DREAM THEATER's JORDAN RUDESS On Reunion With MIKE PORTNOY: It Was 'A Welcome Change To Go Back To Our Core Lineup'

In a new interview with Robert Cavuoto of Myglobalmind, DREAM THEATER keyboardist Jordan Rudess talked about the band's upcoming sixteenth album, which will mark the progressive metal legends' first LP since drummer Mike Portnoy's return to the group last October. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I finished all my keyboard parts, and I'm very pleased about that. I think James [LaBrie, DREAM THEATER singer] is in the studio very, very soon, or now; I'm not sure. But he's doing his vocal parts, and then the whole mix and the master and all that stuff will happen. And then we don't have a release date, or it's not announced yet, but I'm so excited about the DREAM THEATER album because I feel like having Portnoy come back, the timing of it was perfect."

Rudess continued: "It was such a welcome change to go back to our, as we say, core lineup, 'cause although I think that DREAM THEATER survived quite nicely in the days without him, we had a magnificent drummer and Mike Mangini, we toured around the world, we did fine with, of course, the COVID interruption, which messed everybody up, and we won a Grammy. All that was good. But having Mike come back, it's just you feel like there's this missing — well, there are these missing elements that were gone that now have come back. One of them being relating to the way that he thinks. He's so unusual. I think of him like a film director, like a movie director. He's always thinking conceptually. He's always thinking, 'Oh, we played that part,' and 'that part could relate to this part' and 'if we do this, it'll connect here. And then we have this visual element,' tying things together in ways that I don't think about those things and nobody else does. And he does. And I feel like it brings, especially in our genre of music, it brings this beautiful element to everything, more things to sink your teeth into. And I think when people get this album, they're gonna really appreciate a lot of that kind of stuff that's that's in this that's making it more than just a cool album of DREAM THEATER music."

Asked if DREAM THEATER had songs written with Mangini before Portnoy came back or if they started putting ideas together from scratch, Jordan said: "We generally just kind of save our writing for when we're doing it. Basically, the way things work in our camp is, we're all so busy, we're all doing so many different things, and we might have seeds and stuff like that — like, I usually keep a little folder on my computer; if I sit down and get a little inspired, I'll record that. So there are seeds to go back to. But when we block out the time to record the album, that's when we go, 'Okay. It's time to write this thing.' So it's not like we're taking things from the past and just saying, 'Well, we had that with him. Let's do this.' It was all pretty fresh."

Rudess previously discussed DREAM THEATER's reunion with Portnoy earlier this month in an interview with Brazil's 89FM A Rádio Rock. Jordan said at the time: "I feel, in a way, like we haven't even missed a beat with this lineup. Having Mike Portnoy come back to us just feels like he's coming home. He was so welcome and we were so happy, we just jumped right into it. From day one, when he walked in the studio and we started to work, literally it was like there was no break. I mean, he just belongs here and he is so engaged, so passionate about what he does, and having that energy come into our group has been a beautiful thing."

Rudess also spoke to 89FM A Rádio Rock about DREAM THEATER's upcoming sixteenth album. Asked if the recording process has changed with Portnoy coming back to the band, Rudess said: "Well, it's definitely changed because he's a very strong musical personality and a strong personality in general. And so he has a lot of thoughts about things. He's a very conceptual thinker, and I think that as fine as we were just doing our own thing when he was gone, having him back, it's just like, wow, this is so great to have your mind and your spirit involved in it. It really does change things. So I think when people hear the new album that we're working on, they'll kind of see that and they'll feel that. I definitely think it's reconnecting with some of the spirit of the magic that we produced in the years that he was in the band."

Regarding whether Portnoy's time away from DREAM THEATER will help Mike bring new things to the group now that he has rejoined his longtime bandmates, Rudess said: "Well, I think everybody grows, everybody changes and we bring what we learn into the mix. So, I think while we're revisiting and kind of enjoying this feeling of connecting with who we were, we're also different people, we've been through all these different experiences, so there's a lot of other things we all bring to the situation — on every level, just musically, personally, everything."

Portnoy co-founded DREAM THEATER in 1985 with guitarist John Petrucci and bassist John Myung. Mike played on 10 DREAM THEATER albums over a 20-year period, from 1989's "When Dream And Day Unite" through 2009's "Black Clouds & Silver Linings", before exiting the group in 2010.

Mike Mangini joined DREAM THEATER in late 2010 through a widely publicized audition following the departure of Portnoy. Mangini beat out six other of the world's top drummers — Marco Minnemann, Virgil Donati, Aquiles Priester, Thomas Lang, Peter Wildoer and Derek Roddy — for the gig, a three-day process that was filmed for a documentary-style reality show called "The Spirit Carries On".

Rudess also spoke about Portnoy's return to DREAM THEATER earlier this month in an interview with Serbia's Highwaystar Magazine. Jordan said at the time: "Well, it was so great to have him back. In many ways it feels like we never lost a beat. Because he was one of the ones who started this band, and he loves it so much, the welcoming process was really immediate and we're all so happy to kind of re-establish what we had. I mean, it feels like getting the core band together again."

Jordan went on to talk about DREAM THEATER's upcoming "40th Anniversary Tour 2024 - 2025". The trek — presented as "An Evening With Dream Theater" — is the first outing since Portnoy's return to the band. The European leg of DREAM THEATER's "40th Anniversary Tour 2024 - 2025" consists of stops in 23 cities, including in Zagreb, Croatia, and kicks off on October 20 and runs through November 24. Asked what fans can expect from the Zagreb show, Jordan said: "Well, it's gonna be a very, very exciting concert, as you know, because everybody's so excited about this reunion of all of us. And Mike will also have a lot to do with helping to pick the songs that we play in the setlist. That's one of his great talents, to decide things like that. And it'll be just a celebration. We're gonna play a bunch of songs from our catalog. We'll pick some ones that everybody really wants to hear. And, yeah, I think they can expect probably one of the most exciting DREAM THEATER shows that they've ever been to. I can almost guarantee it."

Asked by Brazil's Marcelo Vieira and Matheus Ribeiro if DREAM THEATER's upcoming LP picks up from where the last DT album he played on, 2009's "Black Clouds & Silver Linings", left off or if it's a different thing entirely, Portnoy said: "If I'm being honest, I think it picks up right where 'Black Clouds' left off, to be honest. There's a certain style that the five of us have when we write together. And if you listen to the album with this lineup from 1999, '[Metropolis Pt. 2:] Scenes From A Memory', through 2009's 'Black Clouds & Silver Linings', if you look at that string of five or six albums, that's the sound and style of these five people. So I think that's a good indication of what you can expect with the new DREAM THEATER album. It definitely sounds like classic DREAM THEATER."

Last month, Portnoy told The Prog Report about the writing and recording sessions for DREAM THEATER's sixteenth studio album: "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. I'm not there 100 percent 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."

He continued: "So, yeah, it's a long process. I haven't spent this much time making an album in a long time, because usually [Mike's other projects] NMB [NEAL MORSE BAND] 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 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… 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 kind of 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 of weeks ago, James [LaBrie, DREAM THEATER singer] 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 kind of the way the process is in DREAM THEATER. So, yeah, 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 a record this way."

Portnoy went on to say that he "can't give away much details" about DREAM THEATER's next LP, "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," he added.

In April, DREAM THEATER singer James LaBrie was asked by Rolling Stone magazine why he and his bandmates wanted Portnoy to return. He said: "I think we had to return the band back to its strongest form." Petrucci added: "It wasn't one singular thing; it was sort of a series of life events that caused an organic conclusion. We all talked about it. It was like, 'Yeah, this makes sense right now.'" Keyboardist Jordan Rudess chimed in: "There's so many factors involved, and each of us has our particular relationships. And it was just a moment when everything seemed to come together, and we went, 'You know what? Let's do this. Now's the time.'" Myung concurred, saying: "It was a collective moment of certainty."

Asked if he was surprised when he was invited back into the band, Portnoy said: "Before the Covid pandemic, if you had asked me or any of these guys, 'Was a reunion in the cards?' I probably would've said I doubted that it could happen. I think if the lockdown hadn't happened, you guys probably would've been on tour, and I would've been on tour with one of my 48 bands. But once we were all locked down, John asked me to play on his solo album. Then, from there, Jordan, John, and myself did the LIQUID TENSION EXPERIMENT album. And then I did John's tour. So there were just these series of events of reconnecting us — not only on a musical level but also on a personal level for many years prior to that.

"All of our families are friends," he continued. "And my daughter and John's daughter shared an apartment together for many, many years. And John Myung lives right down the block from me, and his wife's at my house every night. There was just a series of events both personally and musically that started to feel like, 'Well, maybe this really is in the cards. Maybe this is the right time.'"

Asked if they see this reunion as healing a fractured band, Portnoy said: "I don't want to be over-philosophical about it, but as we're all getting older. Here we are in our 50s and 60s. You start to think of the reality of, 'How much time do we have left?' I would hate it if this were to become a Roger Waters-PINK FLOYD or Peter Gabriel-with-GENESIS situation where the fans want it, but it never happens."

Petrucci added: "When Mike left the band, it was traumatic for all of us. We had to figure out how we were going to move our career forward. And those years that went by, they were also healing years because you don't just have something like that happen, and all of a sudden, you're all best buddies a week later. There's some trauma there that had to heal. Thirteen years was enough time for that to happen and be, like, 'Hey, you know what, man? We love each other like we're brothers.'"