Oct. 2, 2025

PipemanRadio Interviews Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater at Louder Than Life 2025

PipemanRadio Interviews Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater at Louder Than Life 2025. https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-adventures-of-pipeman--941822/support for PERKS, BONUS Content & FREE GIVEWAYS! Louder Than Life 2025 Wrapped Up 8 Electrifying...

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Transcript

PipemanRadio Interviews Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater at Louder Than Life 2025.

Click Here to Subscribe to The Adventures of Pipeman for PERKS, BONUS Content & FREE GIVEWAYS!

Louder Than Life 2025 Wrapped Up 8 Electrifying Days Of Music Performances In Louisville, With America’s Loudest Rock & Metal Festival (Sept 18-21) & Bourbon & Beyond A Week Prior (Sept 11-14) Bringing In A Combined, Record-Breaking Attendance Of Over 450,000 Fans

Louder Than Life Returns September 17-20, 2026 First Headliner Revealed: My Chemical Romance Plus Many More Acts To Be Announced Early Bird Tickets Will Go On Sale This Fall At LouderThanLifeFestival.com

Louder Than Life not only continues its reputation as America’s Loudest Rock & Metal Festival with the 2025 edition, but the 11th year of the event also marked the biggest festival in the history of DWP, and breaking rock festival records in North America. There were a number of once-in-a-lifetime moments over the course of the four days that added to the specialness of Louder Than Life.

In addition to music performances, this year’s edition of Louder Than Life featured various partner onsite activations, award-winning beverages and delectable eats from partners including Acathla Clothing, Al Capone, Angel's Envy, Basil Hayden, Beatbox Beverages, Black Shades, Blackcraft Cult, Bud Light, Cutwater Spirits, Demons Behind Me, Dimebag Hardware, Drew Estate, Eargasm, Elijah Craig, Fxck Cancer, Huber's Starlight Distillery, Jack Daniel's, Jim Beam, Knob Creek & Rye, KREWE, Kroger, Maker's Mark, Middle West Spirits, Milagro Tequila, Old Forester, Park Community Credit Union, Voices for Consumer Choice and Citizens for Tobacco Rights, Parlor Root Beer, Red Bull, Strüng, Take Me Home, The Music Experience, The Taylor Foundation, Tito's Handmade Vodka, To Write Love on Her Arms, U.S. Army, U.S. Marines, Voices for Consumer Choice and Citizens for Tobacco Rights, White Claw, and Willett Distillery. According to Louisville Tourism, it is estimated that Bourbon & Beyond and Louder Than Life together generated nearly $43 million in local economic impact in 2025. The back-to-back festivals also drove some of the highest hotel demand of the year, with overall occupancy reaching more than 80% citywide. These preliminary estimates highlight the tremendous tourism and economic value of the festivals, which bring hundreds of thousands of visitors to Louisville and fuel spending across hotels, restaurants, bourbon attractions, and local businesses.

Louder Than Life is produced by Danny Wimmer Presents, one of the largest independent producers of destination music festivals in America.

To learn more about Louder Than Life, please visit:
Website: https://louderthanlifefestival.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/louderthanlifefestival
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LTLFest
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/louderthanlifefest
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@louderthanlifefestival
#LouderThanLife

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Hi, you lunto here? That's sure.

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Se wow, crazy young.

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This is pipe Man here on the adventureds pipe Man

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W four c Y Radio.

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And I'm here with Mike Portnoy from Dream Theater.

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Nice here at Louder than Life. Yeah, oh my god,

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how you love this festival? It's my first time here?

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Actually really well, it's Dream Theater's first time doing a

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Danny Wimmer festival.

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Believe it or not. Yeah, I bet we do all the.

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European festivals Grasspop and hell f S and Sweden Rock

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and all those, but in America this is our first

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time being invited to the party.

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Yeah, so I go and I do download Bloodstock yep,

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don hell Fest, grasp Pop, Resurrection Fest.

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Yeah yeah, I've been to these with my son. My

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son has played all the Danny Room festivals. He's playing

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with Code Orange and with his ban Tala.

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Oh so yeah. So but now finally Dad gets to

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come out and play.

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I know, right, how is he here supporting you now?

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Since you support him? Yes, exactly, I know.

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He's Actually he's got a record release show of his

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own tonight.

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Actually nice.

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Yeah, so I want to focus on that a little bit.

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How does it feel that your kid is in the

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industry too.

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He's been killing it. I could not be proud of him.

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He'd been playing drums for Code Orange for the last

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few years and his ban Tala now he's playing bass

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in that band. So he's an incredible musician, not only

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just drummer, but musician now playing bass and he writes

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all the music for Tala.

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So I couldn't be a prouder dad.

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You know what I love about that is people in

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your and my generation that didn't really happen, like I

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know when I was growing up. You might have experienced

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the same thing. I don't know, but it's like my

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parents were like, yeah, no, you can't be a musician.

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They don't follow your dreams. Get a real job.

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We were born in the general we were probably not

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the first rock generation, but maybe the second.

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It was born in sixty seven, sixty six. Here, yeah,

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there you go.

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But now all the kids that were born in the sixties,

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that Tweasel Zappa and you know Wolfgang van Halen, and

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you have all of the second generation.

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Jason Bonham, that's even better.

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I interviewed Bonham's kid.

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Oh yeah, he's in the medal.

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Right, yeah, now, yeah, actually John Bonham's grandkid, right, was

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it Yager Henry? Yeah, and now it's on the third generation.

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But yeah, you see that now ooh.

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As he like I have brought both my son and

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grandsons into their first mash pits ever.

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Wow, that's amazing. It's funny.

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You know what I noticed too, Tell me if you

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noticed this is like, so we go out here and

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later in life, and we see multi generations at the

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festival looking at bands that are older, like Slayer crowd

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last night, your crowd, whatever it is, And I'm thinking,

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I remember I went to Slayer Matauka's first show ever,

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and there's no way I would have gone to see

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a band of sixty year old at that.

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Yeah.

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And light Yeah, well back then even I saw Metallica

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on the ride of the Lightning Tours.

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I was eighty four.

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And at that point the oldest bands around were the

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Stones and the Who, right, and they were what they

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were probably in their thirties or forties at that point.

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And now here we are the Dream Theaters and the

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Metallicas and the Slayers. We're in our sixties, right, and

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the Stones and Who were in like in their eighties.

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So yeah, it just keeps going. It's just amazing rock

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till you drop.

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At one point, rock was supposedly dead, metal was supposedly dead.

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You walk out there at Danny Wimmer Festival and you

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realize that, no, it's probably bigger than it's ever been.

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Yeah. Absolutely, and a lot of these festivals too.

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You still have a generation above us, like the Maidens

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and the Priests and the Scorpions and the bands like

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that that are even a generation beyond the Metallicas and

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the Slayers and the dream Theaters.

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And look at Auntie.

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Yeah, like, look at the love he's gotten from every

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single person throughout the world. I mean to me, that

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says it all. Yeh, because we're one big family. Like

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people think we're scary, but they realize that this is

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the best place to be.

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Yeah, that's awesome. I'm glad to be here.

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So what was that one moment in time, way way

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way back that you knew this is what you want

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to do. What prompted you to be a musician?

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Well, it was probably seeing Kiss at Madison Square Garden

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in nineteen seventy seven Nice on the Live two tour

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and being in that ordien I was only ten years old,

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but being in that audience even before the show started,

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and seeing the big Kiss light, the big light up

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whatever you would call that, the backdrop, seeing it not

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lit in the arena, smelling the pot smoke in the air,

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and just the excitement of what the light's going down and.

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You wanted the best, you got the best, the hottest

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man in the world. Kiss.

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Just that excitement and the bomb's going off and the

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and that was it. From that point on, I knew

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that's what I had to do.

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See, I love that because my story first album I

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ever had, I'm a Jersey Boy. So I was at

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the Jersey Shore on the boardwalk I won something. They

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were given away albums. I looked up and there were

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these four guys on this album cover. It was Kisses

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first album, yes, when it first came out, and I

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was looking at like, that's the one I want. And

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that is what brought me to where I am.

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And it's so funny because that album cover for the

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first album cover so iconic, but when you think about it,

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it's really just an updated version of the Beatles to

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meet the Beatles album cover. So it was like taking

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that taken the same album cover and just taking it

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for a decade later to a new generation.

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I love that you said that, because I've always said

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that the Beatles and Kiss were very similar to a

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lot of people don't get.

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Oh, I totally get it.

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Like Paul Stanley is the Paul mc cartney character, Gene

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Simmons was the John Lennon character. Ace Freheli was the

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George Harrison character. They online even you had four guys

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that all sing and all create contributes, and Kiss was

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like four.

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And when the Beatles came around, it was the first

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time there was a band.

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Of four characters, right, you know, up until then you

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just had Elvis Presley's or Chuck Berry's. But the Beatles

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came around, you finally had four distinctive characters. And it

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was the same with Kiss. When Kiss came around, you

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had four characters and they were all like bringing something

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to the image of the band.

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I always noticed too, that in both bands, whoever wrote

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the song sang the song. And then like John and Paul,

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every song either one of them wrote was both of them.

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Gene and Paul, every song they ever wrote, both of

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them had exactly And then last week I was here

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for Bourban Beyond another Danny Wimmer festival. Ringo Starr was

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here alas bucket list for me, Like I've seen almost everybody.

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I'm like, holy shit, I'm watching Rigo stories. It's mid eighties. Yeah,

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running around the stage doing jumping.

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Yeah, amazing.

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And he was the reason I started playing Me Too,

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Me Too, you know. So that's way cool. Yeah, So

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what else you got to talk tell us about that

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you have going on after Louder than Light.

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Well, we're in the middle of a dream Theater tour

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that began last October, so we're almost a year in

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at this point. But we spent the first year celebrating

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the band's fortieth anniversary and also celebrating the reunion of

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this lineup now that I'm back in the band.

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We've spent a year doing that.

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We went all around the world, all through America, all

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through South America, all through Europe, and now we're on

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our second run through the globe celebrating our new album.

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We put out a new album in February, but we

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hadn't had a chance to play it yet because we're

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so busy doing the anniversary tour. So we spent the

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first of the first year kind of looking back with

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the first forty years, and now we're on tour playing

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the new album in its entirety, finally looking at where

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we are now.

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You know, I love that and how are people loving

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the new music.

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It's been amazing And it was an inspired album to

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make because it was the first album with me back

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in the band after about fifteen years or so, so

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we were really very inspired making it.

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It was just a real renewed energy.

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See I love hearing that, because it's tough when you

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do this for a long time. Oh yeah, to keep

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that spirit alive. Yeah, it's easy to lose that spark.

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I'll be honest.

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That's one of the reasons I left the band after

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the first twenty five years. After twenty five years of

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doing it, I was fried. I needed some new inspiration

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to inspire me. So I went off and played with

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even Semnvold and Twisted Sister and formed about a dozen

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other bands, and ultimately, after spreading my musical wings and

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getting my rocks off, I realized there was no place

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like home and I wanted to come back to my family.

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It's so great to be back with Dream Theater after

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all this time.

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And with all that gap and doing all that stuff.

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Probably now it's probably better than l absolutely right.

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This makes the heart grow fonder.

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And I think we all really missed each other and

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we have a new new found energy and just respect

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for each other. We're older and wiser, and we just

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we appreciate each other a lot more.

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I think that is a key with getting older, right,

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Like you kind of see things a little differently, and yeah,

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I'm not that cocky young person exactly.

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We used to bicker over you know, when we're in

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our twenties, we'd bicker over everything, every single bitch. Yeah, right,

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and now we're in our fifties and sixties, and it's like,

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you know what, we're just happy to be here and

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be able to do this.

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Well, we're happy you were here at Louder and you're

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here at Louder. Thank you, and thanks for being on

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the Adventures of pipe Man.

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Thank you, mann Hey, what's up?

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This is Mike Portnoy from Dream Theater, hanging right here

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with the Pipemin on W four c Y Radio.

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Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipemin on

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PipemanRadio Interviews Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater at Louder Than Life 2025

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