray got, Adrian picked up an old Spanish guitar that had belonged to his brother, then bought one of Murray's guitars for five pounds. Johnny Winter and Pat Travers pulled him toward melody instead of pure speed. He left school after his exams, worked building sites as a labourer and bricklayer, and even put in time as a water bailiff at the Walthamstow Reservoirs, all while leading a hard rock band that went from Evil Ways to Urchin. Urchin cut a single, "Black Leather Fantasy," got steamrolled by punk, and folded. In 1980 Maiden came calling to replace Dennis Stratton, and the kid from Hackney who used to write songs on the job site stepped into one of the biggest guitar chairs in the world. He has left and come back since, and he has sung his own stuff in side projects for years, but the blues-rock blood never left him.

Richie Kotzen's start was earlier and faster. Born Richard Dale Kotzen Jr. in Reading, Pennsylvania, in February 1970, he was at the piano by five. Kiss got under his skin, and by seven he had talked the family out of more piano and into an electric guitar. He has laughed about jumping around the house air-guitaring before he even owned the instrument. A local band called Arthur's Museum came first. The real door opened through Mike Varney's column in Guitar World. Varney wrote him up at seventeen and signed him to Shrapnel Records, the California shred label. His first solo album, mostly instrumental, was out by the time he was nineteen. Fever Dream followed, and that one had his voice on it. He has said that without Shrapnel he might still be playing a dive bar somewhere in the Pennsylvania woods. Instead the phone rang. At twenty-one he joined Poison and co-wrote Native Tongue. Later he stepped into Mr. Big when Paul Gilbert moved on. Since 2012 he has fronted The Winery Dogs, and the solo shelf behind him runs past twenty albums, blues, soul, funk, fusion, and straight rock all mixed in the same glass. George Benson was the first concert that floored him. Stevie Wonder hit next. The jazz-fusion streak, including a stint with Stanley Clarke, is still in his hands when he plays with Adrian.

That is the blend you hear on "Better Days." Adrian tends to lean melodic and a little heavier. Richie will push the soul and the fusion, and sometimes he is the one who wants to send it. Somewhere in the middle is the Smith/Kotzen sound, a heavy blues-rock pocket with two lead voices trading lines and two guitarists who do not need a referee. The song later rode out again on the 2022 live set Better Days ... And Nights, cut on a tour where Richie ran the solos the way he runs his own trio, unscripted, any length the night would allow. Adrian took the first solo, Richie took the cue, and the room decided the rest.

If you want the official word from the camp, the project home is Smith/Kotzen, where the pair keep the records and the road news, including the two albums and the EPs that sit alongside Better Days. Richie's own shop is Richie Kotzen. On the social side, Richie posts at Facebook, Instagram, and X, and Adrian keeps the Maiden and Smith/Kotzen news moving on Instagram and Facebook. There is not a separate fan-club site standing on its own that we could vouch for, so the real gathering spots are those official pages, where the Better Days camp still checks in. Spin it loud, Zoo Freaks. The riff already did the hard part.