Jordan Rudess interview (excerpts)

Jeremy White: First of all, just talking about this Liquid Tension Experiment coming out – new album LTE3 March 26, 2021, I guess that’s gonna be available wherever music is sold, right?

Jordan Rudess: That’s hopefully what’s gonna happen. That’s the plan.

JW: The big wide release, right? Well, you never know. A lot of people are just sticking to Spotify and Apple Music.

JR: Absolutely, a lot of people doing that. With Sony/Inside Out who’s putting out this record, and our audience as well, there’s still a lot of people who buy physical stuff, so we’re offering that. It’ll be out on vinyl, it’ll be out on CD, it’ll be bonus CDs, every possible way that you could buy it in a physical form.

Mitch Lafon: It’s been 22 years, and of course every interview is going to ask you about this, but why wasn’t there time in the last 22 years to put something together? I know you’ve done all these other projects, and there’s Dream Theater, and there’s this and that. But why was this one put on the back burner for two decades?

JR: That’s a good question. It’s not like from a personal point of view I didn’t want to do it. I mean, people wanted to do it, but it was really a combination of a lot of things: scheduling, weird record company stuff, turbulent band things that happen that we all know about. Put all those things together, and you got a situation which really made us have to wait. Think about the fact that the last Liquid Tension albums years ago are on Magna Carta Records and that’s kind of like even [when] I say that, I start to... [cringes]

ML: You mentioned band politics, but yet you’re in a band with Mike Portnoy and John Petrucci, and Dream Theater has been putting out albums, so how did this one get weird?

JR: Well... First of all, when we switched Mikes, that was...

JW: Let’s not confuse our Mikes.

ML: Oh right! Portnoy is not there anymore; we’re at Mangini now! Yes, of course! [realizing his brain fart]

JW: Like well over 10 years now.

ML: Yes, of course. I know that. Listen, I’ve gotten older, too!

JR: When that happened, it definitely made a situation that didn’t make working together very smooth. So that was one of the major factors that made the wait even longer. [laughs] But here we are. We had the inspiration, the time to do it, and we did. And I have a very strong feeling that this will happen again without having to wait 22 more years.

JW: Right, but let me ask you this: you’re making a record with Portnoy and Petrucci – how is the creative process different from this potentially just being another Dream Theater record?

JR: I haven’t worked with Portnoy in 11 years, and when we did the first Liquid Tension album, it wasn’t another Dream Theater record, either. We look at it from this approach: what was Liquid Tension, what is Liquid Tension all about? It’s coming into another entity, so right away it kind of means something different. And Liquid Tension from the beginning was like a melting pot for all the artists to come in. Like, “I got this idea!” I put in this wacky idea, whatever it is. Tony Levin’s got something, he puts it in. Petrucci wants to try something jazzy. “We want to do ‘Rhapsody in Blue.’” That’s why people do side projects, so even though it’s a lot of the same guys, you can expect different things because the musicians’ influences and their minds are not necessarily always in one zone.

JW: Yeah, you can kinda go wherever you want to.

JR: Yeah. I always say that Dream Theater, as wide as it is stylistically, obviously has a lot of different things about it – it’s not just like pop music in any way, shape, or form – but it still has a bit of a brand to it. You step outside the brand, it’s just not Dream Theater. Dream Theater can’t do ‘Rhapsody in Blue,’ Dream Theater can’t really get away with doing a lot of the things that’s on a Liquid Tension Experiment album. That’s the beauty of it. First of all, there’s no singing on it, so it’s stretched out, the leads are longer, everybody gets to do these crazy solos, and we just really get to expand and try different things. That was the beauty of it in the beginning, and that was the beauty of it now.

ML: Does it re-energize you creatively to not write for vocal and be able to just do whatever you want and take it without any brand?

JW: Let me just say, here’s the real question: how does it feel to be ‘off-brand’?

ML: That’s our inside joke, because poor Jeremy works for a Top 40 radio, and when he interviews people like this, his program director goes, “That was off-brand Jeremy. You can’t do that.” [laughs]

JR: [laughs] Off-brand can be really fun! But to respond the first part of that, to write music without vocals in that kind of Liquid Tension thing... like when I write music that incorporates vocals, I don’t feel like it’s necessarily holding me back in any way. If anything, that job is kind of like, “Oh wow, there are no vocals, so we better make sure that there’s a melody line!” [laughs] Unless you’re really conscious that there’s no singing, you have to be careful. But there’s definitely freedom, especially for me working with the Dream Theater guys as a keyboard player, because within the brand of Dream Theater, keyboards are cool and they’re important, but they’re not as big as a mountain like a guitar. The guitar is like king. So with Liquid Tension, there is definitely a little bit more of a balance. The keyboards tend to come out a bit more and their prominence just is really felt in a different way.

JW: We were just talking to Billy Sherwood about the differences between regular rock and progressive rock and the musicianship that goes along with playing this type of music. How does songwriting happen for you guys? Do you come in with a cool synth pad or some type of composition, and then the guys come on top of that? Because the music is just so interesting and so complex, and it always blows my mind how you guys create stuff like this.

JR: It is interesting the way it comes together. Usually it starts with some kind of a seed. Somebody’s got some eight-bar thing – we got to come up with something to get the ball rolling – and these days what happens is we get an idea and then we’ll jam on it. We’ll hash it out, we like it, we’ll kind of like lay it down like in a demo form. And then we’re like, “OK, what do we need next?” We’ll be like, “That’s a cool verse.” Let’s say it’s a verse. Then we need like a ‘B’ section or a chorus. We don’t necessarily write it exactly in order but we are searching for something that would fit the next move. Often what happens, especially with Petrucci and I, is we feed off of each other. We start getting a lot of ideas and we’re shouting to the engineer, “Lay this down before I forget it!” because we might still be working on the first section, but meanwhile somebody’s vibing on what could happen for the next section. So that happens a lot.

Other things that could happen are we get inventive. Like Petrucci comes up with something and I’m like, “Wow! That’d be so cool if I played something that really went against it with my right hand, kind of like a like a counterpoint.” And then I’ll just grab some music paper, and while the other guys are talking and doing whatever the hell they’re doing, I’m sitting there figuring it out for the next part, which is an interesting skill by itself, because very often in that environment we find ourselves composing when there’s a lot of other noise going on. [laughs] It’s like blocking out because we’re working on stuff, but meanwhile you’re trying to compose for the next section. So it’s a very interesting way to write music, but it works for us. It does the trick. And sometimes it’s helpful if the guys have left the room and I can sit quietly for a minute and just hash something out or change the mood. It’s a creative process, so all different ways. But really what makes it tick is that we feed off of each other, which is really good.

ML: I’m going to ask you the layman dumb question, but when you do instrumental music how do when the song ends?

JR: That’s a really good question, because songs especially like this could go on and on.

ML: Yeah, like why is the album not just one long 75 minute jam?

JR: Let me tell you a funny story. I was doing my last solo album, which was called Wired For Madness. I finally got the time, I was like, “OK, I’m gonna go in and I’m gonna do this.” So I’d go to the studio and I started working on it, and I’d write something and I put it into the DAW. So I do it. Next day, I come in and I write some more. Next day, I come in and I write some more. I’m just going. There’s no stopping, there’s no end of this piece. I mean literally, one section inspired the next section, inspired the next section, took a turn, took a turn, took a turn. One day I said to my wife Danielle, “I’m writing this piece. It’s wild – this is the most progressive thing I’ve ever written.” Without even hearing it, she literally said, “What are you doing? You can’t do that! You have to write some songs.” So I felt kind of mad, like, “What does she know? I’ll just keep going! [laughs] It’s gonna be an hour long piece.” But then I thought about it and of course her voice of reason. I was like, “OK, well I gotta bring this piece to close and I gotta write some songs.” The album ended up being a mixture of one like really long title track, and then some songs.

So you could go on and on, but luckily I do work with guys who have a very, very strong sense of architecture. Even besides my own talents, these guys have probably even more of a sense of, “OK, this part, this part, we’ll move this part here, and then it creates a song.” So believe it or not, even in the Dream Theater/Liquid Tension world, there is consideration of ‘what is this structure really gonna be?’ So there’s a beginning and end; we’ve got hooks. It might get a little more involved or it does get more involved in a lot of ways, but sometimes we just decide on, “This is gonna be an epic, so just let it go,” and that’s literally the conversation in the studio. Like, “Guys, this is really cool. Let’s not constrain this. Let’s just keep on throwing s*** in there.” [laughs]

JW: Jordan, do you listen to any pop music of today?

JR: I listen to all kinds of stuff. I don’t sit down and put on a pop record necessarily.

JW: Do you ever get in the car and you put on the radio, and it’s on your local top 40 station. You hear like a Lady Gaga song or something?

JR: I can’t say that I do that. I guess my guilty pleasure is listening to [a] mellow rock station, the one that plays like James Taylor or Cat Stevens, Elton John. Maybe it’s getting more mature; settling down into a more mellow vibe. And I tend to like mellow, spacey kind of stuff, even if it’s not like those old classic things. I’ll listen to Blackfield or listen to Sigur Rós or I’ll listen to more kind of spacey gentle things or Porcupine Tree, or stuff that’s not like the prog that I make. I save that for my own compositions with the guys.

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ML: So of course, we’re going to have to go back to the obvious question, [you] haven’t played with Mike in so many years; what was it like having him back in? Were there any ill feelings that needed to be worked out first? Did you have to have a counseling session first? Or is it just, “Hey Mike, come on back. It’s been too long. We’re too old for this. Let’s just play.”

JR: I always, over the years, stayed in touch with Mike. We just have friendly texts and everything like that. And I did join Mike for the ‘Cruise to the Edge’ tour. We did the ‘Instrumedley’ – the progressive thing that we wrote with Dream Theater. So our relationship was pretty good and falling into the groove with him again for this was really easy. And John Petrucci actually paved the way work-wise because he had Mike come in playing the solo album. The clouds had parted already and things got back to a nice gentle space. And we actually recorded the LTE3 album at the Dream Theater headquarters, and it was all fine, it was mellow. And Mike is such an interesting, talented, unusual person. In the old days, I just feel like sometimes his energy was like, “Wow!” A lot to wrap your head around. But now he’s kind of settled – he’s still doing a million things and extremely productive, and plays drums great. He’s also a little bit more calm and easier to work with.

ML: So the Sons of Apollo/Dream Theater tour could happen? [Jordan smiles but says nothing]

JW: Do you have to go to Mike Mangini before you work with Portnoy again and say, “Hey Mike, listen, this thing’s gonna be coming out. Don’t worry about it. Your gig is fine.”

JR: Sure. You want to be respectful of everybody; there is a sensitivity there and that makes sense. So before we did this, and we did this with James too, and John Myung is so mellow that it’s not that necessary, but yeah, everybody gets the respectful, “Hey, we’re gonna be going in. We’re gonna be doing this. Just do you know and understand we’re doing it.”

JW: Nobody’s like, “Why are you doing that? What the hell?”

JR: We reached a point where you do what you do. You don’t want to have to be an a****** about it. But LTE was destined to get back together again. There were more requests for this band than anything I’ve ever done in my whole life. Every day, multiple times a day, “When is LTE getting back together?” Like, shut up already now! [laughs]

ML: One last question is ‘Rhapsody in Blue.’ Of course it’s Gershwin; what was that like bringing that to modern times? Here’s a thing that’s been sitting around for whatever it is 50, 60, 70 years. Talk to me about bringing that to fans now and putting your own stamp on it.

JR: That was awesome. We had done ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ live the last time Liquid Tension played gigs many years ago. Mike came forward when we finally decided to do this. He was like, “Guys, we really should do ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ for the record.” And I was like, “Oh no!” Because my first thought was, “That’s a big piece, and it’s been so many years. Where is my score for it? What sounds did I use?” All it [meant] to me was this is gonna be a hell of a lot of work. Relearning it, redoing it, didn’t even have the same synthesizer around; it’s long gone or it’s broken in the closet. So after I got over that, I was like, “OK, if we’re going to do this, then I got to decide on my approach,” because the first time I did it was a lot like live kind of sounds. But this time after I settled down about the whole idea of it and realized that, yes this is a good idea, I took a more orchestrational approach. I went in with all my software and all my stuff, and I really went to town with coloring it with all kinds of sounds of pianos and orchestras and steel drums and sound effects. I’m really proud of the way it turned out. It’s cool, but definitely it wasn’t like, “Oh yeah, let’s do ‘Rhapsody in Blue!’” [laughs] It’s a big piece and I literally couldn’t find the score that we used because we changed a lot of things.

ML: But on the album, it’s a 13 and a half minute version.

JW: If you’re going to play something like that live, do you have the sheet music in front of you and you’re performing it, or is it all just in your head?

JR: It depends on what it is. If and when we do it live, first of all I’ve got to figure out how to hell to do all that orchestration. That’s the first thing, which I’ve done that type of compression of a score to figure out how to do something that’s complicated live. But yeah, I might have some music in front of me, because I usually do a lot of complicated splits and layers on the keyboard and put sounds in funny places to get the job done. Maybe the French horn will be with my thumb and the timpani will be with my pinky, and these kind of notes let me understand how to make that happen.

JW: You’re really doing a workout on the keyboard.

JR: Oh yeah.

ML: Do you ever use any kind of tracks to help you out?

JR: Generally, I don’t but sometimes in musical situations, I will. Like when we did The Astonishing, there was so much orchestration going on and a lot of it was a real orchestra on the album. So we decided to leave that in, although I kind of extended it even more and added orchestration within my keyboard. But we let some tracks play. So that was a tour that there were definitely tracks. For the most part, I’ll just use tracks for opening sound effects, maybe because the lights are still out and the band is gonna begin. I don’t need to sit there and be triggering like the beginning of ‘Metropolis’ or something like that, that can be on a backing track. I like to make sure that there’s as much energy going into the keyboard and in my performance as possible. If I put things on backing track, number one, I wouldn’t be able to stay in shape at the keyboard, but also I feel like there’d be a lack of real connection and energy which I want there to be the maximum of that.

JW: When you guys do play the tracks like in your in-ear... because there was recently a tape leaked of a pretty big rock band of their in-ear monitor mix, and it has the click track and all the cues like, “Verse, two, three, sing,” and all these things. Do you guys have those things running and those audio cues in your in-ears?

JR: It’s funny, we all have different things in our in-ears. [For] Mike Mangini, I have never even heard it, but I’m sure we would all chuckle if we heard it, because there’s all kinds of stuff going on, voices and cues, and counts and what he does that he’s told us he has. With me, I have cues. I’ll have cowbell kind of cues to wake me up in case I took a nap or something, that in three beats my section’s coming in, or if there’s a part even that gets very complicated, and you can’t really rely on the venue to have a really clean sound, I’ll put a click in it so I can be locked. Little helpers like that, mostly for me, it’s like click things at those moments where I really want to make sure I keep this part together.

ML: It’s amazing everything that rock stars go through to deliver a great show. So when you see a guy on Twitter go, “Oh!” It’s like, “Hey, motherf***er, look at everything we’ve gone through to give you this experience! Just enjoy it!”

JW: I hate seeing people moan about bands playing the tracks on Twitter and social and stuff. I’m like, “They’re doing everything they can to give you the best show possible. Don’t be complaining.”

JR: Totally. Let’s face it, most bands – almost I’d say 95% of them – use a lot of tracks, unless you’re like a hardcore metal band that’s very raw. Professional bands are out there and they want it to sound like the album, and they run tracks, it’s just what it is. In my case, I probably run less tracks than others.

ML: When you’re an arena band and you’re charging 100, 150, 300 bucks, 600 bucks, like The Weeknd is charging, you can’t afford to have an off night. It has to be good every night because that fan just paid 300 bucks. He didn’t pay 300 bucks to hear feedback and he wants to see a show.

JW: But then there’s also that argument that people say, “Oh, well, if I wanted to hear the album, I’d just sit at home and put on the CD.”

ML: So I’ll stay at home.

JR: I think there’s a balance. If we look at Dream Theater these days in this period of our career, it’s very much about putting on a very dialed-in show. We’re not doing what we used to do. Like Portnoy would slip something under the door or whatever saying, “Oh, tomorrow we’re going to play ‘A Matter of Time’ off the first album.” We’d go, “What?!” And everybody would kind of learn it and freak out, and then we’d go and maybe we would f*** up, maybe it would be OK, but it’s like fans would dig it... a different kind of a balance. These days, it’s more about [telling] the lighting guy, “This is the set. These are the possible changes we’ll make, so be prepared on this leg, this is going to happen.” So we run it like a Broadway show. Our show is tighter than ever before in Dream Theater history because we’re running it like that, and we appreciate that. Personally what happens for me is that I will leave some things open. The other night John Petrucci and I were on an internet call with all the fans and everything, and one of the questions was about the leads we play, how do we approach the leads. And John was like, “I really try to make the leads just like the album. I feel like that’s what I want to express because I work hard on these leads, and I want to play it just like the album.” And then it came to me; I was like, “You know what? I understand that completely, but I want to leave open the inspiration from the energy I’m feeling that night. And a lot of times, like half the leads I play, I’m just gonna wing it. I’m gonna play whatever the hell comes into my head that night. Sometimes it’ll be fantastic – it’ll be like, ‘Wow! What’s that?” – and other times it’ll suck!” [laughs] But at least I’m leaving it open. I want to do that, and also whenever there’s like comping in the song, I’ll improvise.

JW: ...but have some fun! That’s the fun thing about playing live!

JR: I think so. So there are parts that I definitely can change up and I’ll do different voice leading and things, and have fun with it and do stuff. I like that. And it’s still dialed-in. That’s kind of my own way to fill in my part. And it’s not like it’s in your face. Like something that’s totally different. But it’s little subtle things that will make a difference, and that’s what I like to do.