Rockezine.com interview with Jordan Rudess on Nov 20, 2001

with Jordan on Nov 20, 2001

What can be said about Jordan Rudess, the highly talented keyboard player of Dream Theater and so many other projects like ‘Liquid Tension Experiment’, ‘The Rudess/Morgenstein Project’ and very recently his very own solo album called ‘Feeding The Wheel’. I got the chance to talk to him on the phone and it was a very enjoyable conversation that lasted a little over 45 minutes. Since he spoke in a very passionate and fun way, I didn’t feel like leaving much out, so here’s pretty much everything that was said during the talk. Sit back, relax and enjoy the journey with Jordan Rudess…
		Feeding The Wheel
		Jordan, let me begin with asking you; where the HELL did you find the time to write for your solo album ‘Feeding The Wheel’? (laughs) That’s an interesting question. You know, a lot of times when I do these projects and when they’re all done, I hear them like many months later. And then I literally can’t remember writing the music for it. It’s like it was done by little munchkins in the middle of the night (laughs). A lot of it is kinda surreal in the sense that music is spinning around in my head. The way it comes out of my head is very strange, at weird times. Sometimes it rushes out very fast, other times more slowly. But basicly I just write music whenever I get the chance and work in the studio every minute I can, you know, when I’m not with my family or Dream Theater etc., so when I’m just here doing stuff and laying it out.
		So does it sometimes happen that you’re for example driving a car and all of a sudden you get an idea for a solo or a song? Yeah, it really does. A lot of times that’s exactly how it happens. I write a lot of music in the car, I’ve got a little machine that I can sing little ideas into. And sometimes when I don’t have that with me, I’ll call myself on the cell phone and leave myself a voice message of a riff that I’m thinking about. It really comes in funny times. As a matter of fact, some of the new Dream Theater was written when I just rolled out of bed.
		I would like to ask you more about the new Dream Theater album, but I understand that it’s still a little bit of a secret how that is going to turn out. Yeah, it still is besides describing the kind of music and stuff. But you know, the new Dream Theater is quite exciting. I think we were able to capture a lot of the real spirit of who we have been and also moving into new areas and who we’re becoming. There are so many things people expect from Dream Theater, there’s metal people, there’s prog people and everybody kinda has an idea of what they think Dream Theater is about and what kind of music we should create. I think on this new album we’ve created some sort of a feast for everyone. There is so much material, cause it’s a double studio album and it really goes into all those areas, all of those expected areas and it also goes into areas that nobody has ever heard us do before.
		Sounds cool! If it’s ok with you, I’d like to ask you some questions about your new solo album first and talk about Dream Theater later. I’m sure you would like it yourself to talk about ‘Feeding The Wheel’. Yeah I would! I’d like people to hear it.
		What do you think about it yourself? I’m very very proud of it. I really welcomed the opportunity to create a solo album, cause I’ve got a lot of personal musical visions. Although my group Dream Theater is in my opinion one of the greatest groups in the planet, I still have other things I want to say musicly. And as a keyboardist in a rockband you can’t always express that. ‘Feeding The Wheel’ is just an opportunity for me to really just create my musical visions and allow people to hear what I’m up to and what kind of things I think about and also to share a concept. Although ‘Feeding The Wheel’ isn’t a concept album, there is a concept behind the idea of it. In a format like this with a solo album, I think it’s very possible to put something like that across.
		Could you perhaps tell me more about what the concept is about? Of course. The ‘feeding the wheel’ is an statement. ‘The wheel’ is just a symbol basicly of our lives and motion. From the moment we are born we start our motion and start reaching towards our destiny. We’re on a path every day that we live and we never know what’s exactly going to happen to us, but we’re always traveling from one point to another. That’s the concept behind ‘the wheel’. And the idea of ‘feeding the wheel’ is the idea that there are things that everyone of us can do to kinda influence our paths and direction. We don’t just to have to sit there and riding on it and let it go to wherever it will end up. We can do positive things, we can do negative things. Things like meditation, or education or listening to music, going to work. All these things we do to kind of nourish ourselves in different ways and to keep our path controlled. That’s what the thinking behind the record is about and that’s why there are some spoken words on the album.
		Did you write the music before or after having came up with this concept? Well, it was a concept that had been on my mind for a while and when I was asked to do a solo album, I was thinking ‘what am I going to call it?’ and this was really something that was on my mind, something I was thinking about and something I wanted to share with others as well. Even though it’s not a concept album, cause first of all it’s an instrumental album except for some spoken words, there was the opportunity to express some of those ideas.
		There’s even some rapping on it, on the song ‘Revolving Door’ if I remember correctly (laughs). Yep!
		Was that you or your assistant Bert Baldwin? That’s me AND my assistant together. A rare moment of rapping (laughs). It’s very funny, right?
		Yeah, I love it (laughs). It reminded me of the Dream Theater christmas cd 2000 where James is rapping. (laughs) Oh yeah, that’s funny. That’s where solo albums are for so that the progressive rock musician can do a rap (laughs). So if anybody asks what kind of music it is, you don’t have to limit it to prog, it’s all kinds (laughs). You know, this solo album was really important to me. Even after writing it and putting it out, cause I think it turned out really well. It’s not my first solo album, but it is my first one that is getting reasonably good distribution throughout the world. One of the things I’d like to do as an artist is to create kind of a feedback loop where I put something out and people respond, then I respond musicly and put something else out. So it helps to achieve that goal.
		Yeah… what are you the most proud of, of the new solo album? Is there anything in particular? There’s not one song in particular. I’m just pleased with the way it turned out. I’m the kind of artist that really doesn’t like to put something out unless I feel that it’s really something I’ll be able to live with. So that, you know, when people put it on and I’m in the room, I’m not going to feel like ‘oh my god, I should have done it a little bit different’. So in that sense I put the amount of effort into it and focus and care that I created something that I can really stand behind. It’s really a product of my imagination and therefor the whole thing is me. It’s like, you put it out and I’m just saying ‘this is it, you’re looking at it, you’re listening to it’ (laughs).
		You should have began with that on your record, with the voice going like ‘this is Jordan Rudess, welcome to my solo album’ (laughs). (laughs) Yeah right, ‘welcome to the show’. And I knew this was an important record for me too because so many people would be interested in it. You know, Dream Theater fans and other people would listen to it just for being curious ‘what’s he going to do on his solo album’.
		Did you try to aim for a specific group of people? Like, did you try to attract to the prog fans, or Dream Theater fans, or instrumental fans, etc? Well, you know, I guess in a big way I wanted to be true to myself. I knew I was creating a rockalbum. And even the kind of rock that I really play is progressive rock. In the sense that progressive is meaning non-traditional, with more harmonies and rhythms, with different kinds of sounds. That’s the format, if you consider that a format, that I wanted to keep it in. I wanted to keep it in general high-energy music. But of course it all comes out to be my style anyway and I think my style at this point is a pretty unique blend of a lot of different things. Anything from classical, to rock ,to jazz and all kinds of strange stuff.
		On ‘Feeding The Wheel’ there have been a lot of talented musicians just like you. How did you get them to record on your album? Yeah there are a lot of guys, like you said, and some of them were more challenging to get than others. Some of them I didn’t even really know, whom I loved, but didn’t know them personally. Guys like Terry Bozzio for example, who is one of my favorite drummers, but I had never met him before. But luckily the record company, Magna Carta, had worked with him before and coordinated him to play on my cd. So that was pretty cool. And Billy Sheehan as well, they asked Billy if he would play and he agreed to play a track. Some of the other guys are my friends. I mean Steve Morse, from The Dregs (The Dixie Dregs –FA). I used to play for The Dregs in the past so that was a little easier to get him on the album. I basicly forced John Petrucci (guitarist of Dream Theater –FA) to do it, so he did (laughs).
		‘I’m gonna smack your head with my Kurzweil if you don’t play on it’ That’s right, ‘I’ll take your guitar away from you’ (laughs). John helped me out a lot. He not only played some really amazing solo’s on the cd, he also was able to beef up some of the parts that are more rocking and guitar oriented. So he doubled a lot of the parts I played with his chunky rhythm sound. And then I had some string players on it as well, I had Eugene Friesen who I worked with on the Paul Winter consort. Eugene is a cellist and he also did some vocalizing kind of things that were blended in here and there. And my friend Mark Wood, somebody I’ve known for many years, who grew up in the town right next to mine.
		Mark plays the ‘Viper violin’ which is an instrument he build himself, very cool. And then I had another friend of mine, who’s name is Barry Carl, who is the bass voice in Rockapella and he did all the spoken words. He’s got this really low voice (Jordan impersonates him here by saying that sentence in a low voice, which sounds pretty funny –FA) that shakes the room, great sound. So he was kind enough to join me. I also had Peter Ernst who is a Nylon String guitarplayer and it’s his first professional appearance. He’s a guitarist from Germany who’s going to school at Julliard, the same music school that I went to (at the young age of nine! –FA). And last I had my assistant to play a little bit on the record too, Bert Baldwin. I allowed him to touch my keyboard. Instead of just dusting it, I let him play (laughs), he did a good job.
		He’s also a crewmember on the Dream Theater tour, right? Oh yes, he runs all the video’s and he makes a lot of things that you can see on the screens when we did the multimedia stuff. A very talented young man.
		Does he also happen to have some talent on the keyboard (laughs)? He does, he’s truly talented (laughs), that’s the reason I hired him. He didn’t have some of the organizational skills that I needed, but he was very musical, so I said ‘come on, alright’ (laughs).
		But you aren’t afraid of him, you know, competition? (laughs) No, I’m not, he’s not moving his fingers as fast as I am yet (laughs). It’ll take a little while. And when he can, he can come and do some more playing, I have no problems with that. As a matter of fact, if something happens to me I need somebody to be able to fill in quickly. Then he can try his hands (laughs).
		Well, to get back on the subject, I’ve got a question about Terry Bozzio. You mentioned Magna Carta contacted him to play on your album. Was that a personal wish of yours or was the opportunity in a way brought up to you by Magna Carta? Originally I thought when the idea came up with using some guests that in the drummers-department it would be cool to use a few different guys. The guy I’m used to working with is Rod Morgenstein, who I consider to be one of the world’s best drummers. So I wanted to get him. I thought it would be cool to use Terry on a couple of tracks as well. And then I was thinking, maybe the guy from Spock’s Beard (the prog band that was the opening act during the Dream Theater SFAM tour in 2000 –FA), Nick. Or Mike Mangini (who played on both the James Labrie solo albums, ‘Mullmuzzler’ –FA).
		I was just thinking of using a few different guys. So in the talks of how it was all going to work logisticly with Magna Carta they were saying ‘maybe that would make it too complicated’. And that’s true actually (laughs), it would get too complicated. So they said ‘how about if you only used Terry Bozzio, if he wants to do it?’ I said ‘if Terry will do it thennn, (enthousiastic) okaaay’ (laughs). I’m a big fan of his. So that’s how it happened.
		You didn’t record it in the same room, did you? No, he was in Austin, Texas for all his parts. I had send Terry all kinds of charts, midi-files, I played midi-drums so that he could hear what I had in mind, so he had a lot of information. I spend a lot of time with him on the phone, actually while recording the new Dream Theater album. So I was on the phone, faxing him information, it was a wild four days getting Terry coordinated. He had to play and learn his stuff very quickly.
		What about John Petrucci? I would think you had the time to record the songs with him. Yeah, sometimes I was with John. He did some of it while I was there, but also some stuff while I wasn’t there, but he knew exactly what I wanted.
		And what about Steve Morse and Billy Sheehan? Steve did his parts by himself as well. Steve played a few solo’s during the record, discussing where I wanted them to be placed. I wrote those parts with Steve in mind. When I first heard them when he sent them back I was really smiling and laughing, it was so amazing. And Billy did his part out in his studio as well. He played on one song, on the bass, the song called ‘Crack The Meter’. So that has actually Billy Sheehan, Terry Bozzio and Steve Morse playing on it with me. What a cool band (laughs). So all in all it was done all over the place! It was more of a challenge to organize the whole project than I thought it was going to be. I really didn’t know, it was the first time I coordinated something on that level. While it was very exciting and fun, it was also hard. But you know, in the long run it was all worth it. I had some really great players and it was just a great opportunity for me.
		Yeah and I guess you can be extra proud of it after all that hard work. I am, I can’t believe it’s all done and I can look at it and say ‘oh my god, this is it’. It’s all packaged and ready, it’s out, people have heard it. Coordinating the packaging is another element I really care about. I got a friend of mine who’s name is David Mattingly who did the cover of ‘Feeding The Wheel’. He also does a lot of covers for science-fiction books. It’s all part of the journey, you know.
		David Bowie
		You’ve already mentioned so many artists you’ve played with. I understand you’ve also recently worked with David Bowie? I did, yes. I was invited by my friend who’s a producer, his name is Tony Visconti who actually procuded Moody Blues, Gentle Giant and David Bowie in the past. He invited me to record with him on this new David Bowie album. It was quite fun, they were camped out in the studio in the mountains for a month or so. They invited me up and I was there for about five days on top of a big mountain, just working on a bunch of songs. When I walked in David was there, with Tony and everybody was happy and laughing, it was a very good vibe. So I just walked on, grabbed my keyboard and started to work. He had tons of songs already written. First thing I did was play a Hammond organ part, which was a little bit unusual for me since I’m used to bring everything to my synthesizer. But he wanted more of a vintage approach, so I played that and basicly all kinds of interesting things.
		What can we expect from you on that Bowie album? You said you played on the Hammond organ and other stuff, but I assume it’s not anything like Dream Theater. Well, let’s put it this way. I was not hired at all to be Jordan Rudess, you know, the progressive keyboardist on a Bowie album. I was hired to come and do exactly what it is that the guys wanted, as far as the keyboard parts go. And what they wanted was very different from what any Dream Theater fan would think I’m doing.
		Yeah, but that’s the fun part about it, isn’t it? Oh sure, it definitely was. David wanted to have a simple kind of an approach. He wanted things that didn’t sound too far out of someone’s grasp. So a lot of it was just, dare I say it, ‘easy’ keyboardplaying. But for me it was all amazing, cause anytime you’re sitting there playing the keyboard and listening to David Bowie’s voice in my headphones, it’s a real trip you know.
		Were you already a fan of his before you recorded the cd with him? I always liked his music. I don’t think I’ve got more than one or two of his cd’s, but I certainly like David Bowie.
		Do you think David Bowie will ask you to play the keyboardparts if he’s going to perform live? I don’t know, I mean in the five days I was there I don’t know if we’ve made that kind of a connection, but sure, it’s always possible.
		Do you think you would take that chance if time permits that? If it doesn’t interfere with Dream Theater, I might. These days I have to be more careful about how I schedule my time, because we’re so busy as a band. I like to do my own projects as well, so… But yeah, if he would call I would definitely take it seriously, he’s such a big and well known artist. Do you think I should take it?
		Uhm tough question. Hey, I’m the interviewer here, not you! (laughs) (laughs) Yeah, right.
		Seriously though, I don’t know his music that well, I know him better from his film role in Twin Peaks (Jordan laughs and agrees here –FA), but I do think it would be cool.
		Dream Theater is a pretty well known band, but only in its genre. So maybe it would be a good opportunity to get more people to know who Jordan Rudess is. Yeah, maybe. I was actually relieved when I got back from the David Bowie sessions and got back to Dream Theater because I had a little more to do there. And I was thinking ‘ah, I’m so glad to be back, to be working the way I like to work’. The way that I work is that I like to do things until I feel that it’s completely a 100% right, notice they are and then no questions about it. David and Tony were more so working in a way like ‘I don’t want to hear a lot of soundoptions’. I would play like the first track and they would be like ‘fine, that’s good, next song’. Then I’d be like ‘really?’, you know before I even got warmed up.
		That must have been a new experience for you. Well yeah, in a way. I mean it was weird. What was strange about it was that I wanted to put out my very best and maybe do some things that were even more intense than I’ve ever done before, I came into it like that. Then the reality was that I played four notes and they would be ‘ok great’ (laughs). I would say ‘don’t you want me to fix the sound or do some choir effects, play some lead here’, ‘no no no, nothing. It’s great, we’ll do the next song now’.
		How many times can you be heard on the album? I don’t know, because he had a lot of songs and I played on about six, seven songs. So I don’t know which songs will be used on the new record. So hopefully I’ll be heard on the record, that’ll be nice (laughs).
		Rudess/Morgenstein Project
		You mentioned earlier you wanted to concentrate on projects like this. Do you have anything in mind already for the future? One of the things I would like to keep alive is my project with Rod Morgenstein, the ‘Rudess/Morgenstein Project’. We’re actually slowly but truly working on a new album together, we have some new material that is really really cool. Kinda like prog meets techno.
		Didn’t you recently release some sort of bootleg with Rod Morgenstein? Yes we did. Rod and I went through all our tapes that we had that we had from all our live gigs we played while on tour with Dream Theater. And we decided that instead of everybody else, like releasing bootlegs having them sound like crap, that we would put together our own. We went ahead and picked what we felt were the best performances on there and made ‘The Official Bootleg’. The sound quality is pretty good, definitely better than somebody out there with a little microphone.
		Was it released to satisfy the fans, to let everyone know the project is still alive, or something else? To keep things alive, really. There was a real interest, personal interest in letting people hear what we sound like live and also because of requests from people to have something like that. And to keep products coming from us as well.
		Dream Theater
		If that’s ok with you, I’d like to ask you some questions about Dream Theater. How is the new album proceeding? The new album is completely done, it’s a double studio album. I think we’re all really excited about it. It was kind of a challenge to think about how to follow up with something like ‘Scenes From A Memory’. I mean everybody’s like ‘how you’re going to do it, how you’re going to do it??’. My feeling and the feeling of the band was ‘look, how did we do that? How did we do the last one? We’re just a bunch of guys, we write music, we record it and then it comes out’. So on one hand we were very casual about it, because it’s just what we do. On the other hand we were also on the other side of things, cause the last album was so well received and we were wondering how we’re going to do it. So it’s a mixture of feelings. But in the long run, we are who we are and we’re only going to do what we do, and we’re going to do our best. What ended up happening, is that we went to the studio where we worked for a while and then some more.
		We came out with a certain amount of material. As we saw the end of the recording cycle coming we thought ‘oh wow, we are gonna have to step on the gas here’. So we got a little bit nervous cause we had been taking time writing our music and then we went to a Liquid Tension Experiment kind of a mode, where we were writing the music really fast. We were listening to it back and laughing, it was so crazy and it was some of the best shit we’ve written in the whole time of the recording sessions.
		And is that the material that’s going to be in the 40-minute epic song? Yeah, it was some of the last stuff that we wrote. It’s pretty progressive, some of it has a Liquid Tension Experiment feeling to it. So that was a funny ending because we were wanting to write a little bit more music, but ended up writing a LOT of music, it was kinda going wild in the studio. It’s always a fun mode for us to be in. And it was not only a lot more music, it also had a different kind of flavor, it was a whole different side of what we do. I mean, a lot of the first stuff that was written was very heavy and dark and metal-like. And toward the end we were writing more prog, more keyboard stuff.
		In a lot of your live keyboard solo’s, you use some funny tunes, sometimes even old child songs, like during ‘A Change of Seasons’ on the DVD. Is any of that going to be on the new Dream Theater album? Hmmm let me think about that. No, I don’t think so, you can find that funny stuff more so on my solo album. There are a lot of stylistic changes on the new Dream Theater album, but nothing blatantly funny.
		Is James going to rap on it? (laughs) (laughs) I started a good thing, but first Baldwin is going to rap (laughs).
		(laughs) Hey, about the new album. ‘Scenes From A Memory’ was your first album with Dream Theater. Did you have more influence on the new one? Well, I had a lot of influence on the ‘Scenes From A Memory’ album actually, for being a new member. I had known the guys so well (especially during the Liquid Tension Experiment sessions –FA). The main thing from ‘Scenes From A Memory’ is that I threw away a lot of music. Like, I had a lot of ideas that were just… well, when I turned the guys onto them they were like ‘that’s cool, but I don’t know if it’s very Dream Theater’. So they were a little bit nervous about some of my ideas, well maybe nervous is the wrong word, but they were careful not to allow me to interject ideas that didn’t relate to the usual Dream Theater concept. On the new album, I didn’t throw away as much. For ‘Scenes From A Memory’, I must have come in with like 30 different kinds of sequences and ideas, before the sessions began. They told me they like to write the music together, but since I generally write my music on my own…
		But for this album I didn’t write anything before hand, I came in totally open. It has taken some time to realize what the compositional reality is here and how the band really works. On this second album now I understood that more, but I learned it even more back then. You know, it’s exciting to be a member of this group. There’s the third keyboardplayer in line, but there are challenges in the fact that I didn’t start from the beginning with them and that they already have such a long history together. So there’s always adjusting and learning songs they played years ago.
		If I remember correctly, you were asked to play for Dream Theater many years ago, but you turned it down because of your family? Yeah, I was asked to play for them like, 8 years ago.
		How do you look at it now? Are you able to combine your life with your family and the life with the band? You know, the whole bouncing of family and professional music life is something that we are all dealing with. For me it’s a major concern to make sure that everything gets proper attention and that everything gets done. I mean Dream Theater, solo albums, having two kids and a wife, a family, it’s a lot. But you know, I’m not the only one with a busy life. It’s not just musicians that have that kind of a life. People who go to work every day, who come home later at night have busy lives too. It’s just not structured the same way ours is. You can’t really put anything on top of the list, because everything is equally important. You can’t say that your family is never as important as music, and you can’t say that music isn’t really important. So I end up just shoveling things, more like a side-to-side kind of a game (laughs) where everything is important, but you can’t do everything at once. So one time you focus more on that, other times on the other.
		I hope you’ve never regret going to Dream Theater. Oh, so far I have no regrets at all, it’s all been very very exciting. I know when I said ‘yes’ the second time after the two Liquid Tension Experiment albums were done when they asked me to join their group, that it was the right thing to do. It made complete sense and everything was pointing in the right direction. At that time it was a very natural progression towards my joining the group, it was almost obvious. You could draw a map of everything that happened during the years and how one thing led to another. It seemed so right.
		You said that on ‘Scenes From A Memory’ quite some material wasn’t used, but that a lot of your material of yours was used this time for the new album. Does this mean we can expect more Jordan Rudess on the new Dream Theater? What happens with the Dream Theater album is that as far as all the notes and harmonies and things like that, John Petrucci and I write most of that. And Mike is always there, always very instrumental with his voice and direction for all the songs and everything. So the three of us make a real writing core. So as far as hearing more of me, I mean, I’m very much one of the writers. It’ll be obvious to some people and think ‘oh, that’s a Jordan kind of a thing’. So there’s a lot of stuff there. You know, I’ve got a new keyboard called a Korg Karma, when I started playing on it I really inspired everybody. John Petrucci was standing by the keyboard and was shouting out ‘play something fast! Now make it really happy! Play some military tunes!’ (laughs). I was just improvizing and we captured the improvizations, and a lot of those turned out to be ideas for this big 40-minute song.
		Of course Dream Theater is very progressive, but do you think that with all these freaky tunes, you might go over the top this time and perhaps lose a certain fanbase or not reach as many people as you would like to? I know what you mean, but I think that Mike and John Petrucci are very aware of what Dream Theater means and what they mean to the fans. Especially in their role as producers, they wouldn’t allow anything to be on the album if they didn’t think it would be the right thing for their career. So there’s a very strong awareness of that kind of thing.
		Yeah, cause I can imagine it’s pretty difficult with Dream Theater’s divided fanbase. I mean, you got the metal fans, the prog fans… Right, right. And they’ve all got to live together, you know. They have to live with me even though I don’t know anything about metal (laughs), I don’t listen to it. I represent the other side, I’ll be hanging with the prog fans (laughs). Mike will be in both rooms, he likes both. Don’t worry about the new album, everyone will be happy (laughs).
		What will your plans be before the tour begins early next year? To be going on a long extended Hawaiian vacation (laughs), but I can’t since I’ve got too much music to put together, too much programming. So right now I’m in the studio with my assistant and we’re connecting some new equipment we’re trying out for the tour. So I’m getting my system together, I’m learning music, I’m learning some of the old songs that I’ve never played before, programming, etc...
		Older songs? Does this mean there will be some surprises in the setlist for the tour? Oh yeah, totally, there’s no doubt. They’re surprises to me so surprises for you too (laughs).
		But you probably can’t say anything about it, huh? (laughs) Nope, nothing. Mike would have my head if I did (laughs). He’ll be like ‘ nooo, you told him, shit!’ (laughs). All I can tell you is that we’re gonna play some old stuff, sorry.
		Damn it! (laughs) Well, to wrap up the interview and to get back to your solo album ‘Feeding The Wheel’; is that as much Jordan Rudess as it can get? Yeah, totally. The solo album is very complete. All of the music was written by me, 99% of it is just my sound. It’s my best statement so far, my best solo statement.
		Do you think that in January the new Dream Theater will be your new masterpiece? I think it’s really one of the best Dream Theater has done as well. When I look back at ‘Scenes From A Memory’, that was a very powerful album. This new stuff that we put together is really amazing. I think we have a very unusually cool combination of guys in this band right now that are very compatible musicly and personally. I think it really shows in the music that we create, we’ve got something really special happening. We’re all comfortable with it and we want to write as long as we can. You’ll feel that when you hear the new record. What some people might not realize, is that we’re not really topping anything, it’s just more like a combination of a group of cool musicians that continue to do something together. We’re very grateful to have that and I think the fans will be very grateful too. So will we see you when we come over there?
		Yeah definitely! One last thing, is there anything you’d like to say to our readers? Yes, I’m looking forward to coming back there, cause it’s definitely one of the cooler spots for Dream Theater to play, the fans are so great there. Come visit my website at www.jordanrudess.com and everybody who is interested in learning some keyboards from me, I have an online musicschool which is accessable through my website, so check it out. And that’s about it!
Yes folks, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed reading this rather long interview and that it made you just as excited about the new Dream Theater album as I am, and much more. Look for the release of ‘Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence’ around mid/end of January, followed by a European tour right after that, with Pain of Salvation as the opening act. (Frank Alders)