DETROIT - After a successful two-year start-up, Motley Crue's Crue Fest may take a year off in order to allow the band to record its next album.

"We have about a month left (of this year's Crue Fest 2) and then we're going to be taking quite a bit of time off," Crue bassist Nikki Sixx tells Billboard.com.

"I feel like we're ending being out for quite a long time, touring and 'Saints of Los Angeles' and the Carnival of Sins (tour) and 'Red, White & Crue' ... really going away on a big high to start working on writing a new record and looking forward to the next Crue Fest, which'll probably be in 2011."

But Sixx adds that there's a possibility that future Crue Fests could even hit the road without the namesake band on the bill.

"There have been offers and from suggestions of other bands that were interesting in going out and doing Crue Fest if we didn't do it," Sixx says. "It's growing into something. It's more of a community than just about Motley Crue, which in the end is a really good feeling. There might be a day we don't do it, a year we're working on something else and somebody comes in and says 'We want to do it.' We've heard there's interest. It might be a bit young and premature to do that now, but it's nice to hear it."

The Crue Fest concept has been expanded this year to include a second stage, while Motley Crue is closing each stop by performing its 1989 album "Dr. Feelgood" in its entirety. The tour ends September 5 in Darien Lake, N.Y.

As for the next Crue album, the follow-up to 2008's "Saints of Los Angeles," Sixx says he's "been plugging along, writing" new material, and that bandmates Mick Mars and Tommy Lee have told him they have some ideas as well. All four members, including frontman Vince Neil, are also working on solo projects -- Sixx with his Sixx:AM and Lee with a reconstituted Methods of Mayhem -- but the bassist says those often yield music for the Crue as well.

"Any time any of us are writing, that always comes up," says Sixx, who's also expanding his clothing line, Royal Underground, as well as the Eleven Seven record label. "I was actually working on something the other day for Sixx:AM and immediately was like, 'This is so Motley...' It's an interesting process; it can take anywhere from six months to a year, but the good news is there's no rush, y'know?"