MIKE PORTNOY Almost Drummed For NICKELBACK

"I got a call from Nickelback in spring of '22. 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!'," admits drummer extraordinaire Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater, The Winery Dogs, Adrenaline Mob, Sons Of Apollo).

"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."

In the Drumeo video below, Portnoy is asked to play Nickelback's song "Burn It To The Ground", which he'd never heard before. He played it with lots of double kick and later admitted, "I would've been fired immediately!"

"Chad [Kroeger] sent me the set list," recalls Portnoy. "My daughter and my wife were like, 'You're gonna know every one of these songs,' and I was like, 'I've never heard any of these songs! I don't listen to the radio so I don't know any Nickelback songs.'"