Mike Portnoy has a clear position on artificial intelligence in music, and it has nothing to do with fear of the technology. It’s about what Dream Theater is, and what it has always been.
In a recent conversation with Thailand’s Overdrive Live, the drummer addressed the A.I. question head-on, and connected it to something bigger: the band’s deliberate rejection of anything that removes the human from the performance.
“Oh, no, no,” he said when asked whether the band had incorporated A.I. into the writing of Parasomnia. “It’s all completely organic, and that’s very important to us. Jordan Rudess is very into the technology and A.I. experimentation, but on a personal level, it hasn’t come into the band. I don’t think it will ever come into the band. I think we’re all so serious enough as it is about our own instruments and our own writing and composition that that’s sacred to just being us and has to be fully organic.”
That philosophy runs all the way through to the live show. When asked about getting lost inside Dream Theater‘s more demanding material, Portnoy didn’t flinch. “Well, 7/8’s easy,” he said. “19/16 and 21/16, that’s when it starts to get a little more complicated. But, yeah, sometimes we get lost. It happens. We’re human beings, and I like the fact that we’re human beings. I’m not afraid to make a mistake. I think it shows that it’s not on tracks or it’s not playing to a click. For me, it’s very important not to play to a click.”
“That was something that I needed to establish when I came back to the band. ‘Cause I never used to do it, and I still don’t want to do it. The years that I was away, I know Dream Theaterdid. So one of the important things for me was to have the human element. I would rather make a mistake and be real than be perfect and boring and a machine. So it was important for me for us to be real. And every once in a while, somebody makes a mistake, and that’s okay. I think that’s what makes music real,” he added.
Scrapping the click track, Portnoy argues it actually makes recovery easier, not harder. “I think it’s easier without a click track,” he said. “In fact, I heard the guys talk about it, because they would say when they were playing with a click track with Mike Mangini, if there was ever a mistake, it was hard because you were tied to the [track]. You couldn’t fluctuate; you couldn’t make it work.”
As the band’s self-described conductor, Portnoy runs the whole production from behind the kit, with lights, lasers, video, and bandmates all tied to his cues via an electronic pad. The cowbell, of all things, is his emergency reset.
“At the end of the day, I’m the conductor — the drummer’s the conductor in the band — and I’m the one that’s setting the tempos and hitting the cues and playing the retards at the end of the songs,” he explained. “Everybody’s following me and watching me, including our lightman and our laser person and our video people; they’re all tied in with what I’m doing. I have an electronic pad behind the kit that I cue everybody. Only we can hear it in our ears. So I’ll cue everybody. And if ever anything falls off the track, as the drummer and the conductor, I have to get everybody’s attention with the cowbell and bring us back together. It doesn’t happen that often, but it’s a good little trick to have.”
Parasomnia, Dream Theater‘s 16th studio album, was released in February 2025 via InsideOut Music. Portnoy has also confirmed that the band’s 04/22 show at Movistar Arena in Santiago, Chile, will be professionally recorded for a future Blu-ray release.
Paul Gilbert will celebrate the 35th anniversary of his album Tribute To Jimi Hendrix with a digital reissue, available for the first time on June 12 via Music Theories Recordings.
The release includes performances recorded at the Frankfurt Jazz Festival in 1991, where Gilbert stepped in as a headliner at short notice and performed a set of Jimi Hendrix songs.
On 2 June 1991, Paul Gilbert had been invited to the Frankfurt Jazz Festival in Germany to trade a few solos with Albert Collins, who was headlining the festival. At the time, Gilbert was riding high with Mr Big and Lean Into It had not long been released.
“I was already in Europe, finishing up a Mr. Big tour,” Gilbert said, “so the travel would be easy. I said, Yes!.” However, shortly after arriving at the venue, Gilbert learned that Collins had suffered a sudden health issue and would be unable to perform.
“The promoter was panicking and asked me to be the headlining act instead,” Gilbert says. “I didn’t have a band with me and I didn’t have any solo material prepared.”
The promoter quickly assembled a backing band using the bassist and drummer from Ten Years After, the group led by Alvin Lee, who were also appearing at the festival.
“The only thing I could think to do was to quickly rehearse some Jimi Hendrix songs,” Gilbert says, “and make the solos long enough to fill up a whole set. I told the promoter, ‘We only have time to learn five songs, so I’m going to have to play REALLY LONG SOLOS.”
The promoter said that as it was a jazz festival, this would be fine.
Paul Gilbert marks 35 years of Tribute to Jimi Hendrix
So the band and Paul jumped into rehearsal, and a couple of hours later, did the show with scorching renditions of Red House, Hey Joe, Highway Chile, Midnight and Purple Haze.
“It turned out great,” Paul says. “I don’t think I’ve ever played such long solos in my life.
“The panic that comes from just trying to survive an unexpected musical situation can bring things out of a musician that would never happen if everything were rehearsed and planned out.
“As AI figures out how to make perfect productions, it might be a human being’s reaction to unexpected twists and turns that are the most interesting to listen to. At the same time, I do like to have some rehearsal with my band before a tour if I can get it.”
Around that time, Paul Gilbert also had a cover band, The Electric Fence, with his friends Jeff Martin and Russ Parrish. “When I would get home between Mr. Big tours, Jeff, Russ and I would make a list of 25 songs and challenge ourselves to see if we could learn them in a week.
“Then we’d do a gig. Most of the songs were Hendrix, Beatles, David Bowie, etc, and I did quite a bit of the lead singing. So hopping up on stage with little preparation was something I was used to and enjoyed a lot.”
Despite initially feeling worried that a Tribute To Jimi Hendrix feels like an important mission that should take lots of time to prepare and produce, Gilbert now believes the spontaneity of the performance captured the spirit of Hendrix more authentically.
“Jimi’s songs are such great vehicles for jamming,” Paul says. “His writing invites musicians to play with each other and listen to each other. The songs are flexible enough to allow musicians to keep their own style and still make the song work.”
“In the end, the pressure of pulling everything together quickly in front of an audience, and being worry-free about endless guitar jamming, may actually have brought me closer to Hendrix’s spirit than if I had planned everything while sitting in a chair.”
Paul Gilbert releases Tribute to Jimi Hendrix on 12 June 2026 via Music Theories Recordings. Pre-orders are available from lnk.to/TributeToJimiHendrix.
Every few years, indie rock seems to settle on a naming convention it can’t ignore. In the 2000s and early 2010s, every other act seemed to have a wolf (Wolf Parade, Wolf Eyes, Wolf Alice) or deer moniker (Deer Tick, Deerhunter, the Dear Hunter). As that trend faded, everyone went coastal (Beach House, Beach Slang, Beach Fossils). Now we’re back to a different animal.
The special editions of the record focus on creating truly definitive versions of Sad Wings of Destiny, returning to the original multitrack and master tapes.
