Mike Portnoy comments (excerpts)

Roie Avin: I guess we should ask you just sort of quickly generally how things are going, what’s been going on with you and all that.

Mike Portnoy: Well, I’m in full on DT mode, really. Every time I come on here and see you guys, [I’m] usually juggling three four different bands and tours, but no, I’m in full on focused DT mode. As you know, we’re working on the album now; it’s going great. The writing is done, my drum tracks are done, guitars are done, so this week we’re in bass land. I’m home at the moment, so I’m kind of jumping back and forth between the studio as needed; not there 100% of the time, but I’m gonna go back for keyboards in a few weeks and then we’re gonna start the vocals I think next month. So it’s a long process. I haven’t spent this much time making an album in a long time because usually [for] NMB or Flying Colors or whatever, you kind of get together, do the writing and the tracking, and everybody does it at home, but Dream Theater is still like old school where the band is in the studio the whole time and it’s not like anybody’s doing anything at home separately. We do it all together, coming in one at a time to work and record. So yeah, it’s a longer process than I’ve had in quite some time, but it’s great. The album is... I can’t give away much details, but we are all just really, really excited about it, really proud of it and just can’t wait to unleash some info, but I can’t do that just yet.

RA: We won’t hound you for anything. That’s really exciting, though. That does sound like a lot more fun than having to sit there and cram in like two days all this crazy writing, that you really a chance to sit and pick out stuff you really like and work on.

MP: It’s the old way, it’s the way I always made records with Dream Theater – I just hadn’t done it that way in so long, but it is good and the process is really detailed this way. All these other bands and projects, everyone just does their own thing on their own time at their own place, but this really gives a real unified kind of band vibe. Even a couple weeks ago, James flew back out, came down from Japan and we spent time collaborating on vocal melodies so lyrics can be written to those melodies, which is the way the process is in Dream Theater. It’s nice to just be a part of each one of these steps like the old days. It’s been a while since I made the record this way.

Geoff Bailey: Lots of tour dates springing up already. You’ve made a lot of South Americans happy recently.

MP: Yeah! Well so far, just the Brazilians, but there’s more to come for South America, as well. But the European tour is selling amazingly well – I mean the tickets are going so fast, and we’re still five months away at this point, so it’s obviously gonna be a very successful tour. And then Brazil was announced, and more South American dates [are] on their way, and US dates coming soon as well, so stay tuned for that.

RA: It was really funny when you posted the ‘come to Brazil’ thing, which I know that’s always the first thing that everyone says when you post tour dates, but then sure enough the comments were all like ‘come to Chile!’ ‘come to...’ like all the other countries. [laughs]

MP: Anytime tour dates are announced, I just have to ignore the comments because all they are, are ‘come to Chile’, ‘come to Alaska’, ‘come to Indonesia’.

RA: People have to know it’s not like you don’t want to do it. It’s like ‘we’ll get there eventually.’

MP: Of course.

GB: I’m curious with it all starting in London, was that a deliberate thing or was it just how the schedule worked?

MP: We knew we wanted the first show to be in a major market because we figured people are gonna come from all over the world to witness opening night and the first show together – it’ll be almost 15 years by the time we get on stage together – so we knew it had to be London or Paris or Amsterdam. We talked a little bit about New York; that was the obvious first show, but there were technicalities that made it different. I think management and our agent wanted us to start with a full European leg and for reasons I won’t bore you with –the technicalities – it just made sense to start in London for many reasons. It would have been nice to kick off at home in New York. And now that we’ve announced these shows, we can’t add anything before then because everybody’s banking on London as the first show. So we can’t do a warm-up show in a club or play a surprise show in New York because everybody is banking on London as the first one, so we had to commit to that.

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[speaking of the Queen album Sheer Heart Attack]

MP: My personal favorite is the three song trilogy, which I ended up covering with Dream Theater: ‘Tenement Funster’, ‘Flick of the Wrist’ and ‘Lily of the Valley’. I always found that those three songs [were] a really great kind of like Abbey Road kind of thing, where they strung together a few different songs to make this mini suite. To me, it was always a forgotten group of songs, so once we covered it with Dream Theater, hopefully it gave it some recognition to the prog fans at least.

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RA: Where would you have ranked [Rush’s debut] album in the wheel of Rush albums?

MP: I mean it’s a D-tier. It’s funny, because so many classic bands that we love, their debuts just aren’t there yet. The first Rush album, the first Yes album, the first Genesis album... There’s very few bands that nail it right out of the gates, and Rush I think was still finding their sound at this point, too. Then obviously Neil coming in for Fly by Night just evolved the band so quickly into a whole ‘nother thing. Even Dream Theater’s first album, When Dream and Day Unite, it’s just... So many bands debuts are just not there yet. I think King Crimson is like one of the exceptions, really, but if you look at almost every other classic prog band, they’re still finding their feet on those first couple albums.

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RA: We’ll keep our eyes and ears peeled for some more news from the Dream Theater world I imagine pretty soon and good luck with the tour if we don’t get to talk to you before then.

MP: Thank you. Yeah, it’s real exciting. We couldn’t be happier with the album and I couldn’t be more excited to tour. That opening night in London is... I’ve been dreaming about it for a long time, so it’s gonna be pretty surreal, it’s gonna be incredible.

RA: How did we do on the set list?

MP: I love that episode. For those that haven’t seen it, Prog Report did a great episode guessing the Dream Theater set list for the upcoming tour; definitely worth checking out. You guys did great, actually. I’m not gonna give anything away, but I already have written the main set list in my mind, and I’ve already submitted the tracks to the guys, so I know what you got right and what you didn’t get right, and I’ll just say you guys did good, a lot of good stuff.