John Petrucci: Experimental Theater

One week, four musicians, one album. That’s the way it went down on the Liquid Tension Experiment album: a no-holds-barred, progressive supergroup jam featuring guitarist John Petrucci and drummer Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater, renowned bassist/stick player Tony Levin of King Crimson/Peter Gabriel fame and one-time Dixie Dregs keyboardist Jordan Rudess.

“We only had a week to do this,” says Petrucci . “Jordan was out of town. Mike and I were leaving to start touring with Dream Theater in America. Everything was done real quickly. Basically, we got together at Millbrook Sound Studios in upstate New York, and we stayed up there the whole time. We wrote and wrote and wrote and recorded everything as we were writing it.”

The culmination of this intense pressure-cooker environment is the album’s epic jam. “Three Minute Warning,” 30 minutes of unbridled chopsmanship that comes complete with its own cautionary label on the album: “Three Minute Warning” is not for the musically fainthearted or impatient, or critics of extreme self indulgence.”

“That was done totally live,” says Petrucci. “There are no overdubs. Tony really wanted to jam one night, so it went on for like half an hour. And when we listened back that night, we were like, ‘You know what? Let’s put this on the album.’ So we just stuck it on in its entirety.”

In other Petrucci news, look for his upcoming guest spot on The Age of Impact (Magna Carta), on which Petrucci handles all lead guitar duties, as well as his rendition of the classical standard “Flight of the Bumblebee” on Steve Morse’s upcoming The Guitar Summit compilation on Windham Hill. “It’s rock guitar players playing traditional classical pieces,” explains Petrucci. “It was definitely challenging. It’s all alternate-picked 16th notes. And it’s about 200 on the metronome. I played it for my brother the other night, and he said, ‘You know what? All those stupid chromatic exercises you used to do with the metronome paid off.’”

—Mordechai Kleidermacher