Portnoy celebrates his 50th birthday
In celebration of his 50th birthday, drummer Mike Portnoy will perform a show playing, for the first time, the '12-Step Suite' saga, composed of 5 songs distributed across Dream Theater's albums.
Portnoy comments that he composed the saga with the idea of performing it live in its entirety, but regrets not having been able to do so while he was a member of Dream Theater: “It saddens me that I couldn’t do this with Dream Theater after completing the final piece of my conceptual puzzle… But I’ve decided that I owe it to the fans to finally bring my 12-Step Suite to the stage as I always imagined.”
The five songs that make up the 12-Step Suite represent the drummer's struggle against alcohol abuse. The Glass Prison, This Dying Soul, The Root of All Evil, Repentance, and The Shattered Fortress are divided into a total of 12 parts, representing the 12 steps to complete the Alcoholics Anonymous program.
The show will take place on the 2017 Cruise to the Edge, in February.