The Portnoy Zone

Hi folks and welcome to another update on all things drum related in the Portnoy domain... (plus a few non-drummy items)! Lots of things to report on this time around, so onward and upward!

Mike played on Neal Morse’s solo CD “Testimony”, contributing both drums and vocals for the album, which was released in September 2003, but was recorded in February 2003 at Neal’s (then recently completed home studio, and came after the John Arch “Twist Of Fate” session (January) and thus was the second pro job Mike Portnoy did after his illness in December 2002.

In my opinion, Mike plays some of his most tasteful, restrained and musical drumming on “Testimony”, and therefore totally complimenting Neal’s writing. The Testimony recording session kit (drums/cymbals and percussion) was an almost carbon copy of the Transatlantic kit and Mike spent around about one week with Neal to record drum tracks and vocals.

The Testimony tour rehearsals were held in Nashville and started on November 8th (the day after Mike did his Montreal Drum-fest performance with “Hammer Of The Gods”). These ran for three days and Mike used a cherry black Starclassic kit – again pretty much a duplicate of the Transatlantic kit, even down to the hardware. One interesting thing about these rehearsals, from a drummer’s point of view, was the minimal (if not non-existent) miking of the kit.

The tour kit was again another cherry black Starclassic kit, same as the Transatlantic kit in configuration except it had regular floor toms instead of two stand mounted toms – cymbal-wise, the set-up was pretty much identical, except a 6” Cymbal Disk replaced the Bozzio Radia at the front of the kit over the rack toms and an 18” China appeared to Mike’s left. Mike was very much a “hired gun” for this tour and with this in mind, his kit was set up in an unobtrusive fashion, so as not to detract from Neal’s role as band leader!

The “Drums Across Forever” DVD has also become available (exclusively from www.mikeportnoy.com) and is, in my opinion, an absolute must have for all Mike Portnoy and Transatlantic fans alike! It includes various audio options and a commentary from Mike (with assistance from Mike Brown who produced and edited the DVD and Mike’s dog “Bongo” who was also in attendance). As always, for drummers (like me) this affords a great insight into how Mike works and some of the methods employed to produce his drum tracks – one extra thing for the very “eagle eyed” is that during the “Stranger In Your Soul” recording, we actually see Mike playing without any footwear (just his socks!), very cool!

Mike appears on the DVD release “Modern Drummer Festival Weekend 2003”, which became available during September/October 2003. This package contains some superb footage from the whole weekend with some stunning performances from the assembled drummers and musicians and ranking at the very top of those are Mike’s slots with his Beatles tribute band “Yellow Matter Custard” and, of course, Dream Theater. We also get some behind the scenes footage of the Dream Theater sound check, with the sound guys looking like they were about to experience the full wrath of Portnoy!” The Yellow Matter Custard and Dream Theater performances are awesome and the whole package is well worth the purchase price and a must for Portnoy/Dream Theater fans.

The Yellow Matter Custard kit was a Starclassic Performer with 22” x 16” kick, 12” rack and 14” floor tom. The finish was somewhere between Liquid Metal and Charcoal silk, very like Ringo’s Ludwig Oyster Black Pearl Front head and had “PorTnoy” in the same style as BeaTles and looked very cool! However there was no hole cut in the front head and all the drums sported coated heads (the snare had a Tama “Zero Ring” muffler to kill some of the ring to make it more of an authentic ‘Ringo” sound).

Lightweight Swingstar straight cymbal stands (2) and snare stand were used (only 2 cymbals on this kit, just like Ringo!), an Iron Cobra Lever-Glide hi-hat and single bass drum pe dal completed the set up. Mike’s stick holder (for spares) was attached to one of the floor tom legs. Cymbals were 14” AA hi-hats, AA 16” and HH 17” crashes. There was also a wood rimmed tambourine and a pair of maracas as additional percussion! Mike also used his sticks the “correct” way round for the Yellow Matter Custard set (i.e. he didn’t have his left stick held with the thick end out hitting the drum like he does 99% of the time – another subtle nod of respect to Ringo...

Neal used Jordan’s keyboard for some passages and Matt Bissonette used a very cool Hafner bass, just like Paul McCartney! Each band member had the appropriate Beatles figure on part of their gear, Mike’s “Ringo” was mounted to the tom holder!

The Dream Theater kit was the regular US version of the “Siamese Monster” – nothing new on the kit at all and this was its first outing since being used in the studio for the “Train Of Thought” recordings. John Myung and John Petrucci had amps on stage, none of the band used “in-ear” monitors and it has to be said that this was a fantastic performance of the “Instrumedley” – the band sounded awesome and the sound quality is superb (the audio was mixed by Doug Oberkircher). Oh, and I nearly forgot, just to prove my “eagle eye-ness” I spotted that Mike sported a different style of facial hair between the Dream Theater sound check and the performance!

Transatlantic “Live In Europe” CD And DVD

This deserves an honourable mention for two reasons. Firstly (and most importantly) it is a work of great genius – yes it took almost two years to come to fruition, but the wait was very definitely worth it – I won’t review it here, but suffice to say, if you have not purchased either the DVD or CD (or the deluxe “combined” set) then do so today – you will not be disappointed!

The second reason I mention it is because I’m on it!! This was the tour where I “teched” for Mike, so I feel well qualified to talk a little about the kit itself. We hired the basic Cherry Black Starclassic maple kit from Music Bank in London (I drove with my Bro’-in-law Robbie to pick up the entire set-up, a couple of days prior to the first rehearsal). This consisted of: 22” x 18” kick, 8”, 10”, 12”, 14” & 16” toms. Most of the hardware, including the Power Glide double pedal, but the majority of the MCA63 clamp/boom arm attachments, came direct from Tama, as did the two Melody Master snares. The tambourine, LP bar chimes and fan that you see on the kit all belong to me and were used for the whole tour and returned to my own kit on my return! All the sticks were collected at the start of the tour, including the mallets, Hot Rods and the stick holders, but when we hit Frankfurt, I had to get extra supplies of sticks in for the rest of the tour. The LP “RidgeRider” cowbell was supplied by LP (Rosetti) from the UK, but the holder we used was mine – in fact, as we stuck with “All Of The Above” as the encore song and as this was the only time the cowbell was used, it remained off the kit until just prior to the encore, when I mounted it on the kit (it was then removed at a convenient moment in the song for most of the shows).

Originally, the toms and kick all came with Evans batter heads – I changed these to Remo Pinstripes for rehearsals and they remained on for the complete tour. The 12” Melody Master also kept its original head, but I changed the batter head on the 14” snare twice after rehearsals (in fact the Tilburg show where the DVD was shot, was where I changed heads, so that show had a nice new head in place!). The kick drum front head was also replaced with a Tama logo head and I added a Holz porthole too, prior to rehearsals starting.

Cymbal-wise (some of these were in stock in the UK, some had to be FedEx’d direct from Sabian) we had:

13” HHX Groove hats

7”/9”/11” Max splash set

18” AA Medium Thin crash

17” HHXtreme crash

18” AA Medium crash

1 set Mid Max Stax

1 set Low Max Stax

22” HH Rock Ride

20” HHX Chinese

7”/8”/9” Radia bells

We removed the Radia bell that Mike had to the left of the hi-hat, after the London Astoria show – for the rest of the tour we just used the two. By the end of the tour, I returned the cymbals to the Sabian distributor in London, where they remain in case Mike needs them when he’s over here in the future (all were fully useable except the HHXtreme crash which was trashed and had had the life beaten out of it – it was buckled and lifeless by the end of the last show in Milan!).

Nothing broke during the entire tour and I only had ONE experience (in Cologne, where I had to rush out to tighten the tilter on the 17” crash, which had worked itself loose – my fault entirely for not checking it beforehand! I did make sure I took spares with me – I had my own Iron Cobra Power Glide double pedal and Vela Glide hi-hat with me, which were ready to use in case either pedal broke, but neither were needed. I also carried spare felts, spare heads and plenty of duct tape!

During “Stranger In Your Soul”, when Neal came over to (initially) join Mike on drums (then as the tour went on, took over as Mike did some crowd surfing!), I began putting aside a pair of sticks, which, after a couple of shows, I began handing to Neal so he knew where to look for his sticks before beating the hell out of the drums!

I’ve said it before, but doing this tour was a fantastic experience for me (and I am not a professional drum-tech) – it’s the hardest work I’ve ever done, but also the most satisfying and rewarding. Mike is a complete professional and knows what he wants – luckily for me I was able to deliver! I thank Mike, once more, for offering me the chance to do it. Note: Mike offered me the job of tech for the Neal Morse “Testimony “ European dates, but I had to decline as I was away from November 14th-17th – I didn’t even manage to get to any of the shows as a paying punter!

Hammer Of The Gods

At the start of November, Mike played twice with his Led Zep tribute band “Hammer Of The Gods “, which also featured Daniel Gildenlöw, Paul Gilbert and Dave LaRue. These gigs saw yet another custom kit, which Tam a made especially for Mike, so that he could be faithful to John Bonham’s memory. The kit consisted of 24” x 14” kick drum, 14” rack and 16”/18” floor toms, but it was the material the drums were made of that was “unique”, in that Tama reproduced the famous Ludwig “orange” Vistalite set, just for these gigs! Accompanying the kit was a 14” x 6.5” steel snare and the hardware consisted of a Lever Glide hi-hat, snare stand plus three other “Roadpro” cymbal stands (two single straights and one HTC77W cymbal/tom stand combined to take the 13” rack tom).

The ride cymbal was (just like on Bonham’s kits) mounted on the kick drum via a custom fitting (this is not a regular stock Tama item). A single (Iron Cobra) kick drum pedal completed the Tama side of things. An LP “Jingle Ring” was certainly used in the second of the two sets played (this fastens to the centre rod of the hi-hat).

All of the drums (except the snare) sported “Starclassic” metal badges (as fitted to the “Performer series drums). Head-wise, the toms all had Remo CS (clear) with black dot, the kick head was also a CS black dot, whilst the snare was a normal CS coated with black dot underneath.

The kick drum front head had no hole in it and was mic’d from outside of the drum; it had a pillow inside, however, and black “Tama” logo along with the Dream Theater “Majesty” symbol (also in black). Mike wore black (his T-shirt entirely faithful to the style also worn by Bonham!) for set one, with a headband and he had a full beard for this gig too (again faithful to Bonham’s later look!) for set two. He had a costume change and wore a white “boiler” suit and a black bowler hat (again showing great attention to detail!)

Interestingly, the drums were on a riser, which towards the end of Bonham’s tenure with Led Zep was certainly the case, especially at the BIG shows, but more commonly, His drums were mounted at stage level – I think they look much better elevated to be honest.

A tympani drum was placed just to Mike’s left and a Sabian “Chinese” gong to his right rear.

Cymbal-wise, we had 15” hats, 22” ride and four assorted crashes.

Train Of Thought

No changes to the Siamese Monster configuration for the recording of the new Dream Theater album, but Mike’s role as “equal opportunity employer” to the two sides of the kit went down like this, in terms of which side of the kit he used:

As I Am – right

This Dying Soul – right

Endless Sacrifice – left

Honor Thy Father – Left

Stream Of Consciousness – right

In The Name Of God – left

This, I think adds another dimension when listening to the CD, as it shows Mike’s Endless creativity being put into action on both sides of the kit; the drums sound great, especially the snares and Mike plays superbly as usual.

Another unusual “happening” for Mike on a Dream Theater CD, with this album is, that in “Honor Thy Father”, Mike used ProMark “Hot Rods”. I think I’m right in saying, Previously these had only been used on “Take Away My Pain” from “Falling Into Infinity” and with Liquid Tension Experiment and Transatlantic (quite extensively). Although they had always been in Mike’s stick armoury and, in fact, appear on the Sabian “Hear The Difference” video (produced in 1998), when Mike was filmed in the middle of the “Falling Into Infinity” sessions at Avatar studios. He also used them at the Dream Theater “Unplugged” fan club show in Rotterdam in 1998, but as far as I am aware, only on these two actual Dream Theater studio recordings, worth noting as it’s a rare occurrence!

The first date of the 2004 “Train Of Thought” world tour kicked off in Manchester (UK) on Friday 16th January 2004. The band had flown to Manchester on Sunday 11th January 2004 for pre-production rehearsals – interestingly, they had booked the venue of the first date as their rehearsal spot for the next 5 days, so the gear could be trucked in and set up, then left “in situ” for the duration of the week until the first show ended. This meant that as the band were using new sound/light/video on this tour, they had access to all the various elements pretty much day and night (Bert Baldwin, the video tech, had a few late nights as the video footage/camera work on this tour was particularly complex!).

Kit-wise, the most obvious visual addition were the new kick drum heads, which had been designed by Dave Hatlee from an original idea by Mike Portnoy. Dave is the originator of www.mikeportnoy.com and runs his own web hosting/design company.

The basic design was for the look of an oncoming steam train from the front and Dave created a stunning image which works superbly – it even uses “Tama” as the name/number of the locomotive – Mike had also had the idea of adding a light to the top centre of the heads, these were incorporated into the design but had a few teething problems on the first night (probably pummeled into oblivion by Mike’s kick drum work!) A variation of the drum head design appears on some posters for the first leg of the tour, with the “Tama” replaced with “2004” and looked equally stunning. Smaller “Holz” portholes were also used on these kick drum heads this time around (4” instead of 6”).

The light was a regular recessed ceiling light and bulb kit (this looked just like another “Holz” porthole!). Otherwise, visually, the kit was pretty much identical to the Six Degrees Tour, one thing that wasn’t visible was the pad that was positioned to the left of the hi-hat on the “big kit” side, this was a Roland PD5 pad connected to input 2 of a Roland RM2 Rhythm Coach digital metronome and was mainly being used by Mike as a count in for lighting cues. This is the first time he’s had an electronic drum mounted on his kits (albeit that he was only using it to generate a “click”!).

The cymbal to Mike’s left front was also slightly different in that originally it was an HHX in “Natural” finish but had been replaced by a version in “Brilliant” finish.

Also, hanging on the rack was a laminated message “Leave Me Alone” – a similar message was attached to the front of the band’s tour bus! I didn’t ever get to the bottom of this, maybe someone knows the origins! Also, as the tour went on various other items got hung off the front of the rack, bit like “Do Not Disturb” and the like!

Lastly, some of the mic’s had changed also – kick drum and overheads were new in keeping with the new revised sound system (Mike now has TWO pairs of overheads, one each side of the kit). Well, that’s pretty much it for now- I hope (as always) this has proved an interesting insight into Mike’s world of drums and that you’ve learnt something (however small!).

As always, thanks to Mike for clearing up a lot of my wacky questions, particularly as he was extremely busy preparing for “Hammer Of The Gods”, Testimony, the release of Train Of Thought (endless press) and moving house(!), and all the guys and gals at Theater Of Dreams, for continuing with such a magnificent fanzine!

Until next time, keep ‘em peeled!