Back in the mid/late '80s, when I lived in Los Angeles, CA, pursuing my creative dreams on and off the stage, I used to go hang out at the various Red Onion nightclubs to catch my pals playing in the Top 40 bands they booked there 5 nights a week, sometimes sitting in, eventually hiring many of the band members to play in my own bands and recording projects...The Team, Liquid Blue, and a few other great bands, always the cream of the crop, like the Las Vegas of the LA Top 40 circuit...and many of these musicians went on to play with world-famous bands and had very successful, lifelong careers of their own and still do...
One random night I wandered into the Red Onion in Marina Del Rey, CA, almost no one was there, and a brand new band from Kentucky called City Lights was playing...they were all very talented musicians but all I remember was the DRUMMER...I could not take my eyes off him, like the biggest fireworks display on the 4th of July and the ball dropping in Times Square on New Year's Eve and every major event in between, all wrapped up into THIS one exuberant, electrifying fireball of long blonde hair flying, huge, gleeful grin, sticks twirling, cymbals crashing, jumping out of his drum chair, hitting every snare and tom, dick and hairy like his life depended on it...who the hell WAS this guy and WHAT was he doing playing in a Top 40 band to an almost empty club on a weeknight?!
It was James Kottak.
I got to know James a bit after that, instinctively knowing his star was going to rise sooner than later, and his attention would be fleeting, but I was so game to be in his orbit, even for a short amount of time. Underneath all that "rock star to be" flash and flare, James was a sweet Southern boy at heart, and we had some fun, hanging out, writing songs, (including a great one called "Never Too Far Away" that we should have recorded, the work tape is on some cassette buried in a box 10,000 moves ago) and I was smitten for a hot minute, but like I said, I knew this wasn't going to go anywhere and hell, we were all in our 20s and living in the moment and he never knew how I felt about him...nothing serious or bad ever happened - he got back together with an old girlfriend and the torch I carried eventually dimmed and faded away...I even wrote a cute song for him simply titled "James", that documented this bittersweet moment in time...another one stuck on a work tape, probably in that same long, forgotten box...
BUT - in 1987, a song I wrote with Steve Siler called "A PLACE IN YOUR HEART" became the subject of a bidding war between Chrysalis Music Publishing and Almo Irving Music Publishing...the latter won and we were offered the chance of a lifetime: to record the demo they would shop to major artists and TV/Film projects at A&M Records in the same studio that everyone from The Carpenters to Al Green recorded in! They provided one of their best engineers (unfortunately, I don't recall his name), one of THE hottest session guitar players, Tim Pierce, and allowed us to bring in the rest of the musicians. I brought in an incredible male vocalist named David Burns (another musician I had discovered in another Red Onion band Midwest Coast, who sung on our original 8-track demo, and who would eventually join my band Kimberlye & The Band Of Gold and sing it with me as a duet), my co-writer Steve Siler confidently executed all the keyboard duties, and I included a bass player I had worked with in Tuesday Knight's band Louis Ruiz, and on drums....
I brought in James Kottak.
It was supposed to be more of a Disney movie-esque, mellow track, and with a different drummer, it might have been...but I just wanted to be swept up into that orbit of barely contained, positively cataclysmic energy again and lift our song to reach it, and my co-writer allowed me to let James lead us there. And it was EPIC. He tore the roof off the joint!
The story behind this song and all the twists and turns will be told another time. Maybe in the book I know I need to write. The Disney version we meant to record all those years ago is now on my new EP SOLILOQUY, produced by Jimmy Goings.
But this tribute is for James. Who went on to play with Kingdom Come, Warrant, and The Scorpions for the rest of his life. Like I knew in the first 5 seconds, he was always destined for greatness.
Another great musician I met in another one of the Red Onion bands named Teddy Andreadis , who played in The Team, and eventually Kimberlye & The Band Of Gold, and then went on to play with everyone from Guns & Roses to Carole King, posted an after show stage shot with James the other day and it came through my newsfeed. And I just knew. I googled his name...James Kottak, gone at only 61 years old on January 9, 2024...yes, he had his struggles and demons like so many of us...there is no judgment here...only sadness for the loss of yet another huge talent and bright light...
James is but a footnote in my long history on and off the stage in LA/NYC/Nashville and back here in at home the SF Bay Area...but sometimes it's the little stories that stay with you for a lifetime...that make you smile when you think of them...that represents a place in your heart you will always treasure...
And that will always be for James. My heart goes out to his family, friends, fans, and all who were blessed to know him. Rock In Peace, my friend.