MIKE PORTNOY On Returning To DREAM THEATER: 'It's Exciting At This Stage Of My Life To Have This Third Act'

During an appearance on a recent episode of the "So...You Want To Be A Musician?" podcast with MR. BIG drummer Nick D'Virgilio, DREAM THEATER's Mike Portnoy was asked what he does to keep his drumming chops up. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I'll be honest, I'm starting to feel my age a little bit. I'm not the kid I was 20, 30 years ago. So you've just gotta do the best you can. I mean, for me, I play so much that it keeps me on my toes. Up until rejoining DREAM THEATER recently, I was playing in so many different bands, which meant I was constantly playing, constantly surrounded by different musicians, which always inspired me. The different people I played with and a different style of music, all those 13 years outside of DREAM THEATER, where I did all these different bands and everything, that inspired me. Working with Neal [Morse] and Billy [Sheehan] and all these different people in these different bands and configurations, that always elevated me and inspired me to try new things and to try to just be the best I can. I can't really give much advice on the healthy side of it — eating and drinking and sleeping and blah, blah, blah — because I'm a horrible example of all that. But the playing has always kept me up to speed and keeps me growing and developing and the different scenarios. And now that I bring that back to where I am with DREAM THEATER, it's a cool perspective because I'm coming back to DREAM THEATER with a whole dozen years' worth of experiences that I've had outside the band. And they as well — they've gone the last 13 years with their own experiences that I didn't have with them. So it's kind of exciting at this stage of my life to bring it back together and have this third act, if you will."

Elaborating on his mindset when rejoining DREAM THEATER last October, Portnoy said: "At our ages, we realized when we decided to reunite and get back together, I'd be lying if I didn't say we didn't start to look in the mirror and look at the clock and say, who knows how much time we have left? The clock is ticking, and we realize we're not gonna be here forever. And we wanna spend whatever time we have left together making music with the people that we grew up with and the people that we love. So, yeah, that's kind of where we're at at this stage."

Portnoy recently admitted to Spain's Mariskal Rock that he "needed to get used to was being the 'new guy'" after rejoining DREAM THEATER, "being the new guy in a band that I helped form when I was a teenager. So it's a bit of a transition for me to go from being a bit of the leader, as I was back when I left the band, now I have to kind of find my way back into the chemistry and I need to respect the fact that they've been doing this for 13 years without me and they have maybe new ways of doing things, new ways of making decisions," he explained. "So … I have had to be very respectful for my role as the new guy and finding my way back into the chemistry of the band."

This past June, Portnoy was asked by Brazil's Marcelo Vieira and Matheus Ribeiro if DREAM THEATER's upcoming sixteenth studio album picks up from where the last DT LP he played on, 2009's "Black Clouds & Silver Linings", left off or if it's a different thing entirely. He responded: "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."

DREAM THEATER's upcoming effort will mark the progressive metal legends' first LP since Portnoy's return to the group.

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".

This past April, DREAM THEATER announced the European leg of its "40th Anniversary Tour 2024 - 2025". The trek — presented as "An Evening With Dream Theater" — is the first outing since Portnoy's return.

The European leg of DREAM THEATER's "40th Anniversary Tour 2024 - 2025" consists of stops in 23 cities and kicks off on October 20 and runs through November 24.

Photo credit: Travis Shinn