Drum Theater

With Al Muirden

Hi everyone! It’s been quite some time since my last update, so there’s a fair bit to catch up on this time around. As usual, Mike has been super busy (I don’t know HOW he does it!). So, with quite a bit to fit in and condense into a manageable chunk for you all to digest – I think I’d better get on with it – enjoy!

DT came over to Europe/UK in June 2009 as part of the “Black Clouds and Silver Linings” tour to promote the new album. Mike had his new kit in the stunning “Black Clouds and Silver Linings” custom finish and I met up with his tech Jose, in Leeds in that month and had a good close look at it – if you think it looks good from a distance, you should see it up-close – it’s amazing!

In fact, the kit had been ready in March in its basic form and was used for the video recording of “A Rite of Passage” – the original intention had been to start the tour with the acrylic kit I believe but Tama pulled out all the stops so that it was ready for the A Rite of Passage shoot – Jose had to cobble together some hardware for it so if you look closely at the publicity shots or the vid, you can see some very old Tama boom arms and the like, but it was mainly current stuff and the kit certainly looked the part, even though SOME of the drums (like the Gong bass drum and “right side” of the big kit were still in production).

I was lucky enough to interview Mike in Southampton (see issue 11/12 of New Voice) but we didn’t really talk much about drums to be honest!

The tour continued through 2009 wrapping up mid-December in Australia, so basically a typical DT tour – many shows in many cities and satisfying many fans!

As I write in May 2010, the “Black Clouds and Silver Linings” tour has wrapped up for DT – they still have the Iron Maiden tour to do, plus a couple of select one-offs, but the tour proper came to a close in South America with Bigelf as the support band.

The “B-rig” kit was used for these shows and whilst initially the “ Black Clouds” Bubinga kit only had one variant (the same “A-rig” kit with all of the bells and whistles was used in the US and Europe), Tama built the smaller B-ring kit to reduce shipping costs to some countries – this kit was used in some parts of Europe/Eastern bloc/Israel amongst others as well as in the final South American leg...

Whilst still a big kit to most of us, the kit was basically the same as previous B-rig setups but MP now had four Octobans to his left – previous B-rig kits only had two and there were a couple of changes in the cymbal setup, but it was the second bubinga kit in the “Black Clouds” finish that Mike had at his disposal.

Incidentally, Tama made some 5 drum configuration kits in Bobbing wood with the same custom “Black Clouds and Silver Linings” finish which appeared in drum shops around the world – the finish is not listed as standard by Tama in their catalogue, so anyone with the funds available that wanted a rarity, would have been well place to snap one of these up! (Alas I don’t fit into that category!)

Mike added to his list of tattoos during 2009, getting some awesome “ambigrams” on each arm/wrist spelling out “courage”, “serenity”, “wisdom” and “acceptance” – ambigrams are words that look the exact same when read right way up/upside down – I first saw them in the Dan Brown book “Angels and Demons”: seriously impressive and MP’s variants look awesome! He also extended down his left arm with an elaborate Tama and (I think) Sabian influenced design and he got more in 2010 when he was recording with Avenged Sevenfold in California – more on that later!

In January 2010, Mike, JP, JR, and JM entered Cove City Studios to record an instrumental track for the upcoming God of War 3 computer game soundtrack. DT would be featured along with a slew of other bands and this was the first time that the band had written for an outside project.

Typically, things were turned around VERY quickly; pretty much EVERYTHING in terms of tracking was done in just over a week and engineer Paul Northfield worked equally speedily to get the track recorded and mixed (along with JP/MP) and delivered.

For this session, Mike had a cherry black Tama Starclassic maple kit that had been brought in exclusively for the session – this was basically the same as Mike used for Neal Morse/TA in terms of tom setup, but had 14” and 16” floor toms instead of stand mounted versions – this allowed Mike to move the 14” tom over to his left, under the hi-hat so he had a floor tom on either side. Both Melody Master snares were present and the usual compliment of cymbals – BUT, on this kit, MP had some different models from Sabian’s range to play with, including an HHX crash on the right side of the kit AND an X-hat (which never appeared on the Morse/TA kit setup).

In addition to MP changing the floor tom setup around, he also moved the 8/10/12 rack toms more to his left – this meant that the 10/12 toms were not symmetrically over the kick drum anymore and left more room for the positioning of the ride cymbal to Mike’s right.

We only ever got a couple of shots of this setup from the studio which is a shame because it looked very cool – everything was set up by Mike’s tech Jose Baraquio – the band were also joined by JP’s guitar tech Matt “Maddi” Schieferstein.

MP was then in Anaheim for the NAMM show – he did a couple of interviews and hinted at his schedule for 2010. The TA tour was already booked as were his shows with the “super group” HAIL (David Ellefson from Megadeth, Andreas Kisser from Sepultura and vocalist “Ripper” Owens) which had been announced around the end of December 2009, but he had one thing up his sleeve which he hadn’t revealed (more later!).

The HAIL shows were also in Foxborough (near Boston) and NYC at BB Kings later on January 26th/27th and Mike had some real oddball kits for these shows – there was a cherry black Starclassic maple kit with the old style suspension mountings – a real rock setup with two 22” kick drums and two rack toms mounted on a stand at the front and two floor toms – reminded me a bit of Tommy Aldridge’s setup) – basic cymbals, mounted on a mish-mash of Tama hardware. There were different kits used; the Foxborough show was a black Superstar (which is a mid/lower range kit in the Tama catalogue) and there was a Starclassic maple kit of the same drum/cymbal configuration in cherry black finish for the other show. All good stuff and MP certainly looked like he was enjoying playing a basic “rock” setup, once again showing his versatility and adaptiveness!

I seem to remember at the time, that Mike had said that they had little or no rehearsal as a full band prior to these shows – only what they had worked on separately, before they got together – shows how special professional musicians can be when it comes to being ready for an expectant audience – the shows were very well received as a result.

Shortly afterward on February 1st, Mike’s beloved dog Bongo finally succumbed to her illness which she had been battling with for some weeks/months prior – very upsetting for MP and his family as she was truly a much loved member of the Portnoy household. There was a gorgeous picture of MP with Bongo the day before she died which showed the bond between the two – particularly as she had been with MP throughout the rise and rise of DT and must have left a big gap in his heart.

In February (17th), it was revealed that Mike was to start work on drum tracks for the new (as yet un-titled) Avenged Sevenfold album, taking the drum seat of James “The Rev” Sullivan who died tragically in December 2009. Mike was one of The Rev’s drumming heroes and when A7X contacted him to ask if he would be up for the job and available, he didn’t hesitate, stating that it was an honour to have been asked. By February 25th, Mike had completed the drum tracking, so basically, all done in a week!

The kit that Mike used for the recording was a Tama Starclassic in Diamond Dust finish, with two 22” kick drums, three rack toms and two floor toms, complimented with a couple of higher pitch Octobans, a Gong bass drum, and Mike’s usual array of Sabian cymbals (many!). In fact, this kit was used by Mike when he guested on a Drum Channel show that was hosted by Terry Bozzio shortly after he finished the A7X session and while he was still in California; the kit was moved from the recording studio to the TV studio!

The recording of the long-awaited Transatlantic album (which ultimately became “The Whirlwind”) commenced in the spring of 2009 at Neal Morse’s home studio in Nashville. This was something that fans of prog had been anticipating for many years – I think there were mixed feelings around in that some people thought we would NEVER see a new Transatlantic album, but many clung onto the hope that one day there would be – thankfully, everything came together and it happened!

Mike used the cherry black Starclassic Maple kit that Neal had bought many years ago – this is the same kit that MP has used for all of Neal’s albums that he has contributed to... with the addition of new crash out front, but essentially the same drum/cymbal setup.

Mike completed the drum recording in super quick time. The album came out later in the year and pretty much won universal praise and plaudits from fans and press alike. The title came from a track that Neal had written some time before, but this album was much more of a collaboration and featured more of the rest of the band’s input – especially Pete – and Roine did a lot more of the lead vocal as well to compliment Neal. As before, much of the tracking was done at Neal/Roine/Pete respective studios – on the “making of” DVD that came with the special edition of “The Whirlwind” we even saw Neal and Mike recording MP’s backing vocals backstage in Germany on the DT “Black Clouds...” tour, Neal using a Pro Tools “MBox” to capture them. Also, Neal got some of his European band members to supply finger clicks at the same time! All very cool stuff that really works well on the finished product.

Of course, now everyone was anticipating a tour to follow up the album and this was announced late in 2009 and that Daniel Gildenlow from Pain of Salvation would be joining the band for their “Whirld Tour” which was very cool sounding in itself!

This time, they would be truly “transatlantic” and play a week of shows in the US, take a week’s break and then do a couple of weeks in Europe. The first European show was May 4th in Frankfurt and they ended up the European leg on Sunday May 22nd in Manchester.

The rehearsals for the tour began about a week prior to the US leg, in California. Everyone except MP was there a couple of days prior as there was a lot of gear to check over/set up – MP arrived on the Sunday and his kit had already been set up by the tour manager Colin Leijenaar (Colin is the drummer in Neal’s European band and has tour managed several times before in different capacities). Mike’s regular tech Jose flew in later in the week (the volcanic ash cloud over the UK/Europe stopped a couple of the crew guys from the UK flying out to do the tour) – so some improvisation was required during those US dates!

The kit was a Birch/Bubinga Tama kit in Diamond Dust finish and drum-wise was the same configuration as the kit at Neal’s – this has basically become the regular setup/configuration that Mike uses. The initial setup that Colin did was photographed and was minus tambourine and chimes – these must have arrived later in the session once things got underway properly.

The big difference in the actual setup was in the positioning of the drums: MP had asked for a very similar “look” to the “Raw Dog” setup (mentioned earlier) in that the 8/10/12 rack toms over the kick were positioned more to Mike’s left – if you look at the kit from the front, this is most evident.

Also missing from early rehearsals was the TA “Whirlwind” kick drum head – this was in place for the first show. Also making an appearance was an additional set of MAX STAX (high 8”) cymbals just under the hi-hat – this was something new for the TA kit and as the stage setup was as it had been for all previous TA shows (Mike facing in from stage-left) the audience could clearly see the left side of the kit.

This same drum set was used for the first couple of shows, but as the band were travelling considerable distances in a week, they had to have kits from each location delivered to the venues by Tama or local dealers, so different kits appeared. I think without exception these were birch or birch/bubinga shells, some in some cool finishes like Black Diamond Dust and Red Sparkle Burst (in Montreal – this was an older Tama kit in that it had the old style Starclassic suspension mountings). All had the same drum and cymbal configuration and MP looked VERY comfortable and at-home behind the kits!

For the European tour, Mike used a Starclassic maple kit in Cherry Black finish, 8/10/12 rack toms and 14/16 floor toms as well as the normal Melody Master snare drums. The cymbal array had changed a little with a couple of additions, but it was essentially the same configuration as he normally uses with TA. One helpful thing for Jose was that this time, everything was on a custom plastic drum mat which had all of the positions for the hardware marked out with “U shaped” blocks to insert the feet of the stands into – makes for more consistency when setting up the kit. On this tour too, Daniel has some percussion to hit – a couple of tambourines (one mounted, one hand held) some LP bar chimes, a Vibra Slap (only used once during the show!) and some shakers so he’s kept pretty busy between that and the rest of the stuff he does!

One last thing on the kit – the model figure of Ringo which was mounted on the stand that holds his tambourine on the “Bridge Across Europe” tour was replaced with a figure of the Star Wars character Boba Fett!

So – we’re not halfway through 2010 yet (as I write in May) and Mike already seems to have done enough work to fill a year in most peoples’ lives! He still has the Iron Maiden tour in the US with DT and select one-off shows also with DT, a one-off TA show in July here in the UK at the High Voltage Festival, and touring with A7X from July to at least October 2010 – Avenged Sevenfold have quite a schedule of dates in the US – will Europe follow?

Mike has already (as part of the A7X announcement) said that the new DT album won’t begin until 2011, which seems realistic given the A7X touring schedule, so that’s something to look forward to, and kind of breaks the cycle of DT recording periods, which is probably no bad thing in many ways – whatever happens, life is never dull where MP is involved!

Thanks to MP, Jose Baraquio et al as always, and as ever... keep ‘em peeled!

Until next time!