Dream Theater

It is with the utmost disappointment that I am forced to share the unfortunate news of both Pain Of Salvation and Beardfish having to pull out of this summer's Progressive Nation tour....

Their label Inside Out just recently lost the financial funding for the tour as a result of their distributor SPV recently claiming bankruptcy...which effectively meant that both Pain Of Salvation and Beardfish lost the tour support that was essential to their ability to come to North America for Progressive Nation.

All parties involved (myself, both bands, Inside Out, etc) are beyond devastated at this turn of events and are truly sorry to all of the fans that were looking forward to this lineup. We tried everything we could do to salvage the situation, but in the end it was not possible...

Well as the album title says, every Black Cloud does indeed have a Silver Lining....so with this unfortunate news, I bring to you the good news of 2 incredible bands that will be jumping on board Progressive Nation to join Dream Theater and Zappa Plays Zappa this summer: Bigelf and Scale The Summit.

Los Angeles' Bigelf are my personal favorite new band to come along in many years...their latest CD "Cheat The Gallows" is my favorite album of the year and I already had positioned them onto the European run of Progressive Nation in the Fall....with them now joining us on PN09 in North America as well, it looks like world domination is now not that far out of reach for them!
Pretty soon, everyone will hopefully be falling for their retro, psychedelic, progressive, hard rock, doom metal as hard as I have!

Houston instrumental band Scale The Summit are a recent discovery for me and their top notch musicianship will be a perfect fit to this Progressive Nation lineup stylistically falling very nicely between the musicality of Dream Theater and Zappa Plays Zappa. They bring the instrumental elements of prog rock and fusion into today's contemporary hard rock/metal sounds and are one of the most talented group of young musicians I've seen assembled in many years.

Once again, apologies to anybody disappointed in this unexpected and unavoidable lineup change...but the circumstances were beyond our control...
In any event, PN09 will carry on and still deliver the most musical bang for its buck this summer throughout North America and we look forward to sharing the evening with you!

Sincerely,
Your Progressive Rock Ambassador,
Mike Portnoy

Dream Theater has just released a fifth cover track, "Larks Tongues In Aspic, Pt. 2" by King Crimson. The original can be found on King Crimson's album "Larks' Tongues in Aspic" (1973).
- Click here to get it from iTunes now!
- Click here to get it from Amazon.com!

Dream Theater has just released a fourth cover track, "Take Your Fingers From My Hair" by Zebra. The original can be found on Zebra's self-titled 1983 debut album. Available from iTunes and Amazon

Below is a video of Mike Portnoy talking about the Zebra cover.

Stay tuned for Cover #5 to be released on Tuesday, June 16nd.

Dream Theater has just released a third cover track, "Odyssey" by Dixie Dregs. The original can be found on the album "What If" (1978). Available iTunes and Amazon.

Below is a video of Mike Portnoy talking about the Dixie Dregs cover.

Stay tuned for Cover #4 to be released on Tuesday, June 9nd.

Dream Theater has just released a second cover track of a medley of three songs from the legendary Queen: "Tenement Funster", "Flick Of The Wrist" and "Lily Of The Valley". The originals can be found on Queen's 1974 album "Sheer Heart Attack". Available on iTunes and Amazon.

Below is a video of Mike Portnoy talking about the process of laying down the vocal tracks for this amazing medley.

The first Dream Theater cover, Rainbow's epic "Stargazer", is now available at iTunes. The original can be found on Rainbow's 1976 album "Rainbow Rising".

Below is a video of Mike Portnoy revealing the details of recording "Stargazer".