After a seven-year hiatus from the recording studio, the supergroup trio of Billy Sheehan, Richie Kotzen and Mike Portnoy, collectively, The Winery Dogs, are back with their appropriately titled third album, III.

This album is everything you’d expect from The Winery Dogs – funky, soulful and riff-driven rock and roll! 

In addition to amazing new music, the band is currently in the middle of the U.S. stretch of a world tour in support of the album. I had the privilege of speaking with the legendary bass wizard and one of the nicest guys in music, Billy Sheehan, from a recent tour stop in Dallas, Texas.

Technology makes it possible to record with anyone, from anywhere in the world. How important is it to you to be in the same room as you write new material with Richie and Mike? 

Billy Sheehan/Winery Dogs: “It’s an old school way of doing it. We find the communication that occurs between us to be more vital and urgent and energized when we’re in the same room. We’ve done all of our records that way and we’ll probably continue to do our records like that. There’s just a magic in the chemistry when you get players in a room that happen to be on the same page. And we were very much so on our three records – especially this one.”

With the three of you virtuosos in the studio together, I’d love to be a fly on the wall as you wrote and produced this (and your previous records). What is that process like? 

“We just go into a little tiny room with a practice amp and small drum kit and come up with some ideas. If there’s a drum beat or bass line or chord change, we hear it and let that be the seed from which a composition begins to grow. From there, we fine tune it with a proper chorus or a bridge. There’s not a lot of thinking, plotting or planning. Some people think that it’s like a board meeting where we sit around with a bunch of slide rulers and calculators and figure, figure, figure. It’s not like that at all. We just go in with our instruments and make it up.”

This album continues The Winery Dogs’ pattern of catchy hooks, grooves and harmonies. Where does the inspiration for these great songs come from? 

“We come in with nothing. On “Stars” (new track on the “III” album), I’m not sure if I started on bass or Mike started with a drum beat, but Richie started playing and in a matter of a little while, we had a chorus and it just kind of happened. It happens a lot. I wondered a couple of times years ago just how that could be. But luckily, in my early days, I played cover songs, so I learned many of the nuances of songwriting from them. It kind of prepared me for what a good verse sounds like or how to get out of a bridge properly. Almost everyone I know started in a copy band. The Beatles were a copy band! And they became one of the greatest writing bands of all time. Later on, that set them all up with their writing skills. I have a giant, big bag of tricks that I can dig deep into because I’ve played so many songs in so many styles by so many artists.”

I haven’t had the opportunity to see you guys live. You have such a huge sound. Do you use additional musicians in your live shows? 

“No. Never. It’s just the three of us. We don’t do that.”

How do you feel about the explosion of artists using tracks in their live shows these days? 

“My last moments with David Lee Roth was in the studio. We sang all the background vocals for the Skyscraper tour to be on samples for them to use live, which went against my grain to start with. And later that day, I had the meeting which ended my relationship with Dave. Fortunately, I did not go out on that tour with fake vocals. I did sing on that tour, but I did it digitally. I’m very, very much against faking it. Richie really sings. There isn’t a note of pitch correction on our record. It becomes professional wrestling at some point. I hate to see it because all it takes is work. I’ve never had any talent, I just worked my ass off and figured out the notes, figured out how to do it and got up on stage and did it live. But once you get it, you got it and it’s satisfying and it’s real and I prefer that over anything else. With the Winery Dogs, we improvise a lot. We do a lot of jamming, and we don’t know what’s going to happen. Somebody turns left or turns right and we decide to follow him. It makes it fun and alive, and people are enjoying a spontaneous moment where something happened that will never happen again.”

You’re a wizard on the bass! How complicated is your bass rig compared to others? I know you customize everything you play…would you compare your basses to Eddie Van Halen’s “Frankenstrat?” 

“It wasn’t uncommon for people of a particular generation to take things apart. In my day, if you bought an amplifier, you had a screwdriver in your hand within a day to open it up and see what’s inside! When you want something out of a particular instrument, you can swap out components. I started doing that in about 1969 or ‘70. I like the sound of the Gibson basses, but I like Fender basses as well. There’s room on a Fender bass for a Gibson pickup, so why not have both? It’s simple. Two basses in one. I use both and plug them into two amps. One does super deep lows and the other does all the articulation. To draw it out on a piece of paper, it’s really quite simple. 

One of the best shows I’ve ever seen was David Lee Roth’s “Eat Em and Smile” tour with Cinderella in 1986. Was that as much of a party as it appeared to a 16-year-old in Cleveland, Ohio? 

“I’m proud to say that yes, it was! We had a riot – on and off stage. We had a great time. Dave was generous to us. We learned a lot from him. It was Dave’s idea for me and Steve (Vai) to do that little back-and-forth bass and guitar solo. At the start of the tour, we did separate solos and one point, Dave said, that’s not entertaining enough. We gotta do more. So he came up with the idea and it was brilliant. Working with him was like getting a PhD in showbusiness. He’s a full-time entertainer. He’s a comedian, a storyteller, and a very entertaining human being.”

You’re heading to Brazil and Europe soon. What’s your absolute favorite place to play in the world? 

“I don’t really have a favorite. It can be anywhere. The Winery Dogs did a show in Korea that was one of the wildest, craziest crowds we’ve ever had. They just went nuts. It was amazing. We did a show in Paris on our first tour in a club that was so crowded that you couldn’t fit another person in unless you cut them into pieces and shoved them in! They went out of their minds. In Brazil, the audience often sings the guitar solos. It’s hard to pick just one place. I almost prefer intimate, small clubs as opposed to a huge arena. It’s a different kind of pressure because those people see and hear everything that’s going on.” 

One last thing…just for fun. I’m a huge cat guy and I know you are, too. Talk about your love of our feline friends. 

“We had a cat for 19 years – Spooky. I rescued her when she was two. Actually, she picked me. I love all cats, but I prefer black cats because they have a tough time being adopted. It was only about 10 days after we lost Spooky, and my wife asked if we can just go look at cats. I knew at that point there was no way were just going to go “look” at a cat and not go home with one. So we went to a shelter and a cat in a lower cage reached out and put his paw on my face. At that point, I knew we found a winner – and that’s Rebel, our current cat. We were devastated at the loss of Spooky. She was everything to us. But our broken hearts were fixed by adding Rebel to our family. It hurts almost more to lose a pet than it does a person. To the point that some people never want another pet again, but I like to tell people when the time is right, you’d be surprised how quickly your broken heart can be repaired by getting another kitten or puppy. Your home will be turned from a mausoleum to an amusement park. I can’t imagine our life without our little Rebel right now. He’s just the greatest little thing ever. And I bet Spooky is looking down and quite happy about it!”

I’m Music Magazine Writer Steve Pawlowski