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In an interview with Troy Culpan of Australia’s May The Rock Be With You, Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy discussed his experience touring with the band after a 13-year hiatus, as per blabbermouth.net. The band performed their first concert with Portnoy in 14 years on October 20, 2024, at the O2 Arena in London, United Kingdom.
Portnoy, a co-founder of Dream Theater, contributed to ten of the band’s albums over a span of two decades, from their 1989 debut “When Dream And Day Unite” to 2009’s “Black Clouds & Silver Linings.” He left the group in 2010, having been replaced by Mike Mangini, who participated in five studio albums and worldwide tours with the band. Having rejoined Dream Theater in October 2023, Portnoy reflected on the transition, which followed his departure in 2010. When asked if his return has been “seamless,” Portnoy provided his perspective.
It was seamless. To me, this was not just rejoining an old band; this was kind of coming home to my family. After 40 years and forming this band when we were teenagers, it’s more than just a band. We’ve lived life together. We’ve been to each other’s weddings and seen our kids grow up together, and we’ve had all these life experiences together. So coming back home to it, it was pretty seamless. There was kind of baby steps that led here, which also made the transition that much more comfortable. I did John Petrucci’s solo album and tour, and then we did a Liquid Tension Experiment album with me, John and Jordan and Tony Levin. So there were these kind of little steps that led to finally coming back to Dream Theater. So by the time I came back full-time to Dream Theater, it just felt like coming home to a family.
When inquired about the impact of rejoining Dream Theater on the creative process during the production of the band’s most recent album, “Parasomnia” (2025), Portnoy responded.
Well, we were definitely inspired writing together. We hadn’t written and recorded an album together since ‘Black Clouds & Silver Linings’, which came out in 2009, but we made it in 2008. So it had been 15 years since we had written and recorded an album together. So we were very inspired being together again and having that chemistry, that artistic and creative chemistry that we always had. And it was immediately there once we started working on the new album.
So… how long until the upcoming one?
Well, we have to wait, ’cause it’s been a long tour. We’ve been out for a year now at this point. We started in October of 2024. And here we are, a year later now, and by the time we get down to Australia [in February 2026] and wrap up the tour cycle a few months after that, it’ll have been a year and a half on the road. So, that’s the focus right now. But once the tour cycle wraps and concludes by next spring or so, we’ll probably take the summer off, ’cause it’s been a long road, and then start thinking about a new album after that.
Portnoy discussed Dream Theater’s 40th-anniversary tour, which commenced in late 2024. He was queried about whether this milestone exerted additional “pressure” on him and his bandmates or if they regarded the tour primarily as “more of a celebration”.
It’s a celebration. There’s no pressure. I mean, for me, it’s surreal that it’s been 40 years since we started this band. We were teenagers at college, Berklee College Of Music, back in 1985, and here we are 40 years later. We’ve been around the world dozens and dozens of times, and it’s just been quite a journey and quite a trip. And if anything, it’s just more surreal than anything. It’s just hard to believe how quickly time has flown.
Do they argue about the setlist for their shows?
Well, there’s not really any discussions. Those guys trust that in my lap. I’ve always been the guy that wrote the setlist in the band, at least in my time here, and for me, writing the setlist for this 40th-anniversary tour was actually easier than you would think. Coming back to the band after not having been in the band for over 15 years, whatever it’s been, it was all a fresh, clean slate for me to work with. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I played this song a billion times over the last couple years.’ I hadn’t played any of these songs in so long. So for me, I was able to write with a clean slate.
The setlist we’re going to be doing when we come down [to Australia] is slightly different than the one we’ve been doing throughout the rest of the world, because when we started the 40th-anniversary tour, we spent the first six to eight months on tour just concentrating on that. But since then, the last few months we’ve been playing the new album, ‘Parasomnia’, in its entirety. So when we come down to Australia, it’s kind of gonna be a combination of the two. It’ll be a heavy weight of the 40th anniversary and the full catalog stuff, but we also wanna play a bit more of the ‘Parasomnia’ album than we had, just because it’s so fresh to us and it’s the only opportunity that the Australian fans will have to hear those songs. So it’ll be a kind of a combination of the two.
