The Winery Dogs Bring Power Trio Fury To New Orleans’ House Of Blues (SHOW REVIEW/PHOTOS)

Walking through the crowd at the House Of Blues in New Orleans on Tuesday night, March 21st, I overheard someone say, “Where did these guys come from?” I almost turned around and said, the gods; for the chemistry between singer/guitar player Richie Kotzen, bass player Billy Sheehan and drummer Mike Portnoy sets off the kind of otherworldly sparks not often seen in the human world. All three being extraordinary musicians, onstage together the tesla ball of kinetic energy explodes. Welcome to the world of The Winery Dogs.

Actually, it’s Eddie Trunk we might need to thank for the conception of the power trio. “Originally, Billy and Mike were looking to do something together and they had started working with John Sykes and I’m not sure how far along that actually got but for whatever reasons they didn’t continue that but they still wanted to work together,” Kotzen explained in our 2013 interview for Glide, right before the band unloaded their debut album. “So Eddie had suggested that Mike call me, so Mike and I had a conversation about doing it and we really kind of let nature take its course.” That journey is now on album #3, aptly titled III, and a new US tour, which wraps up its first leg in April before heading to South America, the US West Coast, and Europe. So if you haven’t caught them live yet in 2023, it’s time to let loose some cash and go see them. Trust me on this.

At the show in New Orleans, the trio may have looked laid back but they were laying down some crispy fried chicken solos. Every time one of the guys lit into a spotlight turn it was like being tapped with a hot wire. They got better and better and better and when they drove hard into the fusion storm of “Elevate” as their goodnight kiss, the sweat was in puddles at everyone’s feet. 

Now I could sit here and conjure up all kinds of words that ultimately mean, simply, fantastic. So we’ll leave it right there. You get the picture. Top to bottom, The Winery Dogs put on a spot-on performance in New Orleans. Even if Kotzen never sang a lyric, the musicianship would have kept the crowd enthralled for the two hours they were on that stage. Opening with two songs from their new album – “Gaslight” and the extremely catchy “Xanadu” – they culled rockers and slow-burners from all three of their studio albums: six tunes from III, seven from their 2013 debut and three from 2015’s Hot Streak.

“We started the first record in a small little room, crowded in there altogether, the three of us just throwing ideas back and forth,” Sheehan told me in a recent interview for Glide. Although the recording space didn’t get much bigger over the years, the lyrics have grown from the experiences they’ve had. And so has Kotzen’s vocals, which have refined like good wine. He can bring chills with “Regret” while sitting at his Korg keyboard or pull out heavy metal registers. But what some people forget is that Kotzen is a blazing guitar player, spiraling up a tornado on “Desire” one moment, going into a whirlwind solo on “Breakthrough” that lifts him off the ground before allowing his soul to be taken away in a bluesy segment during “The Other Side” that felt like it was three in the morning in a seedy club where you’re completely inside the notes of your guitar and nothing else matters in the world.

Portnoy, whose legs can take someone down from the strength he has developed in them over years of playing with Dream Theater, Adrenaline Mob, Flying Colors and now Winery Dogs, got his first drum kit at eleven as a birthday present and played his first gig at thirteen. Once telling me that, “I’m very good at sleeping and playing drums and watching movies. Those are probably my three greatest assets,” the drummer from New York knows when to take a song to powerhouse levels or let them idle in a slowed-down hum to accent Kotzen, as in “Stars.”

For Sheehan, his time to shine is now. The nimbleness of his fingers has him conjuring sounds out of his bass from another world; the solo he launches into after “The Other Side” is proof of that. Heavy on the fusion and the funk, he turns “Time Machine” into a deep grunge and sends “Desire” into a steampunk locomotive. For the man who picked up the bass at a friend’s house and “it bit back right away,” Sheehan has to be one of the best bass players in the modern music world.

I think the guy who hollered out “You’re amazing!” following a Sheehan bass solo hit the nail right on the head, and not just about Sheehan. The Winery Dogs are it. Go see them. 

SETLIST: Gaslight, Xanadu, Captain Love, Hot Streak, Desire, Breakthrough, Time Machine, Stars, Damaged, Mad World, The Other Side, The Red Wine, I’m No Angel, Oblivion; ENCORE: Regret, Elevate.

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