Jordan Rudess interview

Felicity: The last time we caught up with you guys was on the last UK tour that you did, which was just fantastic. It was an amazing, amazing tour and the kind of response I saw from it was really positive. Were you happy with how that went down?

Jordan Rudess: Over the years, this whole area has just gotten so great for us. When I started in this band back in ‘99, it wasn’t like this at all. It was kind of quiet. And just step by step, I’ve been watching the whole UK scene just emerge and also accept Dream Theater. It’s been incredible. We really look forward to coming here. The fan base is so strong; it’s a really special area for us.

F: That is lovely for us to hear, most definitely. You’re headlining the second stage today and it’s just gonna be an exceptional set. Do you enjoy the festival sets as much as you do your own headline shows?

JR: It’s really exciting because there are so many people at these festivals. Especially that initial rush when you walk on stage; I’m sure when we go there, everybody’s energy will just totally go up through the roof. And then you kind of try to settle down, because you have to do your thing and you have to focus and play, especially with Dream Theater music where you’re counting all kinds of different meters and need to keep track of things. But that part of it makes it so much fun. It’s a really different environment. It’s not as controlled as when we’re playing our own shows. With our own shows we have our own little space and we get the soundcheck properly; with this, it’s just a bundle of energy, and you just go with it and just put it out there and enjoy.

F: Do you find that kind of more stressful that you don’t get to set up in the intricate way that you would ideally like to [at] a festival, or are you so used to it by now that it just doesn’t really faze you?

JR: We’re kind of a band that likes to have and that enjoys having an element of control and having things set the way we want it; we’re not just a throw and go band in general. That being said, we have an ace crew; they’re fantastic. Although in a way, we could say we don’t know what to expect when we walk on stage because we haven’t really heard anything. They just do a line check. Because our crew is so great, we’ll feel confident that it’ll be fine, but there might be little things that come up that we just don’t have a chance to check. And that’s not the most comfortable thing in the world. Festivals are festivals! It’s a wild crazy scene. So we’re prepared to go with it. We know what it is, and just gonna have fun and put out a lot of energy and rock this place.

F: That’s what we like to hear. Do you ever bother seeing anybody else playing at these things, or do you just do so many of them that it just gets impossible to really check out anybody else?

JR: Honestly, our lives have been so busy that I haven’t really studied what’s going on at this festival, but now that I’m here, I’ll walk around, I’ll see what’s happening—

F: Really? So you will do that?

JR: I like to vibe it out and see what’s happening, yeah.

F: Massive congratulations are in order because you’ve been nominated for four Prog awards.

JR: It’s so exciting! As an avid reader of Prog magazine, it’s my thing. All the old prog – the ELP and Genesis and Gentle Giant and all this stuff – is totally where I’m coming from, so it’s really exciting for us to be being a part of that.

F: It’s not as though you’re any stranger to this sort of thing, but do you still find it as humbling now as you used to do, or has it become quite the norm for things like this to be constantly happening?

JR: I think I’m just somebody who always appreciates... I never feel like, “Oh, this is what it’s supposed to be”; you’re walking around like so cool, that it’s just the norm. I just can’t put myself in that position. I feel like it’s always special, I’m always feeling really kind of blessed to have this amazing group that I’m in, and great players and great guys and we do our thing; we work hard, we feed our families and we enjoy what comes to us.

F: Dream Theater is about to put out this incredible box set that spans years upon years upon years. I think the box starts just before you joined, but when you did join, did you ever think that you’d be getting to the stage where you were releasing this kind of a legacy?

JR: It’s amazing. This has been such a ride. I go back and I look at all the albums that I’ve done since ‘99 – I’m like, “Oh my god!” I start to feel old, like we really put out a lot of music that took a lot of time. But I’m so proud of it. I think it’s great. And then to think about the albums that came before Scenes From a Memory – all this music, it’s such a great body of work, and I just feel like my time, our time on this planet, it’s such an interesting experience. Not only the music but just this lifestyle of being able to go all around the world and constantly travel, and I’m somebody goes out a lot and I’ll walk through the different cities, and I’ll vibe it out and see what it is and talk to the people. I really like that. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t feel really grateful for what I’ve got.

F: It’s so nice to hear that kind of thing. I think when you’ve been doing it as long as you have, the temptation is just to get completely blasé about it and not really care about it anymore, and it must take some work to make yourself keep trying to do things, especially when you’re exhausted because you’ve been touring for months on end.

JR: For sure. The downside of touring is that you can get in this darker space if you don’t go out because you’re always in hotels and being shuffled around and maybe sheltered a bit. So it’s also important to use whatever extra energy to look at the sky and to look at the sun and to go out, and it just feels really good and makes it all feel more right.

F: We are going to have this box set soon, but are you guys talking about new material at the moment? Is it soon enough for that?

JR: We haven’t really gotten into serious band discussions about what’s going to happen next, although we’ve had little discussions between some of us about what we’d like to see happen next. At the same time, if I get a good idea in the middle of the night or whatever, I’ll record it onto my iPhone. All the guys will keep track of some things. I elected James to be the keeper of some of my ideas. I’ll send him little YouTube clips of me playing something I think is cool. Then when it wraps around and we get into writing again and start our process, then we’ll go back and see what we’ve got and figure it out.

F: And there is going to be more writing; this isn’t like, “Oh yeah, let’s release this box set and then stop.”

JR: Oh no no no. We love what we do. We’re passionate about making music and as composers that’s just who we are. Dream Theater has never been a band that just hit at a particular fashionable point and said, “OK, well that’s basically it.” It’s important to us to write music, to put it out there and to work together, and we love it. So that’s why we keep going.