| Mike Portnoy Interview |
We chatted with drummer Mike Portnoy before he took the stage at the Meadows on August 7th. Mike is a founding member of Dream Theater and has also worked on a number of other projects including the recent Liquid Tension Experiment. Dream Theater has been on tour since the fall of 1997 in support of their latest release, Falling Into Infinity. This summer they are an opening act for the Deep Purple tour. Mike said "We've never opened for anybody. For six years now we've been headlining, playing our own shows to our own audience. So this is good for us, it's something different. We've never played to someone else's audience. It's awkward for us to be only playing 45 minutes but it's also really good for us. It's a relief to not have the pressure."
After this leg of the tour, Dream Theater will play some shows in South America and then will take a break from touring. They have a live double CD coming out this fall, as well as a live video. The CD and video will include live performances from their last two tours and were recorded all over the world.
Mike has worked on a number of side projects including most recently a band called Liquid Tension Experiment. LTE also features Tony Levin on bass and stick, Jordan Rudess on keyboards, and Dream Theater bandmate John Petrucci on guitar. Their first album was written and recorded in just one week. Mike spearheaded the group for the Magna Carta label. We asked him what it was like to pull this off so quickly, and he said, " There was no time to rewrite the stuff. Basically we would write it, and rehearse it, and record it, and then move on to the next song. We would do a couple of those a day. It captured the live energy of it all." He hopes to work on another LTE record as early as this October. (See our review of Liquid Tension Experiment.)
Portnoy performed on the Rush tribute from Magna Carta and was thrilled to work closely with bassist Billy Sheehan. He will also appear on the forthcoming ELP tribute. Mike loves surfing the net and said to be sure to check out Dream Theater's official site, Under A Cyber Moon. He's an avid music fan and boasts a collection of thousands of recordings. He said some day when he's stranded on a desert island he will finally have the time to listen to it all.
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