James LaBrie

During the ‘Six Degrees Of Inner Tourbulence’ tour we tried several times to have an interview with James. So actually we scheduled it for the last issue, but due to a very busy interview schedule for the whole band, it got delayed a bit. Fortunately for the band, the ‘Six Degrees’ album asked for so much attention, that they had many interviews for magazines and radio all the time. So finally we arranged an interview to take place by telephone. I called James on a Friday in May and caught him on a regular day at his home. James told me we had half an hour, but eventually the conversation took more than an hour. He was ready to answer every question as good as possible. So...we sat down and:

How was the tour so far?

The touring has been going great. Obviously you guys saw us in Europe. I think for the most part the shows came off great. I had a few bad nights going on, but ever since then I been taking some stuff, you know, it’s called amunicol. It is supposed to boost your immune-system and repair your body-parts so to speak. Ever since I’ve been taking that stuff I’ve been feeling fantastic. The bonus is that I’ve been feeling great every single night and the voice has been bounding and performing just as strong as it did back in the “Images And Words” stage. I mean you might have seen some of the reviews. Obviously every singer if they had an off night, they know they had an off night, they don’t really need anybody to tell them! (laughs) You know what I mean? Let’s be honest, you know if you do something well and you know when you don’t. In Asia every night went great. People noticed and every night people would complement me like: “What the hell have you been doing?” And I’d say: “Well I am looking after myself better and I am taking this immune-booster and it really makes this huge difference to my voice.” And you know, the whole response to the album and to the tour and to the shows has been great.

Did you always want to be a singer or was there any other profession you tried or maybe even had as a backup, just in case...

Well yeah... I mean from the tender age of 3 years old, you know, my parents were saying that I was always singing around the house. Singing to the radio, singing to the stereo. I do remember when I was in grade school, kindergarten and grade one, that I always wanted to sing in school-things. I definitely knew from a very young age that singing was it. When I got older and I was in my twenties, I was in bands, this was before Dream Theater, I could never really think past music or what if it doesn’t work for me and I can’t be a singer and do this for a living, what am I gonna do? But I remember one thing I used to think back then: “If singing doesn’t work for me, I always had an attraction to being a paramedic.” You know what that is?

I have a feeling, something medical?

It is working on an ambulance. Like being the doctor in the ambulance. It is a huge responsibility. I thought I would find that interesting.

Is there something you are really good at besides singing, something we don’t know of and maybe surprises us?

Besides singing? I don’t know... Obviously I am very good at downhill skiing. I’ve been skiing downhill ever since I was five years old. And then I played hockey for quite some years and I was pretty good at that. And I played soccer or as you guys refer to football. I also thought I was pretty good at that. Like I said earlier, my intention, my whole focus was on singing. I got my first rock and roll band when I was ten years old. My father brought me barbershop quartet singing. I was always involved in something that had me singing.

Always wanted to be a rock or progressive rock-singer or did you get inspired by your opera lessons and maybe thought of a career as an opera or musical direction?

Well I knew that I wanted to be the old rock and roll singer. I remember listening to Led Zeppelin and seeing Robert Plant. I totally loved to be something like him or Aerosmith. The whole time in my house when I was growing up I’ve been listening to a lot of progressive bands ‘cause my older sisters and brothers were listening to Pink Floyd and Genesis and Yes. I always wanted to do singing much more intensely than just the whole ‘just Rock ‘n Roll’ approach. I always thought of myself as getting in a band with great musicians, that’s why it was a godsend when I met Dream Theater, it was too good to be true. I studied opera because I knew it would help me as a vocalist, but at the same time I also knew that I eventually wanted to sing in theatres and do theatrical plays such as on Broadway and stuff like that. And right now, I mean as you and I speak, I am in touch with people in Broadway and I’m putting some stuff together and hopefully within over the next year or so I’ll make the connections and I have my own casting-agency and I probably will do a theatrical play.

Is there any other musical instrument you can play or would like to...?

The only musical instrument I’d played throughout my entire life was drums. I played drums for about ten years. From the age of five to the age of fifteen or sixteen. And I played tenor sax and harmonica for a while.

How were you introduced to Dream Theater? What were you up to at that time?

At that point I was in a band, what you’re aware of, called Winter Rose. We were being approached by labels and... to make a long story short, how I came across Dream Theater was: Winter Rose was playing a show in Toronto and we were on the bill with another band called Lee Aaron (Hey isn’t that the long dark-haired hot shot, we all loved when we were those young rock-fanatics, stepping into the world of puberty, the girl we all knew by face and body, but never had a clue what her music sounded like??) At the time she was pretty popular, the metal queen... (laughs) She approached me saying: “I have heard you singing and seen you perform, I love what I see. You should really be doing something.” So she contacted a guy that she knew. This guy happened to work for Aquarius Records in Canada and his name was Pierre Paradis. He was also partly manager of a band called Voivod, remember Voivod? So Pierre called me up and was ready to do something with me, maybe sign me to a solo deal or maybe we could record for Aquarius Records. And when all this was going on, he got a call from Mechanic Records from New York. They said: “Hey Pierre, there’s a band down here called Dream Theater, they’ve been looking for a vocalist for two years, but they cannot find the right one.” So Pierre said: “Look there is that guy up there from Canada, his name is James LaBrie and he is a great vocalist. Maybe I can get you a CD of his material.” So they sent a CD by Winter Rose and the guys from Dream Theater listened to it one night and then they called me up and said: “Hey, we heard some of your stuff, we heard your voice, can you come down and jam with us here in New York?” And I said: “Yeah.” So they flew me down and I went down for five days and in those days we jammed and we recorded some music on a four-track demo. And from there they asked me to be in the band.

But I heard about Chris Cintron? Is it true he was their singer at that time?

Yeah. Chris Cintron was in the band at the time, they had been working with him for something like eight months. They’d done a lot of recording with him, you know. And then when my tape fell across them, they actually were rehearsing one night with Chris and they said to him they had to keep the rehearsals short, ‘cause they had to go. They watched him leave, and they all got together in Mike’s van. They listened to my CD again and said: ‘We gotta get in touch with this guy.’ So I came into the picture and stole his position.

How do you come up with musicians for Mullmuzzler?

Well, basically over the years I’ve been listening to a lot of music. So they are players I have always respected, you know. There was Mike Mangini. The stuff this guy had done, with for example Steve Vai, he was blowing me away. So I remember talking to him during a festival in Germany in ‘95. I said that I really loved his playing and that maybe we could do something sometime. Then when I started Mullmuzzler I called him. From there I called Mike Keneally. He was in a band called Beer For Dolphins. And in this band there he had this bass-player Bryan Beller, who I felt was a great bass-player, so I asked Mike : Hey, you think Bryan would be into it? And he said ‘yeah’, Bryan will be totally in playing this stuff. So it really went off when Peter Morticelli approached me to do a solo record and introduced me to Matt Guillory. Mike sent me a CD with four songs on it. I remember listening to this CD and thought there was a lot of potential in it.

Do you also write music for Mullmuzzler?

Oh yeah! I sit down with a tape and I got all these ideas going through my head. And it’s as simple as me sitting down with a tape recorder and go: ‘tatanta tantata’ (James producirng some rough-stated melody-lines) Then I take these ideas, put it on one tape and send it to Mike. And he’ll send me some of his ideas and then we collaborate. Then we’ll make the songs. Then I take those songs once we are done writing the music and putting all these pieces together, and I start writing all the melodies. Then I start writing the lyrics.

Does it happen with Mullmuzzler, that you have certain ideas about a song, but after recording it, it did not turn out to be what you expected it to be? I mean you are a singer, which means, in your case I assume, you do not play any other musical instruments well enough to express the kind of emotion that you want the song to have.

I have been very fortunate, ‘cause, yeah, definitely the music turns out to be exactly the way I heard it in my head. What I do, I put it down on tape, you know, the tantantatatan, and when I sit down with Matt, I say: “Well, play that.” And then maybe: “Not quite that sound or that feel.” It is just a matter of process to get to the point where I say: “That’s it. That’s exactly what I’m hearing.” But a lot of ideas are coming from Matt as well. He’s coming up with stuff that’s just phenomenal. He’d play me stuff like Stranger, from the last Mullmuzzler. Then I become kind of the arranger of the song.

I have to say that I like the second Mullmuzzler album a lot better than the first...

Thank you for saying that, because I agree with you completely. I think with the first Mullmuzzler album, it was very raw, but there was something attractive with that. But with the second Mullmuzzler we had more time to really put the music together and really create the music and have a much stronger focus on the actual music. And I think because of that the songs are much stronger.

I noticed that a lot of songs, especially the first 5-6 songs are about somebody who is struggling with himself in some way. I assume these kind of lyrics are not really auto biographic, knowing you for as far as I do... Is it such an interesting subject or am I just wrong about knowing you a little...?

The way I look at it is, we all go through life and we all question what it is that we do in life. There is no day that goes by we don’t say to ourselves: What the hell is all this? What does all this mean? It is so bizarre, so mysterious, so unpredictable. So I think that I’m always questioning the whole realm of existence and it makes me think about ways to make me feel better about myself or my surroundings, you know, about the people that I know, the people that I care about. So I think writing these lyrics is therapeutic for me. For me to create a better balance as a person. Even in Dream Theater, when I wrote Blind Faith and Disappear. Blind Faith is basically questioning how society has become. We become so ‘selves’, so isolated from each other. We’ve become less faithful in God. And Disappear is about the whole sense of relationships. With understanding how fragile our time is with each other and how quickly it can be taken away. So Disappear is dealing with a guy that him and his wife had their whole life ahead of them, but unfortunately she’s taken from him by a terminal disease. He’s had to deal with that struggle. To find out how to create his own identity and understanding of life and be able to go on. It is very emotional. So that inspires me. Life, you know?

We talked about this before, you are very fascinated by Indians...

Yes, absolutely. I am part Indian myself. My great, great maternal grandmother was an Ojibwa Indian. I have quite the mix in me. I am French, Irish and Ojibwa Indian.

So a real Canadian...

(laughs) Yeah, I guess so... I guess so.

At the time you were recording “Leonardo”, you were very excited about the project. How did it turn out to be for you?

I was very satisfied. It made me able to show people that opera side of me, to take on a character-role and maintain that one character throughout an entire piece. I still hope that one day Trent Gardner will say: “Listen, we’re gonna bring this thing to the stage and do a great stage-production and it’s gonna be a theatrical classic.” I would love it. I think it is a really well written great piece of music with great lyrics in it. The beautiful thing about it is that he spoke more about the human element of Leonardo. Not just the genius, but more so the person. I thought it was a great experience and I am very happy with my performance as well.

Did you do any research on DaVinci before recording the album?

Yeah, definitely. I got a CD-ROM that was just on Leonardo, so I researched him. So when I was sitting down with the lyrics that Trent wrote, I could really immerse myself within the character. And I thought the more I knew of him, the truer or the more sincere I could be while singing his part. So that’s what I did. They didn’t ask me to, but I did it, just ‘cause I thought it would be better to prepare myself for the actual performance.

Isn’t it hard to learn the vocal lines on such a record? I mean Trent Gardner is not really the man to write easy or catchy lines...

I had a little bit of freedom to go off here or there. It was very settled though. Trent wrote all the lyrics, all the music, he is such a great musician. And I mean, look at the band I’m in, I’m in Dream Theater, which is not really your normal approach to music either. The experience that I have with them really helped me to able to prepare any abstract or any unorthodox approach to vocal lines.

Okay, you are asked to participate on the record, fulfilling the part of Leonardo. How does something like that work? Do you get a tape? And if, how does a tape like that sound? Are there any vocals on it?

He will send me a CD, and he will be singing the parts. Trent himself. Just the melody line. But then he wants me to put all the emotion in it and make it convincing.

Well thank you so far, I guess time’s up, so...

Thank you, you did very well. See you in summer.

Bertil Visser