Mike Portnoy recently participated in a series of videos for instructional drumming platform Drumeo just weeks after rejoining Dream Theater.
The first clip saw him performing Dream Theater’s “Pull Me Under” for the first time in 13 years, while a second video featured an interview and longer playthough session.
A new video from the sessions subjects Portnoy to Drumeo’s recurring “For the First Time” segment, in which drummers hear a song for the first time — sans percussion — and are tasked with improvising a drum part.
The Drumeo studio engineers apparently had a hard time finding a song that Portnoy wasn’t already familiar with, citing his extensive touring portfolio and exposure to countless rock and metal acts over the years. Therefore, the song they landed on, via the recommendation of Portnoy’s drum tech Jose Baraquio, was kinda out of left field: Nickelback’s 2009 single “Burn It to the Ground.”
“Jose’s been taking a beating for me for 30 years,” joked Portnoy. “Like, literally, he’s been abused. So this is his revenge.”
At first, the Drumeo staff teased a far more complex song, Meshuggah’s “Bleed,” eliciting a hilarious remark from Portnoy: “I know I’m like the prog metal guy, but I don’t wanna play that shit.”
After that, Portnoy began to hear the opening guitar licks of “Burn It to the Ground” in his headphones. Although he hadn’t heard the track before, Chad Kroeger’s voice gave it away.
“Is this Nickelback?” asked an astonished Portnoy. “I gotta tell the story…”
Apparently the Dream Theater drummer almost filled in for Nickelback on a festival date in 2022, but the fest ended up getting cancelled.
“I got a call from Nickelback in spring of ’22,” recalled Portnoy. “Their drummer [Daniel Adair], I guess, was having surgery and they asked me to play a show with them. And I said, ‘Yeah, that’d be a fun gig.’ I was all set to play this gig with Nickelback — it was for a festival [in Vancouver, Canada] — and the festival ended up getting canceled. But I was this close to playing a gig with Nickelback.”
Moving on in the video, Portnoy then charted out “Burn It to the Ground” and laid down a very Dream Theater-style beat, filled with fancy flourishes and double-bass work. It certainly would have been a spectacle to witness him perform a full set in this vein with Nickelback themselves.
“I would’ve been fired immediately,” laughed Portnoy, who admitted that he wasn’t familiar with any of the songs that Kroeger had sent over for the potential festival setlist.
“I don’t listen to the radio,” he said, “so I don’t know any Nickelback songs.”
Dream Theater have yet to announce any tour dates with Portnoy back in the band, but Nickelback have various North America and UK/European dates ranging from March to July. Pick up tickets here.
Below you can watch Portnoy play Nickelback’s “Burn It to the Ground” after hearing it for the first time.