WARRANT’s JOEY ALLEN Explains Bassist JERRY DIXON’s Absence From Recent Concerts

In a new interview with the Tulsa Music Stream, WARRANT guitarist Joey Allen spoke about the absence of bassist Jerry Dixon from some of the band’s recent concerts. Filling in for him at the gigs has been Robbie Crane, who has had stints with Vince Neil‘s band, RATT and LYNCH MOB, before joining BLACK STAR RIDERS as a full-time member.

Joey said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Look, Jerry has been in this band since the beginning. He’s played every gig for 35 years. It’s not foreign to anybody that travels and does 125 to 150 flights a year, you can get burnt out on doing that. You can get tired of hotels, you can get tired of planes, and Jerry just needs to take a break. He’s healthy. He’s coming in and playing the shows at the end of every month. There’s nothing wrong with Jerry. There’s nothing wrong with the band. Robbie Crane, who is an amazing bass player and an amazing person, has been playing bass pretty much for this band since COVID got over with and we came back out. And he brings a whole another set of tools to this band that’s made everybody in the band step their game up. So, for us, even though we’d love to have Jerry there 24-7, he’s not. Will he ever be again? I don’t know. We’d love that. But if not, we’ve got a family member in Robbie. Robbie‘s known the guys in the band since before I was in the band in ’84. Robbie grew up in Hollywood, so he’s been a part of the music scene in L.A. for a long time. And it is what it is. But that’s the dirt.”

Joey also addressed drummer Steven Sweet‘s health issues which forced him to sit out some shows earlier this fall. “Steven missed a few gigs ’cause Steven had a heart… He had some… We’re all getting older, man, and he just had a little bit of pain in his chest,” he explained. “And this is all online, so everybody knows this that cares to know it. He had a a 98 percent blockage in his left ventricle artery, like the widowmaker [heart attack] waiting to happen. And thank God [WARRANT singer] Robert Mason‘s got good doctors — the healthiest guy in the band, Robert Mason; he’ll like that I said that — he’s got great doctors in Arizona, and he turned Steven on to his doctor and and Steven got a stent put in and he’s healthy. So at the risk of sounding like old, broken-down men, which we’re not, father time always wins, and we’re just trying to take care of ourselves and be healthy.”

In a recent interview with Robert Miguel of Uvalde Radio Rocks, WARRANT guitarist Erik Turner expressed uncertainty over whether he and his bandmates will release a follow-up to 2017’s “Louder Harder Faster” album. “We’re not sure what we’re gonna do as far as new music,” he said. “It’s just been a little bit — there’s just been some stuff going on where we haven’t really been doing any new music. We have some riffs [being thrown] around. We have some half-finished songs going on. Due to some personal stuff going on, we’re just kind of on hold as far as the new record goes. Nothing horrible, but just band stuff.”

This past March, Allen told Mankato, Minnesota’s “The Five Count” radio show that he and his bandmates were “actually writing right now for a record. So people are sending riffs around. You can do it on the Internet nowadays,” he explained. “We just have a cloud-based files system where we just upload ideas. And somebody will take an idea, a music idea, and put some lyrics to it, and we’ll start to craft our songs. So maybe by this fall we’ll dig into the studio again and [record] the follow-up to ‘Louder Harder Faster’, which came out, I think, six years ago this year. The recording process takes about four or five weeks, so maybe early next year we’ll have something new out for everybody to listen to and back on the road we will go to support that.”

More than two years ago, Mason told the “Thunder Underground” podcast that there wasn’t “a defined schedule” for WARRANT‘s next studio album, but he added that he and his bandmates are “always writing.”

In 2020, Turner told the “Talking Metal” podcast that WARRANT was “throwing some ideas around” for a new LP. He said: “I’ve been sending Robert some riffs, and Robert‘s been working on songs. I’ve got a song going with Jerry. So it’s a slow, long process for us, but the seed of a new record has been started. Now, that doesn’t mean the seed will grow into a record. We’ve got a long way to go. We don’t have one finished song. We’ve got a couple of things cooking, and we’re actually sending ideas around back and forth to each other.”

“Louder Harder Faster” was released in May 2017. The disc was recorded with producer Jeff Pilson — a veteran bassist who has played with DIO, FOREIGNER, DOKKEN and T&N, among others — and was mixed by Pat Regan, except for the song “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here And Drink”, which was mixed by Chris “The Wizard” Collier (FLOTSAM AND JETSAM, PRONG, LAST IN LINE).

Mason replaced original WARRANT frontman Jani Lane in 2008 and has brought a degree of stability to the band after Lane‘s unceremonious departure and subsequent 2011 death.