On July 12th, Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess paid tribute to bandmate John Petrucci on the guitarist's 50th birthday:

Dream Theater has announced the next leg of their Images, Words & Beyond 25th Anniversary Tour, which sees the pioneering group celebrating the 25th anniversary of their milestone RIAA gold-certified album, Images & Words. The Asian headline dates kick off September 9th in Nagoya, Japan at Toyota City Cultural Hall. The run includes three additional nights in Japan and a stop in Singapore. The show will feature a live set of Images & Words in its entirety, along with fan favorites from the band's catalogue.

The tour schedule is as follows:

September
9 - Toyota City Cultural Hall - Nagoya, Japan    
10 - Bunka Gakuen HBG Hall - Hiroshima, Japan    
11 - Tokyo Budokan - Tokyo, Japan    
13 - Grand Cube - Osaka, Japan

October
3 - Zepp Big Box - Singapore

Dream Theater singer James LaBrie recently spoke with Hungary’s Rockbook recently about a number of topics. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Rockbook: Images and Words is a definite masterpiece and an absolute favorite amongst the fans. Why do you think it’s such an important album?

James LaBrie: “It was the album that really put us on the map internationally. They had an album before called When Dream and Day Unite, and they had some critical acclaim, so the press knew that they were an entity. But it was Images and Words that gave us the platform to create what we want after that. And throughout the years, no matter what album we were touring with, everybody got excited when they heard songs from Images and Words. And also it’s been recognized by all the artists, musicians and press in the progressive scene. So it’s in the history books, for sure. And it’s amazing because we only did what we wanted to do in order to express ourselves and fortunately for us it became a success.”

Rockbook: Are you already in the writing process for the new album?

James: “No, we’re just planting seeds for now. We’re just putting some stuff together but it’s pretty cool what’s happening. The real nuts and bolts aren’t gonna happen until we’re done touring. Then we will go to a studio and be together every day just to write songs. But we have a lot of ideas already.”

Rockbook: The Astonishing, the last Dream Theater album was a concept album. Are you planning to do another one in the future?

James: “If we will, it’s not gonna be anytime soon. I mean, we waited for like 17 years between Scenes from a Memory and The Astonishing. I don’t wanna wait another 17 years! (laughs) I think I’ll do my farewell tour in 17 years! (laughs) I think for now it’s best for us to concentrate one album at a time and not thinking in a concept. Unless we wanna write an epic song that has multiple parts in it. Doing something like that might be cool. Something like A Change of Seasons. But a whole album again, no.”

Read more at Rockbook .