I am not a technical drummer at all. I'm more from the Keith Moon/Lars Ulrich school of, 'Hey, look at me!' I just get up there and bash.

I don't care about technique. I have kind of been pigeonholed as a technical drummer since I was in Dream Theater for all those years, but it's actually very far from the truth.

I'm very outgoing, an extrovert, a control freak.

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.

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.

If you do anything long enough, people can't ignore you anymore.

I have no desire to write lyrics with Adrenaline Mob.

In Adrenaline Mob there are five guys that are all absolutely insanely energetic performers each of their own right. It's like a five-ring circus on stage!

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!

If you're not gonna be happy, then it's not worth doing anything.

I always follow my heart.

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.

The most bizarre occurrence has to be when I dislocated my wrist during a show in Germany in 1997.

Normally, when I write the setlist for a Dream Theater show, I'll change it up every night, and we can basically play whatever we want.

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.

I tend to like the heavier things, especially live on stage. I need that energy and interaction and feeling the audience.

I usually have three to four bands a year going at any given point.

The reality is, when I'm sitting in a hotel room at 3 in the morning, and I see something on the Internet that interests me in the form of a band I want to hear, I like the ability to just go online to iTunes and download it immediately.

I'm not a politician; I'm a very open, honest guy, and that's the way it is - that's the way I am; take it or leave it.

My lesson would be to not sell yourself to anybody else and stay true to yourself.

I need to be creative all the time.

With Dream Theater, every creative aspect of the group went through me. I oversaw it all from top to bottom.

After I left Dream Theater, and I was doing Avenged Sevenfold, Twisted Sister... all these other things, I made a lot of new fans in a lot of new areas.

I love when people know me from things other than Dream Theater.