Mike Portnoy comments on European summer 2025 shows

I’ve seen some discussion online about the fact that tonight’s opening show in Finland was a single set and not 2 sets w an intermission...

For the record, alot of these summer headlining shows will have different formats: some will be a single long set, some will be 2 sets w an intermission. Different promoters have booked and billed the shows differently...sometimes the venues have curfews, etc etc Honestly, I’m not sure the rhyme or reason to it...but I too am having to adapt to each one when writing the setlists...

But anybody attending a “headlining” show can know I am very attentive to *the songs*, etc when writing new sets for places we already played vs playing places we haven’t yet...but the set length and format itself will vary from market to market and situation to situation

It’s a little different when doing a summer EU “festival” tour rather than doing an entire leg of our own shows every night