Images By: Travis Tutwiler
It’s 2:20 a.m. and I’ve just returned from The Winery Dogs’ Dallas show. I’m hunched over the island in my kitchen, eating a bowl of Life cereal and watching Elton John and Kiki Dee perform “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” from 1976 on Youtube. How rock ’n’ roll is that?! Whatever… don’t judge me. They don’t call me The Maddest Hatter fer nuthin’. Eccentric…? Maybe, but I’ve long been of the mind a little eccentricity is a good thing. As I write this, I’m wearing my new Seahawks bucket hat for no reason I can fathom. Elton John is wearing an ill-fitting plaid suit in this video without a trace of irony; his eccentricity on display for all to see and he’s done alright for himself. What is life without whimsy, after all? This is a particularly valuable quality in musicians, I dare say and Dear Reader, when I think eccentricity and whimsy, I think Richie Kotzen. He may not have the over-the-top presentation of someone like Elton John, but he is an artist to his core and all that comes with it. That is what makes The Winery Dogs so special and unique. They somehow have blended the disparate elements of technical bombast with a pop sensibility and a whole lotta soul via Mr. Kotzen’s vocals and Hendrix-esque guitar playing.
The Dogs rolled through and over Dallas, providing a much-needed distraction; respite from the city’s recent tragedy. Hitting the stage in an outfit my meager verbal prowess could never do justice, was Mr. Kotzen, evoking a wild-eyed hippie witch with regal facial hair. The band, rounded out by the extraordinary Billy Sheehan and busiest man in rock, drummer Mike Portnoy launched its opening salvo in the form of “Oblivion” from its aptly titled, most recent album Hot Streak. With that dizzying display of technical prowess and star power, The Winery Dogs were off and running. The big, bad, bulldozing riff of “Captain Love” came next and heads began to bob. This song features one of the greatest lines I’ve heard in quite some time, “I’m forty-five, but I’m eighteen in the clutch!” Come to think of it, this is a pretty good description of the Dogs themselves.