Winery Dogs eye summer release

Winery Dogs will enter the studio to start recording the follow-up to their 2013 self-titled debut in May, mainman Richie Kotzen has confirmed.

The vocalist and guitarist, along with drummer Mike Portnoy and bassist Billy Sheehan, have been working together on fresh material – and Kotzen says the ideas they have so far are “crazy” and “cool.”

He tells Vintage Rock: “We actually started writing music a couple of weeks ago at my house and got a bunch of ideas. I think it’s going to be a cool record. We’ve got a couple of songs that we did at the piano, some acoustic things, crazy stuff and it’s going to be a fun record.

“We’ll probably start recording it in May and, realistically, it will be out at the end of summer.”

Last month, Portnoy said they were planning a world tour to coincide with the release, while Kotzen admitted the trio had been surprised by the success of the band.

Scott Munro
Louder e-commerce editor

Scott has spent more than 30 years in newspapers and magazines as an editor, production editor, sub-editor, designer, writer and reviewer. After initially joining our news desk in the summer of 2014, he moved to the e-commerce team full-time in 2020. He maintains Louder’s buyer’s guides, scouts out the best deals for music fans and reviews headphones, speakers, books and more. He's written more than 11,000 articles across Louder, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and Prog and has previous written for publications including IGN, the Sunday Mirror, Daily Record and The Herald covering everything from daily news and weekly features, to video games, travel and whisky. Scott grew up listening to rock and prog, cutting his teeth on bands such as Marillion and Magnum before his focus shifted to alternative and post-punk in the late 80s. His favourite bands are Fields Of The Nephilim, The Cure, New Model Army, All About Eve, The Mission, Ned's Atomic Dustbin and Drab Majesty, but he also still has a deep love of Rush.