“It’s been a great time for Dream Theater, quite honestly,” Rudess says. “I don’t think we’ve ever had this kind of show. The energy of the band is just wonderful and it’s in a very great place. We feel that we’re offering the best show we’ve ever had, really, production-wise. It’s the biggest, grandest show. It’s ‘An Evening With…’ and we’re playing music from a lot of different albums. There’s a little bit of focus on the new album but also a tribute to different anniversaries that we have with other albums. There’s a lot of video, a lot of really cool lighting… it should be a fantastic time for Dream Theater fans and also people who haven’t checked out Dream Theater before to come and see what we’re all about.”
Recent live DVD Live at Luna Park offers up plenty of proof of the state of Dream Theater right now: the band seem to be having more fun onstage than ever. Founding drummer Mike Portnoy left in 2010. He’s now keeping himself all sorts of busy with progressive rock supergroup Flying Colors and the classic rock-influenced The Winery Dogs with Billy Sheehan and Richie Kotzen. Portnoy has such a big personality and eye-catching drumming style that he naturally draws attention to the back of the stage (and rightly so; the dude is amazing). So with Mangini now behind the kit for Dream Theater it seems like the energy is spreading more naturally and evenly throughout the band. “It’s so much fun, it really is,” Rudess says. “Mike Mangini is such an incredible drummer. He’s so consistent, he’s so powerful and his energy is so uplifting that when we walk onstage it’s not only a high for the audience but it makes us feel really good. You’ll see when we get there.
Dream Theater’s most recent album was last year’s self-titled record, their twelfth. It’s the first that Mangini participated in all the way through (the drum parts were already written when he joined to record 2011’s A Dramatic Turn of Events), and along with its predecessor it features more up-front Rudess virtuosity than the last handful of albums of the Portnoy era. A year on from the album’s release, how does Rudess feel about it? “Well it’s funny; people ask me all the time what my favourite Dream Theater album is and it’s hard to say because I get so attached when I’m in the middle of making them. But at this point I’d have to say that the new album is a favourite. So much love and care went into it. It’s not like I listen to it all the time; no, not at all. I put out these albums and then I kinda shelve them. But the reality of going around the world and playing it is just so wonderful. I just feel like we put so much into it. Nobody in this band is lazy at all; we’re so energised and we try to do our best work, and it’s rewarding to go out and share all the music with our fans, especially the new album which is so close to our hearts.”
BY PETER HODGSON
