The Winery Dogs – the power trio supergroup comprised of Richie Kotzen, bassist Billy Sheehan and drummer Mike Portnoy – are writing material for a new studio album.
Sheehan confirmed the new activity in a Facebook post that reads: "It’s a beautiful day here in Los Angeles. And what a great reason to visit – with The Winery Dogs writing new songs! I am very happy and excited about this."
The trio's last activity came in May 2019, when they set out on the Who Let the Dogs Out tour of the United States.
"It was a nice time," Kotzen said of the tour to Eonmusic in an interview this past March. "We had a good time on the road, and we were talking about the idea of doing something again in the studio, the third record.
"The pandemic hit, so now I just don't know," he said at the time.
"I mean, everybody asks, and I'm very positive about the idea of doing it, but I just don't know what's going to happen now. You know, we have the situation where we still don't really know when we can tour, and The Winery Dogs are an interesting situation; we're not going to just phone it in."
Thankfully, the music industry's gradual re-opening seems to have also extended to this talented trio.
Of course though, individually, the band members have kept themselves quite busy over the last year and a half.
Kotzen released a triple album to mark his 50th birthday and formed a duo with Iron Maiden's Adrian Smith, Portnoy re-teamed with former Dream Theater bandmate John Petrucci for the latter's solo album and for a Liquid Tension Experiment reunion, and Sheehan worked with Sons of Apollo (which, for good measure, also features Portnoy) on that band's second album.
