Keep It To Yourself: Interview With James LaBrie

Extracts from an interview by Mike Ostrich

Date: July 26, 1999

I’ve had the album for about a month, and it’s really, really good.

Oh, cool. Thanks. I did an interview with Burrrn! Magazine yesterday with Cazorosi. Do you know Burrrn! Magazine? Huge in Japan and Cazorosi is the senior editor and he flew over to do the interview with me. And he’s just loving it up. So I’m getting a full 3 page spread in Burrrn! and, he just loves it so much, which is a big-time bonus – ‘cause sometimes they do interviews just because they have to do it. But he said he was really big time into it, so it was really cool and he thought the artwork was amazing and all this shit, you know, it’s really bizarre as well as the name is.

The first question, this cover, it’s kinda different! Was that your idea?

Yes it is. All the art is my idea. The art concept is my idea.

Then I have to ask about the concept about eating someone’s ear!

Well, you see that’s a little bit of a mistake! That came off looking like exactly how you’re describing, and unfortunately that’s not what it’s supposed to be. What it was supposed to be – you see the ear is like flat and it’s facing towards you? The ear was supposed to be more on, like as if I’m speaking to you right now and I’m looking straight at you – how do I see your ear? I don’t see it like that, do I? I see it more on... like it normally should be!

So, the ear was supposed to be detached from that person’s head just slightly, but it was supposed to be on a normal angle as I would see it if I was speaking to you head on, but the other guy was supposed to be where he is, coming into it, and his mouth was supposed to be a agape, but not in a lunatic-type of gape. And it was supposed to be as if he was trying to communicate to this person, but it didn’t matter what he said because of the detached ear, which Symbolizes that there is no contact or communication being completely made, right? And the frustration from the other person trying to communicate his thoughts or feelings but nothing or no one is there to be heard, you know, no one is there to listen.

Hence the name Mullmuzzler?

Yes, and that’s what describes Mullmuzzler, which also describes Keep It To Yourself. So it’s the frustration of being suppressed, suppressing one’s feelings or thoughts before it can be, expressed, and so unfortunately, in a way, it’s cool because it comes off and it looks really bizarre and it’s just like “wow, man, this is like over the top” but in another way it would have been cool to do exactly how I had asked, and so there was a little more subtlety, a little bit more sensitivity, which this looks like just lunacy is coming into play here but, it’s OK. I can accept it. At first I was really upset! And then I was able to come around and look at it from a different perspective and it seems to be okay at this point.

One of the things I noticed on the album and listening to it is really how tight the musicianship is. I mean, songs like His Voice and Statued are just... you wouldn’t believe that these guys never met to do any of the recordings.

Well, yeah. I mean what I had to do was – thank god for technology today that you can email people, and obviously you have the phone where you can talk, which you need to do at some point sooner or later.

But that really helped and the fact that I flew out and met these people and I was there when the actual recording was going down to make sure that it went down all right, and so all of that really helped.

We recorded most of the band tracks at my studios. So that helped, and the fact that I was communicating with these guys on a constant basis and I was telling them exactly where I wanted them to go and how I wanted the music to come off, and if there needed to be changes that I wanted musically, like a lot of arrangements we had to change, things here and there, so there was a lot of communication going down. Like, Matt [Guillory] recorded all his piano and keyboards away from me – he did it all separately. He and I were in constant contact because I wrote three songs with him – His Voice, Statued and Lace – so he and I had to be in constant contact, and the same with the other songs, when I was writing the other songs with the other guys, it was the same process for everything, so that if I couldn’t be there, you know everything went down exactly as I wanted it. So, It came off exactly the way I wanted it to, and that was one thing that was a major element that I wanted throughout the whole album, is that I wanted the album to have some kind of groove or rhythm going on throughout, even though there’s progression – progressive elements throughout it – and it is to me more of a hard rock album, which is what I definitely wanted to do. I think most people were probably expecting me to come out with a more vocal, safe-play album, more like something Steve Perry would do. And that’s basically the furthest thing from what I wanted to do. I wanted to come off, obviously vocals being very important but also I wanted the music to be really hard and hitting and very groove oriented, which I think was pulled off.

I think so as well. How involved were you with the writing of the music?

I was very involved. I wrote lyrics and melodies. Well, the three songs I did with Matt I wrote the lyrics and the melodies, and then a couple songs I did with the Shadow Gallery guys, I wrote some of the lyrics and melodies, and then the rest they did. And then with Trent Gardner, we worked on the melodies and the music compositions and all that. He wrote the lyrics, actually.

I was going to ask that, speaking of Trent, because Beelzebubba makes me laugh every time I listen to it because of the whole Clinton thing. Was that Trent’s doing?

Yeah, it was, absolutely. He sent me stuff and at first I said “You know, I’m gonna rewrite some of this” and basically he said “yeah, man, go for it”, and then I started just sitting with the lyrics a bit longer and looking into it and I basically called him back and said “You know what? I’m just leaving it. I’m leaving these lyrics because they’re very cool.” And I think, for what I would do to change it and maybe, from another angle, talk about the same subject from another angle it’s unnecessary. I left it. So, I basically worked with him on the melodies and the song structuring. But you know Trent’s so incredibly talented, he’s a fantastic musician and a great guy. I mean, I can’t believe how nice this guy is. It’s just unbelievable! And we’ve struck up a really good friendship and a working relationship, and we’ve already said to each other that we’d love to do some things together in the future. And I’ll tell you on that note – Matt, who I think is an incredible player and a writer as well – I’ll definitely write with him in the future as well, ‘cause I think he’s extremely talented, no doubt about it.

Does that mean there’s a chance for a Mullmuzzler 2?

There is at this point, but I don’t know. You could talk to me now, and in a year, year and a half after we’ve done the next DT tour and all that stuff. I might say at that point, no. I don’t know what the future holds. At this point, I’m really happy and proud of the way the debut Mullmuzzler came out, so if I do it this way then definitely I would love to jump into another one.

Any thoughts of actually bringing Mullmuzzler out and touring with them?

It’s funny, cause even Cazorosi from Burrrn! asked that. I have no plans at this point. I told him basically the only way I would bring this band out touring was if that something was offered to me – I’m not talking about money here – I’m talking if, obviously money to cover the expenses and the overhead and all that shit – but it would have to be something that was a gig or a few gigs that was a very special situation, like let’s say, I don’t know, definitely if Japan said “we wanna bring you over and do 3 or 4 shows over here and the interest is big time and it makes sense and you’re gonna play in front of two or three thousand people a night.” Then I might consider doing it, or if there were even some shows here in the States, and the people were going “there was big time interest for you to go out and do a few shows and the promoters are real high on it and you can do some cool shows at some cool venues.” Then I might consider doing something, but I don’t think it would be a full out thing. It would be a few selected dates and that would be it, ‘cause I think I’d have a lot of fun playing with these guys – like Mike Mangini, who’s a terrific drummer, incredible drummer, and Mike Keneally, who’s a great guitar player, and then you’ve got Bryan Beller, who’s a great bass player and Matt Guillory – it would be a lot of fun to be on stage with these guys and jam and just really bring it to the people in the live sense. But, I mean, it’s gotta be right.

Speaking of Keneally, I know a little bit of his work. How’d you hook up with him?

You probably know his solo stuff? I’ll tell you how I hooked up with him. I met Mike Keneally once or twice when we played at the House Of Blues in LA. Actually, I met him one time before this thing started, the Mullmuzzler started. And I thought he was a really cool guy and very intelligent and very well spoken and I had listened to his Beer... For Dolphins or something? And I thought it was incredible. Very Frank Zappa-ish.

You know he worked with Zappa?

Yeah, I know, exactly. It comes out through his music no wonder Frank had him working. But I remember listening to his stuff and going “Wow, this is really intelligent. This is really cool writing. This guy is really talented” and, so when it came time to start doing the Mullmuzzler stuff, obviously I wrote all the stuff with different people, the only people that played on it that I wrote with were Matt and Trent. The other guys being Carl and a couple guys from Shadow Gallery didn’t play on the stuff. Just because I really, at that point knew I wanted players that I really had been digging for a while to play on it.

So what originally happened was I met Mike Mangini, we did a big festival in 95 with Extreme and Page/Plant and all this stuff. So Mike and I hung out backstage, and I was talking to him and, I remember seeing the show with Extreme and I was hanging out with Gary Cherone, who is absolutely a terrific guy by the way. He really is a nice guy. A lot of people don’t know that but Gary is a nice guy. Anyway, getting back to Mike Mangini, I was hanging out and I remember seeing him do the show with Extreme at that festival and this guy’s fantastic, I was blown away by his performance. And so, when it came time to do Mullmuzzler I just called him up and said “hey Mike, listen – this is James LaBrie. I’m doing this thing, would you be into it?” and he was like “fuck yeah man! I’m there! Let’s do it!” [Laughs] and so at that point I said, “Well, listen I’m just gonna try and nail down a really cool guitar player” and actually the guy I had in mind at first was Lincoln Brewster. Well, he played on Steve Perry’s last solo album.

Incredible guitar player. Like Neil Schon, I think, he is a terrific guitar player. This guy was like a young Neil Schon: very melodic driven leads, a lot of taste, a lot of feel, a lot of soul. And that’s what I wanted here, but also technical ability. And so I was saying this to Mike Mangini and he said “What about Mike Keneally?” And I never even thought of him, and Mike says “I’m working with Mike right now on the new Steve Vai album” and I went “Aww, shit! Ask Mike if he’s into it.” And Mike goes “We hang out almost every day” and I said “tell him I’d love him to play on this stuff.” So Mike Keneally gives me a call and says “I hear you’re looking, I’m totally into doing this thing with you.” So I said “Great! Let’s get together, let’s sit down, let’s go through the material and I’ll tell you what I’m looking for in the guitar thing and how I want you to approach the sections and then I want you to put yourself all over it.” And he went totally into it, so that’s how that came about.

And Bryan Beller. Mike played with him in Beer For Dolphins and I remember really digging his bass playing, and I’m thinking this guy, he’s sweet, the way he plays, he’s got a lot of feel, a lot of maturity in the way he approaches things. He’s not just trying to show you or dazzle you with his 64th notes or whatever. And what really impressed me, was that he approached playing in a very mature sense, cause when I was younger, everybody’s out there going “hey mom, hey dad, look what I can do!” [Laughs] but when you get older, you start saying “hey, man, what makes most sense for the song?” The song’s construction or structuring is what it all boils down to. So, Bryan Beller was definitely great, and I think he did a superb job on the album. I really do.

I’ve actually noticed that, when you were mentioning about doing things in terms of feel rather than shredding, something I’ve noticed in DT with Falling Into Infinity were more song-based and less chops for the sake of doing chops.

Right. I mean, it Just comes with the more you’re involved and the more you’re exposed to all these different styles or genres of music, and just with maturity and evolution you come to realize that you become more focused on the song than you do on the individual playing or the self-indulgent kind of feel. You know, it’s one thing to be totally immersed in your playing capability and that in trying to bring that out to show the people. But it’s another thing to try to be able to hone in, to zone in on that and make it even speak louder in the sense of feeling and expression through the instrument, I think is much more telling of what separates the men from the boys!

I know within the past year, we’ve had quite a bit of solo releases from John and Mike and Derek and whathaveyou. Was this originally your idea or was this Magna Carta coming to you and saying, “hey, would you like to do this solo album?”

Magna Carta approached me when I was doing the Falling Into Infinity tour. It was actually Mike Varney who first contacted me and said “Hey, James, Pete Mortecelli and myself have been speaking lately and are you interested in doing a solo project for us?” I said “lemme think about it and I’ll get back to you.” So, I thought about it for a bit and then I did eventually call Mike back and said “yeah, I’m into it, but I wanna get the right players and I wanna get guys writing in this type of direction, so I wanna think about guys that I wanna work with and write with.” Eventually all fell into place and, I went for it.

You know, as soon as I was done doing the last show of Falling Into Infinity, which was in South America, I got home, I started putting all the material together with these other writers and started piecing it together, which was last October, and then I finished all the mixes in April.

We had spoken in December and you were just about ready to put the vocals down.

Yeah, which I actually didn’t start until January. You know, because there’s always a delay here or there. Never a reason, but because of people’s schedules and whatever.

How does this output with the solo album effect the writing, or your writing in DT? Because, let’s be honest, your writing credits haven’t been too “out there” with DT – it’s been more Mike and John. How does this affect how you come in with material for DT?

Well, you see the other thing is, is though a lot of people will look at things and they’ll say “Does James have a lot of involvement in the writing?” and I do, I actually have a lot of involvement, especially in the melodic sense – and maybe not necessarily in the lyrical sense, but that’s just the way that things fall into places. You’ve gotta take what makes the most sense. So it might come across that I’m more, you know, off to the side while these guys are writing the material but that’s not the case, and that’s probably one of the biggest misconceptions I think out there. But anyways, I think that when you’re doing a solo album, and you’re writing with different people. It just helps to bring more to the table for your priority project being Dream Theater because it just keeps you well-tuned and really in there, in sync with the writing sense, so, I was Just finishing the Mullmuzzler stuff and bang – we’re jumping into the new Dream Theater, getting into that headspace and hearing the material and coming up with melodies and coming up with lyrical ideas and all that stuff. I think it just helps in the fact that these guys were doing this Liquid Tension – I mean, really up on their chops, I think it’s an incredible album. It fucking blew my mind.

Speaking of DT, and I had to get to this eventually, how does the new album sound?

Well, it sounds amazing, and that’s basically all I can divulge to you. I think people... I think the fans worldwide are gonna be completely blown away and completely exhilarated by this. I think it’s the epitome of Dream Theater. We’re all extremely excited about it and I think that it’s gonna solidify our place in the progressive music thing. When everybody talks about progressive music and all that, they’ll go “Have you heard of Dream Theater?” And you hear of all these other progressive bands – you have that magazine out called, Progression? It’s a fantastic magazine, and there’s so many progressive bands it blows my mind! And it’s great, cause all these bands really keep all this kind of music in people’s minds and brings it to a more accessible kind of area in the sense that it’s in a bigger forum when you see a lot more bands doing it. There’s obviously a lot more people aware of it, and it’s really exciting in that sense. It just helps, for bands like us, because when we get out there, there’s one thing you have to realize, and I think a lot of people haven’t realized this – and it’s not to come out sounding pompous or pretentious – but of all the progressive bands in the world today, and there’s a lot of them out there right now – we are the one progressive band out there right now today that has a signing with a major label, you know?

When you think of it, everyone is on this independent or this label or that label – and that’s not a bad thing. I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying that, we really realize and appreciate how fortunate we are to be doing this kind of music, and to be on a major label, cause you hear a lot of these bands that are terrific and are really great players but they’re not able to get this major signing, which is really a shame. And if through us we can bring the major labels more insight to this kind of music and maybe have them give some of these great bands out there even a chance to get a signing to them then it’s great. It helps to keep everything alive in this genre of music; the fact that there are so many bands out there like that.

How does the other band members like the Mullmuzzler disc?

They dig it big time. Even Mike came in yesterday to the studio and was like “Hey man, I just got the actual CD (you know, with the artwork and all that) and I love the artwork man, it’s amazing, I dig it!” And I’m like “thanks, thanks a lot” and Mike goes “yeah, it’s fucking cool.” So everybody’s very cool about it. It’s great.

I know that Mike and you guys are doing the mixing now.

Right, with David Bottrill.

What’s the plan for the tour?

You know we’re taking off... we’re going to Korea, so we leave for Korea this Wednesday.

It’s just a one-off until the album comes out, right?

Exactly, we play there this coming Saturday. We play in Seoul, Korea and it’s like for 20 – 25,000 people. We’ll do one show and then turn around and fly right back and then I guess we’re gonna chill out, but I mean chilling out really isn’t really chilling out. We’ll be doing a lot of press and start getting into the press thing and, all of that will take some time – which will probably, eventually bring us right up to the release of the album and then shortly thereafter I would imagine that we’d get out there and start the tour.

At the Korea show, you guys gonna play any of the new tunes?

No. Absolutely not. No way. [Laughing] I know! Everyone’s gonna bootleg it! I know that’s happening. We’re completely insightful to that but, no, there’s no way. We’re gonna do a bit from everything – the previous albums – and we’ll still give them a really good show.

How does Jordan fit into the music now?

You mean with the new album? He’s fucking amazing! Unbelievable. I mean, people are gonna just be completely blown away by this guy. He’s incredible, he really is. I mean, you talk about a guy who was like 9 years old and going into Juilliard Music School. He’s just a protege of the keyboard world and he’s incredible, he’s a really cool guy, he’s very comfortable to be around and talk with and that really means something to this band cause everyone for the most part is pretty down-to-earth, pretty laid back – and I don’t mean boring and old men – but I’m just saying that we’re not wild and crazy and flamboyant...

I hate to cut that short [James laughs], we’re running a little late on time. With that in mind, I wanted to thank you for taking the time to sit and talk about Mullmuzzler. Although it’s not due out for release until mid-August, I’ve got a good feeling about the record.

Thanks, man. I appreciate it.