The Winery Dogs
Loud & Proud Records, 2013
With any super group line-up it’s easy to face a full blown mess of egos and overplaying. And The Winery Dogs comes with it’s own pedigree of noted over players. So the big question is can they make it work together?
We have bassist Billy Sheehan whose own remarkable discography includes Talas, David Lee Roth’s initial solo outing, and Mr. Big. Mike Portnoy formerly of Dream Theater and Avenged Sevenfold and currently of Adrenaline Mob is on drums, and rounded out with guitarist Richie Kotzen handling vocal duties as well, this is a formidable group of players.
They deliver 13 songs of mainstream-ish rock with phenomenal playing that’s a musicians wet dream to listen to. It’s like noodling heaven. And as good as the music is while it’s playing, it’s almost instantly forgettable. Everybody gets a chance to show off, and be flashy, but the songwriting comes up short. It all sounds like the instructors at Berkley warming up on b-list material. This one is for serious fans only.