In The Studio: Mike Portnoy’s Liquid Tension Experiment

The following article was excerpted from MD Hot Trax, Modern Drummer’s CD/magazine package that features great drum performances by eleven of today’s top artists. Mike Portnoy’s contribution to MD Hot Trax is an exclusive outtake from his recent Liquid Tension Experiment project.

Mike Portnoy thought he was dreaming. There he was, one of progressive-rock drumming’s guiding lights, in a New York City recording studio with three of his all-time favorite musicians laying down totally spontaneous, improvised tracks. Portnoy’s musical soul was soaring.

For one week last September Portnoy “found himself’ in a recording studio with keyboard whiz Jordan Rudess, guitar virtuoso (and Dream Theater bandmate) John Petrucci, and the mother of all low end, Tony Levin. The plan was to put four super-talents into a high-pressure musical blender and see what oozed out. The result? The Magna Carta release Liquid Tension Experiment.

Over the course of that eruptive week several jams made their way to tape, including a few bass-and-drums duets. “Chris And Kevin’s Excellent Adventure” found the Dream Theater drummer crossing sticks with Crimson/Gabriel bassist Levin. Here the two men played all over, under, and around a half-time shuffle. About a dozen wildly different versions of the jam came down the pipe.

Dream Theater fans be warned: This is not the Mike Portnoy you’re used to hearing. Yes, there’s a good deal of technique on display, and Mike’s way of screwing with the time – one of his favorite practices – is evident. However, gone is the studied intricacy and execution we’ve come to expect from the drummer. Mike’s playing here is “in the moment,” and whatever happens – warts and all – is a part of that moment.

WFM: How did this whole thing come together?

MP: Last year the record label Magna Carta approached me about doing some sort of – and I’ll use their words – “super group.” They asked me to put together a list of musicians that I would like to play with, sort of a dream project for me. And they did the same thing for Terry Bozzio. At the same time they were trying to assemble this for me they were putting together Terry’s Black Light Syndrome project with Tony Levin and Steve Stevens.

I gave them a list of bass players, keyboard players, and guitar players, although there were only two bass players and two keyboard players on the list. I wanted either Billy Sheehan or Tony Levin on bass and Jordan Rudess or Jens Johansson on keyboards. At the time, Billy Sheehan and Jens Johansson were available, and Tony and Jordan were not. So the project was going to be Billy, Jens, and me, and at that point we started looking for a guitarist. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find the right guy. I had a list of people ranging from Trevor Rabin of Yes all the way to Dime bag Darrell of Pantera. For some reason, the guitar position just never panned out. So the whole project got put on the shelf, because I had to get back to work with Dream Theater.

A window of opportunity opened for me towards the end of the making of the latest Dream Theater album [Falling Into Infinity], and Magna Carta called again and said, “Look, now it turns out that Tony and Jordan are available. Let’s try to make this happen. Find a guitar player.” And once again I went looking but couldn’t find the right guy. And it turned out that the right guy was right under my nose. At first I wanted to keep this a completely separate entity from Dream Theater, and that’s why I didn’t even consider asking John to do it. But when push came to shove and we absolutely had to have a guitar player, I asked him to do it, and I’m really glad I did because he ended up being perfect. The chemistry between the four of us was incredible.

WFM: It seems that Magna Carta loves you.

MP: Yeah, well, they are a very small label and they’ve taken some criticism because it’s a smaller operation. But as far as I’m concerned they are the only label out there that is giving any exposure to young progressive bands. Not to mention the fact that I’ve done two side projects with them now [Liquid Tension Experiment and the Rush Tribute, Working Man], and in both cases I was able to actually collaborate with my two favorite bass players. I did Working Man with Billy Sheehan and now this one with Tony Levin. So as far as I’m concerned, Magna Carta is cool.

WFM: Once John, Jordan, Tony, and you gathered in one place, what was the game plan for making music?

MP: Well, the plan was to put the four of us in a studio with barely any preconceived ideas and see what would happen – mike everything up, hit the record button, and let spontaneity be documented. We found a week where we could all get together – that’s all the time we had – so we had to put it together this way.

The songs ended up being incredibly technically demanding and very progressive pieces of music. It’s kind of strange, because normally with Dream Theater we’ll have an eight-minute track with all sorts of odd time signatures, and we’ll spend a lot of time sorting through it. This project had tunes that were just as complex as any Dream Theater music, but we had to write, record, and nail each of them in one day. It was pretty stressful, but it was also that pressure that inspired a creative environment unlike anything I’ve ever been involved with before.

The album has nine songs on it, four of which are full-blown written pieces. Then there are two duets: one with me and Tony and the other with Jordan and John. And then there are two shorter jams and one huge extended jam, which is about a half hour long.

WFM: When you mentioned you were going to be doing this project with Tony Levin, you seemed very confident about it. Have you known him from some previous project?

MP: No. This was my first time working with Tony, and it’s actually my first time meeting him. Magna Carta put me in touch with him, and right off the bat he seemed incredibly easy to work with and to talk to. And obviously from his track record, he’s incredibly versatile, and that’s what we needed.

Having Tony involved with this project was really beneficial because John and Jordan are total shredders – if Billy Sheehan had been on board it could have become total chaos. Tony added a sense of foundation to this because that’s the style of player he is. He’s a total groove man. But at the same time he’s innovative and totally versatile. It was fascinating to listen to him jump from style to style and pull out all these different instruments – the [Chapman] stick or the bass or even an upright bass played with a bow – to add all these different flavors to the tracks. He was able to do all of that and at the same time give a foundation to some of the madness that was going on.

WFM: Tony has played with some of the finest drummers on the planet: Bill Bruford, Manu Katché, Andy Newmark – Tony’s even credited with introducing Steve Gadd to the New York studio scene. Was there any nervousness on your part in working with him?

MP: Maybe for the first minute. We actually had one little jam session at my house before we went into the studio. And you know, maybe for the first minute or so it was like, “Wow. This is the guy who played on all the classic Peter Gabriel and King Crimson stuff.” So there was a little intimidation. But he came over to my house, started playing with my dog, and we made a big pot of coffee – that’s his big love. The minute he strapped on his bass and I got behind the drums I immediately felt comfortable with him, and suddenly we were on the same level making music. A player of his ability is really able to make the other musicians around him feel comfortable and play better.

WFM: Can you be a bit more specific about how the two of you synced up musically?

MP: It was interesting, because I had Jordan and John on one shoulder tugging me towards the overplaying world. You know, those two were corning up with weird, strange parts and wanting me to go with them. But then on the other side was Tony, inspiring me to lay down the groove. And it was great; I loved doing both. And Tony, even though he’s a groovemeister, is also pretty wacky; he comes up with some really strange shit.

Now after having worked with Tony, I hear where a lot of the really abstract King Crimson stuff comes from. I always assumed that the really out stuff came from Robert Fripp, but a lot of it stems from Tony. So it’s kind of weird; Tony, with his two main outlets being Crimson and Gabriel, is able to be the super groove-man with one project and be totally off the wall with the other. No matter what we put on the table, something straight or really complex, he was able to jump in and come up with an amazing part.

WFM: Did playing with Tony, or with this project in general, bring out a different side of your playing from what people are used to hearing from you in Dream Theater?

MP: I suppose so. Liquid Tension Experiment is a progressive album, no question, so it’s not too detached from what Dream Theater does. But this is also the progressive album that Dream Theater couldn’t make, because we have to consider our future on a commercial level. So now with both Dream Theater and Liquid Tension, John and I have the best of both worlds: We have our bread-and-butter band that is a more mainstream act, and we have an outlet where we can do anything we want musically. Liquid Tension Experiment is driven purely by musical satisfaction and selfishness. [laughs]

WFM: And what would you say having this freedom has done for your playing?

MP: There are moments on here where there are things I’ve never been able to do in Dream Theater. In fact, there’s a piece called “Osmosis,” which is a four-minute jam, that is so Peter Gabriel-ish it’s unbelievable. I played the whole kit with Hot Rods and mallets, and I really felt like I was playing on a Gabriel track. Although Dream Theater has had that influence and we’ve tried to promote that, we’ve never gotten this close. A band can’t fully become another style when you are so grounded in what you do. It was great working with Tony, because I was able to play a lot of things with him that I could never do with Dream Theater simply because of the nature of the musicians. When you play with different people you are going to sound different.

WFM: You do sound different on this, especially hearing you play a half-time, Bernard Purdie-like shuffle on “Chris & Kevin.”

MP: I love playing that sort of thing, and I never get to do it with Dream Theater. The basic idea for the duet just came from the two of us jamming on that groove. Tony pulled out the stick and started working with it. We came up with the basic idea, and then did several different takes on that groove. We just laid into that halftime groove and then went completely out, came back in, and did lots of different things.

WFM: It’s interesting to hear you be a bit freer and not play a well-planned part.

MP: I have to say that I’m prouder of my playing on this record than any other record to date. It’s funny, we put this thing together in one week, and I think I achieved more in that one week than I ever achieved on any other record I’ve done with Dream Theater. I’m not insulting Dream Theater; I’m just saying that this project was something very special.

There’s a thirty-minute improv jam that closes the record that I think is some of my most-inspired playing. If I had to play any piece of music for anybody to hear what I’m all about, this piece would be it. It just pulled things out of all four of us that I’d never heard before. I’m very excited about it.

WFM: Speaking of improvisation, I remember Bill Bruford talking about how King Crimson would set up certain guidelines for improvisation. Crimson had a blackboard where they wrote things that they either wanted to do or wanted to avoid-thoughts like “no metallic sounds” or “no backbeats.” What kind of discussion, or guidelines, did the four of you have before actually launching into a piece?

MP: For most of the album we did exactly as Crimson did – we had a blackboard in the studio that we’d write general concepts on for specific tunes. But for that thirty-minute jam I was talking about, which is called “Three Minute Warning,” we had no preconceived ideas for it. It was completely spontaneous and improvised.

WFM: How did that happen?

MP: During these sessions Jordan, John, and I would spend a little bit of time trying to construct a basic framework for the song we were working on. Tony wasn’t really interested in contributing in that way. Tony’s more interested in just playing. So there were a lot of times when John, Jordan, and I would be sitting there working out these complex passages and Tony would just be waiting for us to play.

Towards the end of the last night of recording Tony really wanted to get going, so he basically gave us an ultimatum. He said, “Look, I want to be jamming in three minutes or I’m packing up and going home.” He was being funny about it, and that’s why the track is called “Three Minute Warning.” [laughs] What happened was that we immediately said, “Well hey, roll tape.” We didn’t discuss a single note, and what you hear on the album is what happened over the next thirty minutes.

WFM: That’s terrific. In that type of situation you must have been listening hard to the other musicians.

MP: Exactly. You have to open up to the other players and really be aware of what’s going on. And doing that while the tape is rolling – having to listen and focus so intensely – brought out a whole different side of my playing.

WFM: And regarding the duet with Tony: Where did the name “Chris And Kevin’s Excellent Adventure” come from?

MP: Well, we didn’t have any time for a photo session for the album, so there was actually a photographer running around the studio taking pictures while we were laying down tracks. This photographer kept calling me Chris, and Tony, Kevin. He just kept messing up our names, so when it came time for Tony and I to name this duet, I said, “Why don’t we call it ‘Chris And Kevin’s Excellent Adventure’?” [laughs]

WFM: One noticeable point about this track is the looseness of the performance. On a Dream Theater release your drumming is very precise, which is something that your fans have come to expect. But it’s surprising that you let some of that go on this track. You seem to like it, warts and all.

MP: Absolutely! I think that was the beauty of this whole project – it was spontaneous and raw, and that’s what made it so wonderful. Even if there are clams here and there, it’s natural and that’s what happened.

With Dream Theater, we’ll spend months polishing the stuff – really over-polishing it – and when we record the tunes we’ll go for perfection. Although that’s great in certain ways, there is a certain amount of spontaneity that is not even a part of that equation. Liquid Tension is all about spontaneity. There are moments on this duet where we are just completely out and where we lose it for a second. But that’s okay – it’s us playing.

WFM: Do you think any of that attitude might drift into Dream Theater?

MP: I wish it would, but knowing how the five of us are, I doubt it. Like I said earlier, now it kind of works out nicely because I have two completely separate creative outlets. I hope we get to do another Liquid Tension Experiment album, and if we do I want to take the same approach – you know, having that pressure of creating something right on the spot. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

For information about ordering a copy of MD Hot Trax, see the ad on page 109 of this issue.