Jordan Rudess interview (excerpt)

Roie Avin: I want to real quick... get a quick update for you on the Dream Theater stuff. I know you recently shared on Instagram that you had finished your parts and there’s the tour coming up in October. What can you tell us without giving stuff away? How has it been going for you guys?

Jordan Rudess: It was a really deep process. My biggest feeling, at least getting to this point, is that I think the Dream Theater fans are going to freak out, because we don’t take anything lightly. We put everything into what we do, each and every one of us. Having Mike back has just been so deep, it’s been so wonderful, just feeling like, “OK, this is so cool. He’s back with all his unique talents that he can put into this.” And right away, like the conceptual elements that he’s so great at. Like, “This can connect with this. This can connect with this.” And it’s both in the audio world and in the visual world, where he’s got a mind of a film director. So he’s thinking like that. And let’s just say like it is: Dream Theater was fine. We did fine. We won a Grammy, everything was cool. But having him back is just so wonderful, because there was an element, or more than a single element, that was missing, if you will. And we’re just enjoying having him back where he really should be. So I’m excited where we’re at. I did finish all my keyboard parts. I worked on a bunch of sound effects and things like that. I was excited about the album, but after I got done with all that, I went, “Wow! OK, we hit the next level for me as well.” And now, of course, James is going to be singing on everything and I’m sure he’ll knock it out of the park. Then we’ll have the whole thing. It’ll be cool.