Winery Dogs: Billy Sheehan, Mike Portnoy And Richie Kotzen Continue 'Hot Streak' With New Album [EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW]

When word got out that Billy Sheehan, Mike Portnoy and Richie Kotzen had formed a new band called The Winery Dogs, expectations of hard rock fans were understandably high due to the players' pedigrees. Remarkably, the band lived up to the hype and then some with its 2013 self-titled debut.

Even more remarkable: the Dogs have done it again with the perfectly titled "Hot Streak," a sophomore effort that builds upon the success of the debut record without rehashing it.

Sheehan is the bass virtuoso who gained fame as a member of Mr. Big and for playing with David Lee Roth and Steve Vai. Portnoy is a renowned progressive rock and heavy metal drummer with a comically long resume, including his tenure as a founding member of Dream Theater and stints with Avenged Sevenfold and many others. Kotzen is a prolific guitarist and vocalist who was hired as a 21-year-old to revitalize the pop metal band Poison in 1991, played alongside Sheehan in Mr. Big for a while, opened for the Rolling Stones during their 2006 Japan tour and released his 20th solo album earlier this year.

Sheehan, speaking to Headlines & Global news on the phone after pulling into Atlanta during the Winery Dogs' tour to promote "Hot Streak," released earlier this month, says he was convinced early on that the band had something special.

"The first couple times we sat down together to write before the first record even, I just felt really confident right away that things worked well," says Sheehan. "First of all, we hung out pretty well. Everybody's personality was such that we could sit around a table, have a meal and hang out and have conversations and have fun and make jokes, and that's a big part of it. A lot of bands might look good on paper, but in real life it doesn't work out, and in my opinion there's more to it than just the music you're playing, it's also the type of person you are. So that has a lot to do with allowing chemistry to work, that personal factor."

We chatted with Sheehan about "Hot Streak," which has been a strong performer on several Billboard charts right out of the gate, why the Winery Dogs are a long-term project and not a one-off supergroup, and the heartbreak he feels when one of his favorite bands breaks up.

There's a lot of musical diversity on "Hot Streak." For example you have straight rockers like "Captain Love," the title track has a jazz fusion feel, "Spiral" is essentially an electronica track and "Think It Over" is classic r&b. How did this diversity come about? Did you guys make a conscious effort to branch out a little more on the second album?

Not really. We put very little conscious effort into anything of a planned angle or strategy, if you will. We just kind of get in and start writing, and what happens happens, and that's kind of what we did on the first record. And now that we've played together for a while - going into the second record we had done over a hundred shows and played around the world, literally - we just have a lot more experience with each other and we're more aware of each other as players. So for some reason, this group of songs came out like that. I don't know exactly why it did, but I'm glad about it, I'm pleased about it. But we didn't really plan it that way. I'm pleased there is more variety on this record, because I think the safe and easy thing, and most lucrative thing, would be to do the first record over again. I think a lot of bands do that, and I'm glad we didn't do that. There is some variation here, and my thought on that is we already have the first record, that's there, that's done, so now let's move onto something else instead of staying painted in the same corner.

A lot of bands that come together like this don't last very long. When did you guys commit to this not being a one-off?

When we started working on the first record, the idea was that if we're going to do this we should do a band, and if we do a band it should be a real band and we should plan this out for many years and look forward to our sixth record and all of that. And I was totally into that, because as a fan - and I'm a big fan of a lot of music and I've got a huge iTunes collection - I invest emotionally when I get into a record or a band. They become part of me; music is the most important thing in my life, so when I find a new band I like, in a way I'm invested emotionally, and I'm sure other fans do the same thing, and I know how heartbroken I am when a band puts out a record and then they don't tour or they put out a second record and they have a different guy in the band or I found out later that they all hate each other. It breaks my heart (laughs). A lot of bands I found out later that they hated each other, they had separate tour buses, they didn't talk to each other, and here I was thinking they're all friends and happy and when I listen to their music I imagine them all hanging out together and having a good time. So right from the beginning we said if we're going to do it we should do it for real. Because if people are going to invest in us, we don't want to scam them and let them think it's something that it's not - it's either really a band and we're really doing this or it would just be another side project, and none of us wanted that.

The three of you are all monster players. Was there any kind of adjustment period of not getting in each other's way?

For me, no, because I had played with both Richie and Mike separately before, and quite a bit, so I knew those two guys. For me the task was easiest, I think. For Mike and Richie, it took a little while for them to get to understand the way each guy approached a rhythmic feel and a melodic feel, but not long at all. I think by the first week of gigs we were rolling along pretty well.

Having been in the business for so long, is it exciting to be in a new band, maybe something you hadn't felt in a while?

Absolutely, yeah. And I was excited today to open up the email and find out that we entered Billboard at No. 16, that's a career-high for me. We're very excited about it. I was looking forward to getting out on this tour, because first of all we're doing a lot of American shows first, so it's relatively easy for us. There's only one flight to the tour bus, and then we stay on that until we're done with it, which is very nice, and we've got a great crew and people are sending emails from all over the place about how excited they are to come see the shows and how much they like the record, so it's really turned into a ball of enthusiasm. It's nice to be around.

With the band members' individual history, this looked like a great band in theory, but you can't guarantee that people are going to like it. What's your feeling about the fan reaction, because it seemed to be strong right out of the gate?

I was pleasantly overwhelmed. You're right, I've put out records and thought, man, this is going to be fantastic, and nobody paid attention at all (laughs). It happens a lot where you have great faith in something, but the best laid plans of mice and men, it just doesn't happen, try as you might, it's just not in the cards. This one here, I felt so strongly about the record, I thought, well, it could go by the wayside too, it's a different record business now, it's a different world, we don't have a lot of the access we used to have, but out of nowhere people started gravitating toward the band and the record and it spread like crazy, social media of course; I was very, very pleasantly surprised to see the kind of numbers we're doing, and I still am, record sales-wise and to see the numbers we're doing at shows. It's very, very encouraging.

So you have dates scheduled in the U.S. until November. What's next after that? Overseas shows?

I'm not sure which is first, whether E.U./U.K. or South America/Central America/Mexico, but those are two things coming up. And we also have Southeast Asia and Japan, and we're trying desperately to get something going in Australia. We've been trying since the band began to do Australia, but it's been tough to get a promoter to bite over there; we'll keep trying until they do.

Will you come back for more U.S. shows after that?

Yeah, we're going to do a whole other leg of the U.S. and the festivals in the spring and summer here and in Europe as well.

Do you have any other projects in the hopper you'll be getting to at some point?

At some point, Ray Luzier and I are going to do a drum and bass record, he's played on a bunch of solo records that I did. He's out with Korn right now. Last night he was in Charlotte and we had a night off, he was right down the street from us but unfortunately we didn't get to see him. He's a great friend of mine and we work well together.