Mike Portnoy interview

Black Clouds and Silver Linings, which debuted at number six on the Billboard 200 album chart and number one on the Billboard European chart, was perhaps one of the most difficult to make personally for drummer Mike Portnoy. During the creation of the album he lost his dad to cancer and Dream Theater's song ‘The Best of Times’ was about his father. He was asked if it was a difficult thing to address on the album.

Mike Portnoy: I’ve always written very, very personal lyrics from ‘A Change of Seasons’ to the five songs about the 12 steps that I’ve written and ‘Honor Thy Father’. My life and my feelings and emotions have always been an open book to the fans. I’ve never been worried about opening myself too much. So when I wrote ‘The Best of Times,’ I knew it was a super, super heavy topic and a real personal emotional experience for me, but I had no problem sharing that with the fans. It's just my personality – I’m just kind of an open person.

The most important thing about that song was on a selfish level that i was able to play it for my dad before he died and I played it at his funeral for my family and friends as well. So to me, that song provided me with something that will live with me forever. That last experience of sharing this song for him, to him.

Eventually I want to be able to include it and play it, but right now it's still a little too soon for me. I can't even listen to the song – it's very, very emotional for me. Because whenever I hear it, I think about the funeral and I think about playing it for him and crying, so maybe in time. Time heals all wounds.

We asked Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy of Progressive Nation will be an annual event.

MP: I can't say that Progressive Nation will be annual or biannual, but I surely want it to be something that happens every couple of years. We're gonna kind of probably mix it up and do other tours on our own – whether it be ‘Evening With’ or maybe just us with it with one opener – but I don't think we ever want to cement into just one presentation. This was a reaction to us always doing the ‘Evening With Dream Theater’ and now that we've been doing these for a couple years, we’ll probably want to go back to that, so it's always about mixing it up. But I really love being able to help out and give a lot of exposure to other younger bands or bands that maybe don't have the same following as us. So that's why this is a lot of fun for me.

We also asked him about playing with Zappa Plays Zappa.

MP: Anybody knows me knows that Frank was one of my all-time heroes I have this mustache tattooed on the back of my leg, so I've always been an absolute Zappa fanatic, and to be able to have Dweezil out with us is great on two levels for me. One is I'm really happy to be able to maybe introduce our audience or our younger audience or a new generation to Frank's music – maybe they know the name they know the reputation, but I think I'm seeing a lot of our fans are walking away after a set each night like, “Oh my God! These guys are incredible! What albums should I pick up?” So to me that's like this tour is doing its job – it's finally getting Frank's music to a whole new audience. And then the second level is my selfish enjoyment of being able to watch them every night.