Crises Fail To Deter Rising Dream Theater

It’s been the best of times, it’s been the worst of times, to borrow a phrase from Charles Dickens, for the progressive metal band Dream Theater over the past few weeks.

On the good side, it’s epic third album, Awake, debuted at 32 on the Billboard chart last week, the first time the band have cracked the Top 40, having sold 36,000 copies in its first week out.

And Dream Theater was sent to get a jump on the album’s quick start by kicking off its tour in Providence, R.I., Thursday. It stops at the Palace Theater in New Haven Saturday with Toronto’s I Mother Earth opening.

On the bad side, several crises have arisen to coincide with album and tour that have caused a few anxious moments.

First, keyboardist/songwriter and partner of 10 years Kevin Moore left the band weeks before Awake was released. And now, as Dream Theater was working to get new keyboardist Derek Sherinian up to speed for the impending tour, drummer Mike Portnoy was stricken with pneumonia and bedridden for a week.

“He’s going to find out today whether he can resume practicing with us,” noted bassist John Myung of Portnoy’s condition last week from the New York offices of the band’s record company, EastWest.

“I’ve been calling him and telling him, ‘herbal tea, vitamin C and plenty of sleep’, (while he’s been sick) we’ve been going over the music at a low volume to make sure that everything we’re doing is right.

“A lot of the work has been breaking in the new keyboard player, getting all the parts straightened out with him. He has a great attitude, he’s a real pleasure to work with; things have been going real good as a result. That has a positive reflection on everyone during these stressful times.

“The whole thing is just going to have to be handled positively. It’s just a part of life, there’s a lot of unexpected turns, you’ve got to be willing to accept them.”

Things took an unexpected turn in Dream Theater’s favor in early 1993, after many years of toil.

The New York-based band, formed when childhood chums Myung and guitarist John Petrucci hooked up with Portnoy at Berklee School of Music in Boston and then recruited Moore after leaving school, saw its first album, When Dream And Day Unite, go nowhere for lack of promotion and tour support from its former label, Mechanic.

The group also had a problem finding a singer before hooking up with James LaBrie.

Dream Theater’s second album, Images And Words, was struggling to catch on as well when it suddenly took off nearly a year after its release, thanks to a combination of MTV and radio play of the single ‘Pull Me Under’ and the band’s constant touring.

The record went on to sell nearly 500,000 copies in the U.S. and establish the band as legitimate contenders for stardom despite a sound that is the antithesis of the stripped-down, simple and direct “alternative” rock that is presently in vogue.

“It definitely builds confidence in yourself, kind of like ‘wait a minute there’s a reason why things are happening, maybe what we are doing is working and there is a future and what we’re doing,” Myung said. “It’s cool, it reinforces that this can be done.”

Awake is a strong follow-up featuring 75 minutes of music that runs the gamut from spectacular, intricate instrumental forays and epic arrangements (‘Space-Dye Vest’, ‘Scarred’ and ‘Erotomania’ which begins the 20-minute trilogy ‘A Mind Beside Itself’) to sturdy, crunching riffs and simple, inviting melodies (‘The Mirror’, ‘Lifting Shadows Off A Dream’ and ‘The Silent Man’, which concludes the trilogy).

Where so much progressive music bogs down in self-indulgence and pomposity, Dream Theater provides a happy medium between dexterity and listenability.

“We definitely strive to have diversity and variety in the music only because that’s what we listen to,” said Portnoy in a separate interview before his illness.

“Me, as a listener, I like that variety of music, all of us do in this band and we try to bring that into the music and we’re very open to bringing everything in.

“Obviously there are open-minded people out there that listening to all these different kinds of music and they want to hear it as well.”