First and foremost, play what you love to play. Don't try to jump on a bandwagon or a trend or a popular musical craze.
A lot of bands, they'll try to jump on the bandwagon or the fad or the fashion, and they'll skyrocket, have this quick overnight fame. But as soon as that fad or fashion changes, they'll go out with it.
I love my family more than life itself, but I can only sit at home by my pool eating barbecue food so many days before I go cuckoo.
When you're making this kind of music, you don't need a producer. If you're making pop albums or trying to write hit singles, then yeah, but if you're writing 20-minute prog epics, as long as you know how to make it sound good, and you have a good mixer, that's all you need.
I was always very extroverted and loud.
I absolutely am not the 'de facto front man' in The Mob - that title surely goes to Russell Allen, who is one of the best front men in the business. I am just happy to be part of the band and not necessarily leading it.
With Dream Theater live, I may have been a bit of a focal point because I absolutely live for the energy on stage, and having interaction with the audience is absolutely crucial to me - regardless of how some others have described it!
People always say to me, 'Well, how can a marriage last when you're away as much as you are?' And I always say, 'Well, absence makes the heart grow fonder.' That time apart from each other has actually strengthened our relationship.
I am - you know, I'm getting to do everything I've ever wanted to do, anything my imagination can think up. I'm getting to play with some of my favorite musicians in the world, ranging from Russell Allen to Billy Sheehan to Paul Gilbert to Steve Morse.
With the Neal Morse Band, we're doing progressive music with a harder edge; it's a little more in Dream Theater territory for me. Flying Colors is a little more poppy, it's more Radiohead, Muse, and Coldplay territory, so I approach that drumming in a different way.
I'd just like to be remembered as a huge music lover.
I can't possibly overstate how much influence Rush had on me as a young teenager. I would say from about 1981 to 1987, they were my gods.
Richie Kotzen is such an unbelievable talent as a vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter.
Some of my heroes are John Bonham, Keith Moon, Neil Peart, Ringo Starr, Terry Bozzio, Bill Bruford... The list goes on and on and on.
When sequencing an album, you kind of have to look at it like you're making a movie with different acts, and you have ebb and flow, peaks and valleys. You want it to feel like a journey or a good movie or book where you can actually feel very satisfied at the ride at the end of it.
In Adrenaline Mob, I'm not the leader, but I'm on the board of directors, and that's OK. I'm not stressing out over every detail. I'm sharing the load.
I'd rather be entertained and go to a show and watch a drummer and have somebody that makes me actually smile. So I don't judge drummers based on their technical ability; I judge them based on the overall package and what they bring to the music they're part of.
Trite as it sounds, follow your heart. Persevere. And if you follow your heart and persevere, it will pay off.
I remember waking up Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, to my wife telling me to put on the TV because I wasn't going to be going into N.Y.C. as planned. Dream Theater was working in N.Y.C. at the time mixing our album 'Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence,' and I would've been driving in that afternoon for our session.
