The Winery Dogs are working on a new album

(from left) Billy Sheehan, Mike Portnoy and Richie Kotzen of The Winery Dogs perform at The Culture Room on May 14, 2014 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
(Image credit: Larry Marano/Getty Images)

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.

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Jackson Maxwell

Jackson is an Associate Editor at GuitarWorld.com. He’s been writing and editing stories about new gear, technique and guitar-driven music both old and new since 2014, and has also written extensively on the same topics for Guitar Player. Elsewhere, his album reviews and essays have appeared in Louder and Unrecorded. Though open to music of all kinds, his greatest love has always been indie, and everything that falls under its massive umbrella. To that end, you can find him on Twitter crowing about whatever great new guitar band you need to drop everything to hear right now.