James LaBrie

You’ve just finished recording “A Change Of Seasons” with David Prater. What made you use him, after the problems you encountered with him on “Images?”

Well, I didn’t have a problem with him from “Images And Words,” but other members of the band didn’t exactly hit it off. It was made aware to us that he was available, and we thought, ‘why not check it out, let’s see if things can be worked out, and if we can somehow benefit from each other’s input.’ Also I think the label was really pushing for it, they really wanted us to go with him; some of the ways that labels think is: ‘if it’s not broken, why fix it?’ And that’s the way they’re looking at it. They’re looking at the success from “Images And Words” and they thought ‘let’s bring some of that back around, that sound.’ He is very in tune with our music, and at the same time he does get very warm sounds when it comes to mixing.

So it worked out okay with him then?

Yeah, it worked out okay. There was a bit of friction at certain times during the recording, but we seemed to work through it in a professional way.

Did he bring anything new to you this time?

Yeah. He brought a Nordic Track with him that he worked on every day. A cross country skiing machine that he worked out on for an hour to an hour-a-half a day! That’s one of the new elements that he brought into the recording, he had it right in the recording studio! He went about things usually the way he does – he gets very frantic with things, then he gets really caught up, then he gets excitable, very easily, you just got to learn how to deal with it with him, because he’s very intense, but we seemed to work through it. I think he brought his knowledge of the type of music that we play and was able to apply his knowledge to that. I don’t think we had enough time to really work together to establish something that would be very beneficial to all, over the course of time we had as it was a very quick thrown together thing.

You had to go back into the studio to re-record a line or change a word in ACOS. The reason behind that?

Yeah. Mike will comment on this too, but, it was basically I brought it up to him, it’s one thing if I speak with that word in my own personal life, and I don’t want to come off sounding like pompous or stuck up, or hypocritical for that matter, but to me I really do not want to be associated with that type of language, with profanity, in the context of music. I think that there are many words within the English diction that can be just as powerful or just as emotional, then to use a word of that nature, to be shock value if you might want to say that, or whatever. I just thought that when it comes to creative forces, that’s one thing that I want to do without, I don’t want that element within the context of music. I spoke up, and the other guys in the band seemed to agree, and it was more or less Mike and I working things out and coming to a decision. I said to Mike that I want people’s focus and attention on the musical composition and on everything else that is within it, not the whole topic and speak of it being: “Hey, did you hear what they did?” It takes the focus off the most important thing, and that is the music.

I know what the change is, but for the benefit of the readers, can you tell us what the change was?

We change, instead of: “I don’t need your mercy fuck” it’s now: “I don’t need your sympathy.”

A bit more subtle.

Yeah, a bit more subtle, but the way I sang it, it still has that aggression, it still has the emotion, it’s still powerful if you ask me, I made it very ballsy.

It was all Mike’s lyrics for ACOS?

They’re all his yeah. He changed some of them around here and there to better suit where we were going with the song, and then I sat down with him and worked out all the melodies, as I had all the melodies in mind what I wanted to do with it. He then suggested what he would like to hear, I took that and embellished upon it.

Any other new songs written yet?

Yeah we’ve written a new song, completely. After this run in Europe, I’m going home, or during this thing in Europe, I’m going to write some melodies and lyrics for it. But it’s really cool. It’s really exciting because it is an indication of where we’re going with the music for our next album. One of the main things that I want to focus on is, obviously we want to evolve with each chapter of albums, I think that’s where we’re taking it, it’s really exciting.

Is there a title for it, or a working title yet for it?

No title for it, and I can’t even remember the working title for it. (The working title is ‘Showdown’ -Ed.) But it’s about seven minutes long and it’s very cool.

Something I noticed when we were listening to ACOS on the way over here in the car was, and that I was pleased at, was the backing and harmony vocals. It really enhances some of those passages on there.

Whenever we record I do the harmonies and that stuff, and it was just something that we changed the lines so that they weren’t just so simplistic, not that simple is bad but, we wanted it to have a little bit of meaning to it – the back-up lines behind it. And the way that I approached it too, there’s one section in there where I’m talking, it’s all about where Mike’s talking with his mother she’s leaving and going for the plane, and that’s the last time he’ll see her, and all the anger and horror that he experienced at that point – and there’s talking behind it, and it’s emotionally felt too because it’s as if somebody’s having a conversation with somebody that’s ready to leave, but it would be the last encounter. So it was cool because we approached it in a different way.

Presumably ACOS features in the new set? Have you brought anything else into the new set, like Scarred or Innocence Faded?

We didn’t get to that yet. Obviously Derek has to learn these songs and some of them are very, very involved. The fact that we’ve recently been concentrating on writing ACOS and changing it; that took up a lot of our time. So when we were done with that and the recording was all done and said, it didn’t leave much time even for these warm-up shows here on Long Island and New Jersey. But we have brought back in Learning To Live, Under A Glass Moon, and a few others back in, as well as ACOS which is twenty three minutes of something different within the set. What we’re hoping is that while we’re over in Europe doing festivals, when we’re doing our headline shows we’re hoping that maybe we can bring in Scarred, depending on when Derek learns the song, and how much time he has allotted to do this.

Are you looking forward to these European Festivals?

Oh totally. I mean this is what I think Dream Theater needs at this point, we need to be seen by bigger masses of people, and I hope this turns some heads, and lets people become aware of the fact that we’re out there and hopefully they’ll get into what we have to offer. It’s going to be a very energetic set that we do, we only have forty five minutes to play, so, I think we’re gonna be playing about seven songs. Under A Glass Moon, Lie, Caught In A Web, Another Day, Voices and there’s one we’re gonna end with, oh yeah, obviously, Pull Me Under. Then when we’re doing our headline shows between the festivals, there’ll be an hour-forty-five minute set.

After Europe, we have ACOS coming out around September.

I think there’s a middle August release for Japan, and then second week of September release for the rest of the world.

Are you going back out in the States in support of it, or time off?

There’s talk that when we get back from Europe that from the 20th of July ‘til about the 30th of July, we’re gonna do about 7 or 8 shows in between that 10 day period, just do some eastern coast cities. So seven dates, get back, chill out a bit, because basically all the month of August we’re writing off, as John Myung is getting married on August 26th, and he needs time to get preparations ready for the wedding. Then I think middle/end of September we’re going to Japan and Korea, to do a few shows. Just to let them get their taste of the ACOS EP.

That takes up most of the rest of the year, and then a break?

Yeah. We want to get started writing on the new album sometime in October. Unlike Awake where we had two and a half months where we wrote the album, we want to spend a good five months to write this album, because we want it to be very very powerful. Not that Awake isn’t, I love the album, I’ll never apologise for it, I’m very very proud of it. But we want to just take a bit more time and let things slowly digest within us as we’re writing it, instead of everything being so rushed.

That leads nicely to my next question. What direction do you see the next album taking; will it be more of the raw edged Awake side of things or the more melodic side like Images And Words?

It’s interesting that you bring up that point, because, we did a photo shoot for the ACOS EP yesterday, and while we had time between shoots I started speaking to some of the guys John Myung, Derek and John P.; Mike wasn’t around at the time, and I mentioned to them that lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Pink Floyd, Yes, a lot of Rush; they’ve all been major influences, more or less that type of music, a lot of classical, also Al DiMeola and Mike Stern, and I’ve been really affected by it. But what I gathered from it that was very moving and inspirational, was that it was somewhere that I want Dream Theater to get into, that head scope, where I want us to kind of take our music into that vein once again. I said I think that the aggression and the heaviness that we have, that was obviously a very prominent element within Awake, I want that to be used more as an attitude and a characteristic within the context of the next album. I would like to take an approach more like that, really have mature clean sounds, bring back that technical personal side to Dream Theater, bring that back in; we can keep the unorthodox approach to compositional writing. But that’s the way I think I want it to go.

Something that I said made us very unique, was the fact that we had the clean sounds and then interspersed throughout the album was the edge and aggression. That’s where I want to take it once again, because that’s what I think made Dream Theater very unique in its sound, that kind of separated us from the mass of bands that are out there. No offence or degradation onto any of those bands but, a lot of people can get up there and get really raunchy and sing raunchy. If you notice in ACOS that you just heard on the way over here, you’ll notice that I’m singing really clean throughout the whole song.

That’s another thing that I noticed with it, you have that raw Awake edge in there where it really does thump away, and then it changes again to the more melodic Images side of things. It’s a nice mix.

Exactly. A good transition.

If you can combine the two on the next album, who knows?

Basically that was where the whole conversation we were having was going yesterday when we were talking. And everybody was very in to it, John P. expressed that he was totally into taking it that way, to a whole other level, and really evolve with it. That’s why I’m really excited, I can’t wait getting started on the next album. Also my big thing now is that I’m contributing a lot of the melodies, and that’s great in itself, but on Awake I only contributed one lyric, but this album I’d like to get maybe two or three lyrical sections on it.

It will give you a more personal feel to it, and things in general as well.

Yeah. ‘Cos I’ve got a lot of stuff that I’ve jotted down on paper, and I want to get it down, I want to express; it’s very therapeutic to see it go down on paper and stay there, and let other people feel it. I think we all pretty well feel the same emotions and we go through the same challenges within life, so it’s cool to hear somebody else’s perspective.

Thanks once again James, it’s been good to see and speak with you again.

My pleasure. Thanks.