Don Dokken spoke to Tigman of the Poughkeepsie, New York classic rock radio station 101.5 WPDH about the progress of the songwriting sessions for DOKKEN‘s new LP — the group’s first since 2012’s “Broken Bones”. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “We just finished our new album. We finally got it done, which was hard with COVID and all the guys living in different states, and I couldn’t play guitar. But luckily, when we did ‘Broken Bones’, our last album, Jon [Levin, guitar] and I had written, like, 12 or 14 songs left over, so we picked through ’em and picked the best and wrote some new ones. And I got my pen and paper out, and we’d write on the road and we’d write over Skype. I’d never recorded an album over Skype before. You send a track to the bass player, he records it and sends it back. I send a track over to BJ [Zampa, drums], his house, and he cuts the drums. Then I hop on a plane from Santa Fe, come down to L.A. and stay at Jon‘s for a few days. And we’ll just bang it out. And I just go into producer mode and try to create the best songs. And we’re really happy with it.”
Asked when the new DOKKEN album will be released, Don said: “Well, it’s coming out on Silver Lining [Music, the label owned by Thomas Jensen, one of the founders of Germany’s Wacken Open Air festival]. And we just don’t know what to do because this COVID thing, it’s like… Now they’ve got the new [variant] — omicron, or whatever it’s called. It seems like every month there’s a new variant, and we’re supposed to do a European tour in the spring — like, eight countries — but it’s out of control there.”
Regarding the musical direction of the new DOKKEN material, Don previously told The Metal Voice: “We’re kind of going retro. I mean, look, you write what you write as a musician — your life changes, the world changes, you write what you write. You’re influenced by new bands and other music. But I know where my bread is buttered as far as the classic DOKKEN sound, and Jon‘s really good at doing that. And so I said, ‘I think we should write a record between the lines of ‘Tooth And Nail’ [1984] and ‘Under Lock And Key’ [1985].’ And that’s kind of the direction I’m writing in right now.”
DOKKEN released an album called “The Lost Songs: 1978-1981” in August 2020 via Silver Lining Music. Featuring sleeve art by renowned U.S. artist Tokyo Hiro (MOTÖRHEAD, MOTLEY CRÜE), the effort contains material written and recorded by a hungry young Don Dokken as he embarked upon a journey which started in Southern California and Northern Germany.
DOKKEN‘s classic lineup — Don, guitarist George Lynch, basist Jeff Pilson and drummer “Wild” Mick Brown — reunited for a short Japanese tour in the fall of 2016. The trek marked the first time in 21 years the four musicians had hit the road together.
A DOKKEN concert DVD focusing on the band’s reunion tour, “Return To The East Live (2016)”, was made available in 2018.
