In 2011 – a year after his traumatic departures from Dream Theater and Avenged Sevenfold – Mike Portnoy returned with a new outlook on life, determined to explore new musical directions. He told Prog about just some of his plans for the near future.
“You wouldn’t believe what I’m doing right now – I really wish you could see what’s going on,” laughs Mike Portnoy down the phone, sounding out of breath and unusually flustered. “Dream Theater have sent back all of my drums from the last 25 years which have been in their storage. So we’re out behind my house and my life is flashing before me.
‘It’s all very nice and nostalgic, but I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with all this stuff. For each tour, I had multiple kits. As if one of those massive kits wasn’t enough, you have to times that by two or three, and then that multiplied by six or seven tours. So it’s pretty insane!”
In spite of such wistful and probably painful visible reminders of past musical triumphs, it’s a relief to find that Portnoy has – superficially at least – returned to his buoyant, optimistic self. Effectively left musically homeless at the end of 2010 following his resignation from Dream Theater and subsequent departure from Avenged Sevenfold, the drummer says he found solace through his family, and by working with Neal Morse during those shady times when uncertainty prevailed, and he’d become the target for open abuse by some disillusioned fans.
“I surrounded myself with Neal’s tremendously positive spirit,” Portnoy says. “We did his Testimony 2 album and a couple of other projects right off the bat. Neal has such a calming and positive spirit that was just very, very good for me on a personal and musical level at that time. I was also able to spend a good amount of time with my family, sitting by the pool and having barbecues.
“That’s not to say I wasn’t itching to go on the road. You might think my wife would say, ‘Now you don’t have Dream Theater you should relax and stay home awhile.’ But actually she’s been so supportive – any time the phone rings she wants me to go for it. It’s been really great to have that in my life.”
Not that he needed much pushing. With an incessant love for music and a personality which he readily admits to being obsessive compulsive, it came as no surprise when news of multiple new projects broke.
“I need to work and I have to stay busy,” he confirms. “You can imagine that, once I didn’t have Dream Theater in my life, I was champing at the bit to fill up my time with a million other things. I saw a lot of people posting online like, ‘I thought you left Dream Theater because you wanted a break’ – but my intention was not to take a break from music, or from working or being creative. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do that. I just needed a break from the Dream Theater machine.”
Every Flying Colors song has a very different style to it and it’s something that’s unlike Neal, Steve, Dave or myself have ever done
It transpires that the first of these projects, Flying Colors, had already been planned before his split with the prog metal giants. Featuring Morse, Steve Morse (Dixie Dregs/Deep Purple) and Dave LaRue (Dixie Dregs), it’s obvious why the project has garnered so much interest. “The Flying Colors concept basically stemmed from Neal and Steve starting work together,” Portnoy recalls.
“Then, once we had the four of us, we wanted to get a separate singer, as we knew Neal was going to be more of a supporting player. I brought up the idea of Casey McPherson because I had been a friend and fan of his for years; I loved his work in Endochine and Alpha Rev.
“It’s really hard to put my finger on it musically, though – every song has a very different style to it and it’s something that’s unlike Neal, Steve, Dave or myself have ever done. It’s more song-oriented, alternative pop with a progressive edge. On top of that, it was great to have Peter Collins producing; he’s produced so many great Rush albums as well as classic Queensrÿche albums like Operation: Mindcrime and Empire.”
It’s intriguing to watch Portnoy embark on an assortment of projects far-remove from his past. Even the much-heralded Adrenaline Mob – in which he teams up with Symphony X frontman Russell Allen – owed more to such metal luminaries as Black Sabbath or Judas Priest than the progressive, neo-classical metal that many were expecting. With Adrenaline Mob now set to release an album, Portnoy stresses that deliberately exploring music that’s far away from Dream Theater has been key to his current happiness.
Adrenaline Mob was the first time I’ve ever been on stage and felt like I was the least animated person
“Everything I’m doing is purposely very different. If I’d wanted to keep doing what Dream Theater do then I’d still be in Dream Theater,” he asserts. “I wanted to explore other things with different types of singers, instrumentation and musical influences. Although I love progressive metal and it’s a huge part of my background, it’s not the only thing I do.
“Now it’s about exploring different territory and different sides of my musical tastes, which are incredibly broad. Adrenaline Mob isn’t a prog metal thing and as long as people go in understanding that, then [Omertà] is a tremendously powerful album.
“We did a little touring in America and everybody in the band is a full-on performer. It was the first time I’ve ever been on stage and felt like I was the least animated person in the band.”
Another of his musical influences is 70s classic rock, with bands like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Whitesnake all a portion of his musical psyche. Keen to tap into that, he recently joined with former Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy and Blue Murder guitarist John Sykes for a proposed side-project that now seems to have petered out. Undeterred, he’s also teamed up with bassist Billy Sheehan (Mr Big), guitarist Tony MacAlpine and former Dream Theater keyboardist Derek Sherinian for live appearances at a handful of drum shows as PSMS.
“I thought it would be cool to put together an instrumental band, and this was the line-up that came to mind. So we’re going to do a couple of these shows and while we’re together, we’re going to film a DVD as well.
There a lot of things that could come up and Transatlantic is one of them… that’s really a fourth band in the mix
“It’s probably going to be a lot of covers and jamming as it’s not going to be a real band in terms of writing original material – although who knows if something like that could develop in the future? It’ll be the type of fusion prog stuff Bill Bruford played with Allan Holdsworth, and I’m sure the four of us will be able to tap into some serious playing.”
There are also strong hopes that Transatlantic will record a new album in 2012, although Portnoy explains that this will be reliant on finding a suitable timeslot in which the band can reconvene to write and record. “There are still a lot of things that could come up and Transatlantic is one of them,” he says.
“All four of us have openly stated that we’d love to continue working together. There are rumblings of trying to fit it into each of our schedules and get another album going. If and when that album comes out, we can hit the road possibly at the end of 2012 or early 2013. So that’s really a fourth band in the mix.”
For all his foibles, it remains hard not to have a huge amount of sympathy over the position Portnoy found himself in a year ago. Idealistic in the vision that Dream Theater would share his yearning for a break, it all backfired when the band called his bluff and carried on without him. The public baring of war scars that followed was messy. Yet it’s apparent that this is a year which will see him busy – and, as a natural consequence, undeniably happy.
“It’s absolutely about having fun,” he says. “It’s not about money for me – I could have been financially secure for the rest of my life if I’d just continued riding the Dream Theater machine. When I decided to leave, with that choice went a lot of security and stability which I could have rode for the rest of my life. But for me it’s not about that.
Sometimes you have to walk away from security – you have to roll the dice and go for it
“It’s about being artistically and creatively inspired to do new things; and sometimes that means you have to walk away from security to follow your dreams – you have to roll the dice and go for it. So everything I’m doing right now has everything to do with fun and wanting to spread my wings.
“I’m doing this for the love of music. I love the Dream Theater fans and my fans who have supported me through everything I’ve done. I’m just hoping they stay along for the rest of the ride, because there are surely some great things to come.”
