L’équipe de Thorium a eu la chance de parler avec le claviériste Jordan Rudess en préparation de sa tournée nord-américaine avec le groupe de prog metal Dream Theater. Nous avons aussi profité de l’occasion pour lui parlr de ses autres projets musicaux.

Thorium : How was the European leg of Along For The Ride?

Jordan Rudess: I just got home actually. It was a whirlwind! We we out for about two months, but I have to say that it was very successful. It was a great feeling, looking at the audience every night and seeing all these different and happy faces. For all the years I’ve been with Dream Theater people, you know, loved the band, but this was a new level of excitement going on. It might be partly because we’re performing “An evening with…” shows, which means almost three hours of Dream Theater music, but also because de expenditure of what we’re presenting, it’s definitely bigger than what we’ve ever done. We’re putting even more in the music, but also in the entire presentation.

T-How hard is it to keep a tight ship with Dream Theater when you have such an extensive touring schedule?

JR-It’s a very busy time for us. I don’t even have a break now, since I have a couple hundred of my orchestral solo, which just came out project CD’s to sign. What is great though with such a schedule is that everyone will kind of stay in the mood, you don’t have time to forget the songs. We’ll bounce right back on stage, so in that sense it’S a big positive.

T-Let’s talk about the tour: What can the fans expect from an evening with Dream Theater?

JR-The biggest Dream Theater show to date! There’s a lot behind this, and not only a lot of music.. Fans and promoters were requesting “An evening with Dream Theater”, so we’re offering that. We’re interested in having people walk into a Dream Theater show and from the moment they walk into the door they become part of our experience. We put a lot of thought behind how to make that happen, and the reactions from the fans is that it’s the most fantastic show yet. I would have to say that if you’re into Dream Theater, or you want to get someone else into the band, it’s definitely the time to do it, because we have a lot of talented people working with us. Media and graphics for the band, movies, visual things happening along with the music, our lighting is probably the best it’s ever been. It’s a really good time for Dream Theater.

T-Hardest part of preparing for a world tour?

JR-It’s a lot of work, on a personal level as well as a musician. In studio, if I’m doing an orchestral type sound, I have to do the strings, the brass, some percussion and whatever, but when it comes to playing it live, of course there’s a performance to be done on the keyboard. I spend a lot of time doing preproduction, working out how to make all these orchestrations, how to make the things that happen in studio happen on stage because everybody wants to see Dream Theater play, and not listen to a record, they want to see us do our thing. That was really hard. There was a part that was very time consuming, and hard as well,  which was planning it out: How to make this performance blow up. Which songs to play, how to create our visual effects. Planning it out properly needed a lot of thought and phone meetings. This tour is our reward for planning something like this out. When we’re up on stage, we’re just so proud because we spent so much time planning this experience together.

T-Let’s talk about Dream Theater’s most recent album. How would you compare the record to the other ones you have released with the band?

JR-This record is unique in the sense in what we tried to do is we tried to take all the elements that makes a Dream Theater album: The intensity,virtuosity, diversity, melody, drama… All these things, we tried to offer them in a more concise, to the point way. Although there’s a huge epic on this album, The Illumination Theory, there are also a lot of songs that are shorter, and it was our goal to present our music in this way.

T-Was the composition for this record different from the earlier albums you released with the band?

JR-One of the things that happened with this album is that we had our drummer, Mike Mangini, in the studio with us. He wasn’t around for the first album when he joined the band, so that influenced the way the album came together, having his energy and his drumming when we were writing music. Compositionally, it was put together in a similar way in that we went into the studio, having to write an album, writing and recording… About the organization as a whole, everytime we do an album we learn so much about getting the best tone out of our instruments, tweaking the guitar and vocal sounds, and I learn a little bit more about recording the keyboard properly, using the technology to get a sound that’s the cleanest it can be. We try to advance things to the next nevel, not only musically but with the recording techniques. Each new album is an opportunity to up our game.

T-Where do you think upping your game will take you in the future?

JR-This isn’t a band that really slows down. Because we all have the ambition to be the best musicians possible, we’re always working, writing, planning. We have a passion for what we do. I think that kind of approach to things keeps us moving straight, and forces us to keep the band alive. Lots of bands don’t really last this long. Dream Theater is a unique organization of people who really are caring about what we do, and we are all passionate about our instruments. All of us have this to maintain, so we’re just going to keep working!

T-You have released a Dream Theater record, a solo album and an album with Levin Minnemann Rudess. Do you ever take a break from music?

JR-I haven’t taken much of a break lately. I just got home from the tour and I had to sign hundreds of my orchestral CD, which is called Explorations for Keyboard and Orchestra that has just started to ship. I did this massive Pledge Music campaign and it was all around this orchestral album that was very successful, but it was also a lot of work. Not much break this time around! Here’s what I say to people who ask me why I never take a break like that: I really love what I do, I’m passionnate about it! I have a lot of hobbies, but I enjoy playing music and I also enjoy playing music of every genre. It was very satisfying for me to release the solo piano record I just did which is called All That Is Now. Tremendous, important projects for me like Explorations are a way to express myself in different ways. I’ve been very busy but it’s also been very satisfying.

T-How do you feel Pledge Music influenced your recording?

JR-I really couldn’t have done that kind of creative project in any other way. To hire an orchestra and get them to play a piece as complex as my Explorations for Keyboards and Orchestra is just so expensive. By doing it as a Pledge Music campaign, I was able to raise money to really do this right. It kept the orchestra in the studio for a month, rehearsing, taking the time to record everything until it was the way we wanted it, and mixed properly. To me, the Pledge Music as a campaign has worked very well. I can definitely some people for who this type of project wouldn’t work, but for myself, I have a lot of dedicated and wonderful fans around the world, and they appreciated being allowed to participate in this. A part of the whole pledge music thing is one has to be very willing to engage socially with their fans, and I like to do that, through social networks, and the whole sharing process. That’s like a requirement for someone to do this. The fact that I got the money I needed to complete the project and that I could bring the fans into my world is what made this campaign successful to me. Of course today I’m signing hundreds of CD’s, original artwork, and all that so it’s a big project for sure, but it was worth it.

T-Do you think crowdfunding is the future of music publishing?

JR-I think it’s a very viable and interesting way to go. For me and my solo career, it’s been a great thing. I think for a band like Dream Theater it doesn’t need to be, because our record company, Roadrunner,  is so capable in taking the band and doing the right thing, doing a record, publicising, and all that. But things are changing so fast, one has to keep their head up and be aware of all the changes.

T-How did Minemann Levin Rudess happen?

JR-I’ve worked with Tony Levin in Liquid Tension Experiment, and he and I always clicked together musically and personally. I met Marco Minneman around the time Dream Theater was looking for a new drummer, and I really wanted to work with him because he is an exceptional musician and drummer. And so, Scott Schorr of Lazy Bones Records contacted me and wanted to know if I wanted to be the third musician in this really cool project between Tony and Marco, which had already started throwing around musical ideas. Being two of my favorite musicians, I thought it would be a very fun project, and it really was. Originally, I thought we would get together and improvise, but when I got their stuff, I went “wow!” and wanted to apply myself, make this as cool as it could be. We ended up taking six or seven weeks instead of a few days to make the album, and people really loved it. It was so much fun to do, I wish we could do another one.

T-You released a music video with this project. What’s the deal with the fish?

httpv://youtu.be/KF9JZTVDB7I

JR-*laughs* It was just a little bit of a cute inspiration. We wanted to do something that had a funny ring to it, so we thought that was the way to go.

All right, one last thing before we go. What do you have to say to your Montreal fans before you come around?

JR-Well, we’re very excited to come around there. There are some of the best Dream Theater fans in the world in Montreal and Canada, also being the home country of our lead singer. It’s a city we truly look forward to going to. And then again, it’s the biggest Dream Theater show we’ve ever produced  and I encourage anybody who’s following us or wondering about it to come out and share the experience with us.

Dream Theater sera de passage au Centre Bell le 21 mars prochain, un spectacle présenté par evenko.

Auteur: Philippe Mandeville

Photos: Archives Thorium, Paul Blondé