On his latest solo release, The Road Home (Magna Carta), Rudess delivers a slate of songs that helped forge his formative years as a rock musician. He revisits and revives prog-rock classics by Genesis, Yes, King Crimson, Gentle Giant, ELP and others with a host of special guests that include Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Bumblefoot (Guns N’ Roses), and members of Spock's Beard, Ozric Tentacles, and Winger.
In a rare break in the action, Blogcritics caught up with Rudess gearing up for Dream Theater’s current “Progressive Nation 2008” summer tour and supporting the band's Greatest Hit package. The recording artist, composer, producer and performer talked about a whole host of things with Cleveland-based author/journalist, Peter Chakerian. Their conversation covered a lot of ground and went a little something like this:
Before we get started, I wanted to ask you about something I read about you online in the Dream Theater FAQ through Wikipedia. When you were approached to join Dream Theater the first time, you instead picked the Dixie Dregs because of scheduling interfering with having a young family. True? If so, I have to say I really admire that.
Jordan Rudess: That was one of the biggest reasons for sure. I had a newborn in those days and really wanted to concentrate on spending time my family. But there were other factors as well. I also had a great position with Kurzweil that I was enjoying and I had musical things on my own going on as well. Those were all big factors in my decision to not do Dream Theater at that point. Being in a new group – and not being totally clear about the way things would go with them, even though I liked them all – the other path seemed a better option for me at the time.
I have to say, your new solo effort is really smashing. Very well done. How did you go about picking the playlist for your CD, The Road Home.
That’s great, thanks! There are a lot of songs from that era that were amazing and certainly a lot that affected me. I went with the ones that were at the very top of my personal list for being influential. Aside from being great songs, each one has a little bit of a story to it, for the reasons why I selected it. With [ELP’s] “Tarkus,” that was a real turning point for me. It was the first time I heard keyboards in that context with such power. Keyboards can be so big and strong sounding opened up some doors for me in my brain and helped frame how I could bring what I was doing compositionally into that world a little bit.
Article comments
1 - Glen Boyd
This is really, really long Peter. But it is also very, very good stuff. I really enjoyed reading all about the different people Rudess has played with (especially Steven Wilson as I'm a huge P. Tree fan), and about his influences (loved learning about his favorite Genesis songs by Tony Banks).
You might wanna consider breaking this into two, or three parts next time as not everybody is the progressive music fan I am, and might not have the where-with-all to stick it with it.
But personally I loved this as I expect most other Dream Theater/progressive rock fans will as well. Great stuff.
-Glen
2 - Peter
Thanks for the compliment, Glen. Rudess is a great interview... and I had thought about breaking the piece in half, but couldn't seem to find a place I felt comfortable doing so. In the end, a monthly magazine-length feature piece comes along once in a great while for me. I had to leave it intact. Anyway, thanks for checking it out; I appreciate the feedback.
3 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
Yeah!! Excellent Interview!!
It's about time the man (Mr. Rudess) gets some credit here on BC. He definitely adds dimension to D.T. unfortunately their new album was disappointing(to me).
As for the Progressive Nation Tour, if it was to get huge, I would rather see some more underground prog bands instead of including SOAD or Coheed... They have such a great line-up right now and I wouldn't want to cheapen it any just to make it huge. Maybe add a couple more bands like Aghora,Cynic & Spock's Beard. Adding SP to have another giant that can sell tickets & because they are wicked good.