Madmen, Sinners And Other Related Stories

With the madness of Madmen & Sinners, the Tim Donahue project, just behind him and the madness of writing and recording the new Dream Theater album just days ahead of him, I caught up with James on a somewhat memorable day: 03-03-03 at 3.30pm (Dutch time). We covered a multitude of subjects, which I hope will make for some very interesting reading. So without further ado, here we go. Make yourself comfy because from here on it’s eyes down and read on. Enjoy!

Madmen & Sinners Tim Donahue Project

Let’s start with the most recent thing you’ve done, which to my knowledge is the Madmen & Sinners project with Tim Donahue.

Yeah, actually I just finished the vocals this past Friday night. The project was brought to me almost 2 years ago, by Carl Begai, he lives in Germany now but he’s originally from Toronto, Canada. He’s like, a freelance writer. In Germany he contributes to Rock Hard (German magazine) and also contributes to Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles or something like that, it’s a magazine over here. Anyway, what happened is that he e-mailed me one day to say that there’s this great guitar player called Tim Donahue who’s been writing this material and he had me in mind and just wondered if I was interested. So I told Carl to get me the material so I could listen to it, or at least know where it was going and I really liked what I had heard, so I finally got in touch with Tim and Tim actually came over here, he’s from the States, and we started to piece it together, all the music and that. Then he’d go back home to continue working on this stuff. He’s with Vigier Guitars from France. They’re amazing guitars, it’s wild, it’s all fretless that Tim plays, so it’s pretty damn unique sounding and you can really tell with his playing, it’s really clean, very, very cool stuff. So needless to say he’s got kind of his own sound and own style, he’s just a great player. He went to Berkelee and graduated there. His first solo album had Paul Rodgers singing on it, the second one had Kelly Hansen from Hurricane on vocals and this is Tim’s third solo outing, so yeah we’re going to do this! The music, how it hits me, is like older Genesis, Pink Floyd, Rush and then it even has moments where it’s like old Black Sabbath, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and all that, so it’s quite diverse in that sense. It’s really cool, the whole lyric is dealing with Madmen & Sinners, which obviously kind of speaks for itself, people dealing with mental stress and mental breakdowns on one side and all the things you have to deal with to get through those situations, the whole form of thought behind this is being talked about. Then there’s the Sinners, which are obviously people that are somewhat regretful for their past, are starting to get haunted by their past in their present day life and are beginning to regret their evil ways. So it’s pretty cool, I’m pretty excited about it. We’re releasing it through EMI and Toshiba, I guess, are also going to be on board to release it.

Has a release date been set yet?

Not really, Tim has to now go back home and finish doing all the real guitars, the bass, the keyboards/synths, he’s got a lot of work to do still. To me it sounds like maybe it would be a late 2003 release, I’m thinking, I don’t know... it might be earlier, it might be even later, I’m not sure. Obviously what Tim and I talked about is that it’s got to come out at the right time, when everything’s right and the music is completed as far as the tracks, the mixing has gone down well, we’re happy with the mix and then the mastering. It all has to happen at the right time. I would think, from what Tim and I talked about before, that it’ll be a late 2003 release.

Is that it, as far as your part in the project is concerned, or will you be involved in the mixing and mastering?

No, Tim’s pretty adamant that he mixes and all that. He’s mixed his last two albums himself, even when he was working with Paul Rodgers he was in charge of the mixing, so he’s going to do that. Obviously I’m going to be kept aware of everything and he’ll go to send me mixes when they are done, I’ll listen to them and if I like what I hear he’s going ahead and print, so it’s going to be a lengthy process, but I guess it’s the only way you can do it. Obviously if he’s got everything up and he’s got to send me a CD of a rough mix then he’s got to wait for me to call him back and say “Yeah, this sound great”, that all takes time, he’s got to leave a mix up on the board for a day or two before I can get back to him. But that’s OK, there’s no other way to do it. The important thing is that we’re really involved together with the whole process, the music coming together, the whole writing of it and that. So throughout the whole process we kept in touch really often, like every second day we’d be talking about things within the music, then he also came out to Toronto and we spent a couple of weeks together, sitting down with the music, being in the same room and working out all the parts, making sure everything was flowing properly.

So you were involved in a bit of the writing process as well?

Yeah, very slightly. I’d give him ideas of where the music was going, I’d say maybe we could keep this or extend that section, or can we come up with something new here, then as far as melodies go, I’d have suggestions as to where I thought the melody should be going or if I didn’t like a melody or whatever, that would pretty much be my involvement. The lyric writing was all his. He just said, “I’ve got this idea and I’ve got to get it down.” He was working on those for about a year I think, just on the lyrics. Like I said, we first got in contact with each other about two years ago, so it’s been somewhat of a lengthy process, but, I mean, he’s got his responsibilities and the same here with me, so it’s not like we could put everything on hold and get together for a month or two months and get it done from beginning to end. But that’s OK, it’s cool, because you see it develop slowly, but properly, so it’s kind of nice.

I think you’ll like it. I’m pretty excited about it and I think it’s very cool. I got Mike Mangini playing drums and he killed on it, he sounds great, so it’ll be pretty cool. I think people are really going to like it.

We’ll have to keep in touch about the development, so we can update the readers and build up the tension a bit.

Definitely, I’ll give you a ‘heads-up’ on it when it’s pretty well mixed!

Mullmuzzler

How are things progressing there?

That’s another animal! Yeez, well for Mullmuzzler, believe it or not, I’m still writing the music right now. We had quite a lot written, Matt Guillory and I, but we started listening to some of the songs that we were thinking about including on the next Mullmuzzler and we just started taking a whole different direction, so we kind of axed out about 4 songs and said “You know what, these don’t sound like they’re appropriate, they’re before this time or this chapter in Mullmuzzler’s life”, so we started to re-write some of the material. At the same time, I’m working with Gary Wehrkamp too and we’re going to work out some songs as well, which is also going on right now. So it’s coming along, there’s 5 songs that are just about done and completed which sound great and we’re pretty excited about these, but the other 5 or 6 songs that we’re going to do, we’re kind of piecing those together right now, Matt, Gary Wehrkamp and myself. I’m hoping that we can have it all finalised as far as the music goes, within a couple of months. Maybe within 2 or 3 months we can say, “OK, the music is where it is, everything is done, now all we need to do is to get in and quickly record.” As far as the release goes, I really don’t know at the moment, I guess that at the point of recording we’ll know what will make sense as a release date.

What’s the process for this album, is it the same as for the last album?

Well, Matt and I have gotten together a few times, where we would just be sitting down in the same room and putting the music together and so, that’s been helpful in that sense, also there’s a lot of communication back and forth on the phone too, quite often we’re literally going over stuff on the phone, playing stuff back and forth to each other. Then, the other thing is sending MP3s back and forth.

It’s almost like a combination of the way you recorded both the first and second Mullmuzzler?

Yeah, in a way it’s a bit like the first, but more involved. We’re getting together a lot more than we would have done for the first Mullmuzzler. As far as Gary and I go, at this point, it’s all phone communication going on and the ideas are stemming from that communication only. We’ll have to see, I know eventually I have to get together with him as well and we’ve got to make sure that everything is refined and everything is sitting exactly where we need it to be. That’s the problem really, when you’re doing projects like this. The ultimate would be to get everyone’s schedule together properly and say can we get together in a room for 3 weeks or 4 weeks and do nothing else but just focus on where we want to take this music. I think that would be the ultimate setting, but unfortunately these other guys, they have jobs and they have things that they’ve got to do. They can’t just easily pack up and say to their employers that they’ve got to leave for a month, it’s not that easy. So you kind of work with the tools you have in hand and you just work that little bit harder to bring out the best that you possibly can.

So far it’s all worked out pretty well!

Yeah, I’m especially happy with the second Mullmuzzler. There’s some great stuff with the first one as well, because it’s very raw and is kind of getting back to more of the rock roots. With the second one, it sounded like there was more of a focus, more of a coming together as far as the direction of the music and the whole overall sound within it, that’s why we’re trying to continue that whole feel and process and hopefully we can bring that out and have that more evident within the next album.

Am I right in thinking that the new album is going to be a continuation of Mullmuzzler 2?

Well, I don’t know if I’m actually going to go with the name Mullmuzzler, just because I’m switching labels, so it won’t be released through Magna Carta, it’ll be through another label, but I can’t really say at this point because we’re just in the signing stages – maybe in a week or two I can put some closure to that.

It might just be something as simple as James LaBrie Project or whatever, something to indicate that it’s a continuation, because for the most part, it’s going to be the same players, it’s going to be myself and Matt Guillory, Mike Mangini on drums, Bryan Beller on Bass, the only change at this point is that I’m bringing in Andy Timmons, the guitar player, he’s a phenomenal guitar player, just absolutely amazing, so basically I want to bring him in. You can go onto his site actually, if you go onto www.andytimmons.com you can actually listen to some of his playing. The guy is just an incredible player. He’s on Steve Vai’s label, Favored Nations, and Steve Vai just thinks the world of him, he thinks he’s just an absolute top-notch guitar player. Andy came out to one of the Dream Theater shows on the last tour and because we’d already been speaking, it was really cool, we could actually sit down and talk about where I want to take this.

I can’t really say much more at this point, but as far as the music is concerned, there are some real aggressive moments, pretty in your face, whilst the other parts are just the complete opposite of that, some things are just really vibing, on a sonic kind of technology and effects level, in that sense and getting kind of ethereal, it’s kind of cool. Let me put it to you this way, we’re experimenting quite a bit with this album, I might even go as far as to say we’re taking risks as far as pushing the envelope in certain areas of styles of music. It’s like I said to Matt, I’d like to do something different here, I don’t want it to be like Mullmuzzler 2: The Sequel, I want to kind of just show that we’re stepping into other unforeseen areas. Obviously I’m not saying that the music is going to sound like something you’ve never heard but it’s something we’re concentrating on bringing it so that it has different characteristics to it, different elements within it that might bring a completely different picture to it.

Sounds interesting!

It is interesting, but at the same time, because of that, it takes a little bit longer to really make sure that it’s sitting right and that it’s exactly where we want it to be. But that’s OK, I don’t really want to throw 10 songs together and say “Here you go” or whatever. Unfortunately some people would like it to happen quicker, I’m all for making sure that we keep a certain time limit on things so that we can turn it around and not have a ridiculously long process, but all that doesn’t make any sense when, in the long run, you’re putting out something that you’re feeling only halfhearted with. Anyway, it’s going to be cool and it’s going to be different.

Will you be writing all your own lyrics again?

Yeah, right now I’ve already written 4 lyrics, but like I said, now that we’re working on new material and kind of doing a whole re-write, we need to let the music complete itself at this point, then I’ll start chopping into those lyrics again. Matt has voiced that he wants to write a couple of lyrics as well, so he’ll probably have a few on the next album.

When you’re a bit further ahead with the new album and the lyrics are finished, could we have a chat about what inspired you to write those lyrics and the meaning behind them?

Yeah, absolutely. One of them is actually dealing with all this violence and terrorism going on around the world, we can’t help but be affected by that. I try to bring in particular stories about that but kind of put it into a more human or general sense, instead of it actually relating to a typical or particular sequence of events. It’ll be interesting, we can definitely talk about that one once all the songs and lyrics are written. It’ll be cool.

Are you actually planning to go on tour with Mullmuzzler?

The other thing with this new label is that they definitely want to get behind me as far as touring is concerned, but all that will have to coincide with Dream Theater, that’s a big thing, too. When it comes to it, it’s going to be me trying to work out a schedule, I’m sure I’ll make it happen, but it takes a lot of organising as far as getting the other guys together, finding out when they can take off and have the time free and then getting everyone else on board that can make the dates become a reality. I definitely have mentioned to them that I feel very strongly about going out and playing this material live. It’ll be really cool, I think, it’ll be really heavy and in your face as far as the energy and everything in it goes. It’ll be very exciting and I think I’ll have a blast. It would be a lot of fun, just playing with those other guys that are in the band and that have played on the album, they’re all good players. The new label is completely into it and what they really want to do is capture a few nights live and later release this as a DVD, so they are pretty serious about it. It’ll be really cool to be doing some of these songs live, I think, some of them could be really, really powerful.

Dream Theater

What are the current plans here, are you going into the studio shortly?

Well, it’s not really a studio, it’s more like a rehearsal place, like a warehouse kind of thing where we can just set up the instruments and jam. Just play hard, heavy and loud and put together the material that way. We’re actually supposed to start next Monday, March 10th, that’s when we all get together and start to bang away!

Will you be involved from the start as well?

Well, this time yes. We’d like to take a different approach this time, I mean realistically, let’s be honest, in the past it’s basically been those four guys sitting in a room jamming out ideas and me coming down periodically listening to the ideas and eventually putting my two cents in, whether that meant being a melody contribution or a couple of lyrics here and there. It would be nice, I am definitely going to go down there from the first day it starts. We talked about it and we’d like to work it out differently, having me there from the beginning to the end, which could bring in a whole new perspective. Though whether it does or doesn’t, I think the main thing is me being there during the whole process which could be a completely different feel, not just hearing a lot of the ideas when they’ve been completed and then at that point either get involved with the melody and the lyric, or not. It’s just cool in a sense, that you could be sitting there, right in the room with them when their ideas are floating around, that could be pretty exciting. It’s basically the same way that I work within Mullmuzzler, I’m there when the ideas are coming around and then throwing my input and contribution in from that moment on. I think that’s why there’s a completely different involvement, a different sense of unity, also the guys have mentioned that they want to see that happen and basically it should be healthy, very healthy for the band.

Elsewhere in the magazine is an interview with John Petrucci and Mike Portnoy in which Brian King asks them about the sound effects being used on your vocals for the last album. Mike’s response was “we usually had to fight him on it, but this time around, I don’t know what happened! Maybe he’s just happy that he’s able to do whatever the fuck he wants to with Mullmuzzler”. Would you like to add anything to that?

Well, it’s true, Mullmuzzler is an outing for me. It’s allowing me to get music out of my head and out of my heart that normally would definitely not fit into Dream Theater. Let’s face it, the material of Mullmuzzler has absolutely no place in Dream Theater. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t know, maybe other people think differently, but I do not see any of the Mullmuzzler material being anywhere near appropriate for Dream Theater, I really don’t. It’s completely different. Dream Theater are much more intense musically, it’s why the band is what we are, because we have something completely different to offer to the people than most bands do. I’m not trying to sound pompous, egotistical or anything, I just think that that’s the reality of Dream Theater. It’s a very unique situation, so for Mike and John to make a comment like that, yeah absolutely. I’m able to come in with Mullmuzzler and do these songs the way I’m feeling and hearing them and then get together with other people and write songs, then when it comes down to the actual producing and mixing, I can make my voice sound any way I want it. Usually I can have my voice really loud in the mix if I want to, but I’m not going to do that! With Mullmuzzler I’m able to mix my voice and give it the effect that I might want, so that’s kind of cool.

I just thought I’ll throw in the comment and give you a chance to respond to it as well.

Well, I think they’ve made a fair assessment. You know what it is, I guess it all comes back right round to what we’ve just talked about, you know Mike’s comment that Mullmuzzler gives me an outing to experiment with my voice and getting to sound more like the things I’m keen on. In the past my thing was that Dream Theater was the time that people were really going to hear me on a studio context situation, so I always wanted to make it sound so that I would think the voice was at its optimum and being somewhat, to a certain extent, closed minded to the effects that I might think aren’t really letting the true voice speak. But I guess too, as time goes on you start realising that this can bring in and make even more noticeable, certain characteristics within a lyric to become more evident, if you put a certain effect on the voice and so brings it closer to home without actually trying to communicate or convey lyrically and musically. The other thing, too, is that when I sit back now, you’ve got to listen to the big picture, to where the music is coming from and what these guys are trying to say lyrically, you have a much more open minded approach to it. You’re not just thinking “well, if the voice sounded like this, wouldn’t it be great as far as the vocals go? But if the voice sounds like this, wouldn’t it be even better as far as the music and the album goes?” That’s really what you’ve got to get your head around. I think we’re going to be doing much more of that on the next album. Although we don’t really know at this point, I’m sure once the music starts speaking, the ideas will definitely start flowing as far as where we think that’ll go.

Something else completely. As some of us know, you weren’t very well during the last leg of the Tourbulence tour. How did you cope?

I was pretty sick. If you remember, I did the whole last leg of the Dream Theater tour with bronchitis. I was surprised I was even out there singing. I tell you, there were moments there that I would get really light headed, and I’m not trying to look for sympathy, that is my gig, so you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. Because of the fact that I was on steroids, which I was taking so I’d keep my energy up and I was on antibiotics, a real wicked heavy-duty antibiotic, you know, the kind that gives you stomach cramps! I remember being on stage at times and I was feeling so light headed, I thought I was going to frigging pass out, so I’d slow down, walk and take deep breaths, but that’s not for the fans to know. They’re there to see the show and to have a great time, so I was dealing with it the best I could, but it was also very frustrating, because I’d had a really good tour up until then and then literally, I kid you not, six days before I left to do that tour, our first show was in Dublin, Ireland, so six days before I left I had no voice, I couldn’t even speak! I remember calling up Frank, our manager, and saying “I don’t think I can do this tour... I have no voice”. I saw my doctor and he’d said the same thing, he’d say “yeez, I can put you on steroids, but my advice to you is that with bronchitis, that’s where a lot of people get infected and get laryngitis, the two kind of run into each other.” Actually I was just on the tip, my doctor said I’d got bronchitis, but if I’d left it any longer, in a couple of days I could have been dealing with pneumonia, so thank god I went in when I did so we got right on it and got these antibiotics pumping into me, but the thing is that I thought for the most part, all things considered, that I did carry my weight. Because of that and because I was singing the stuff that we did, the Iron Maiden stuff as well, it caught up with me, so by the time I was in Paris and Greece I was fried, I was toast. But hey, I’m not crying the blues here, I’m just saying that that was the reality of my situation and it was really kind of unfortunate, because I wanted to end that tour on an up note, to just walk away from it and say “Yeah! I had a great time and it was spot on every night etc.” The wacky thing about it too is, as down as I was and as tired as I was from this bronchitis, we did this last show in Turkey and I didn’t feel that bad. It was almost like it was just on its way out, even though I was still very tired vocally, if you listen to the Turkey show, I was there for the most part, for 95% of the show, it was all there. So I was pretty lucky somehow!!!

Pro Secrets Of Heavy Rock Singing

How did you get involved in this book?

It was brought to my attention by I think it was Ann Leighton, the publicist, but I’m not sure. She called and said there was this guy, Bill Martin, who wrote the book, who was very interested in having an interview with me, speaking mainly just about the voice and being a vocalist and so on, so I said, what’s this for pretending to want, and she said he wants to write a book, dealing with and being very insightful into the actual voice. So I thought, wow, this is great, there are not really that many vehicles or outlets for vocalists, you don’t really see vocalist clinics now, do you? They’re very rare, so I thought this was cool, she also mentioned some of the other vocalists that were being interviewed and I thought, sure, that’ll be very cool to be a part of that and took it from there. Bill called me up and we must have spoken for at least an hour or an hour and a half or something like that and really getting into the voice, the whole art of vocalising and the study of voice, the hardships of keeping a voice where you want it to stay, being on the road and all these different environments which set up challenges for every vocalist. If you talk to any given vocalist out there they would tell you that touring is very demanding, touring has got its ups and downs as far as you making sure you stay on top of your voice and keeping it in check. Everybody has their secrets and everybody has got their remedies or whatever, to somewhat keep their voice in as close to optimum form as they possibly can. It’s funny, I remember talking to Bill and saying, you know, I can’t eat garlic or onions and I can’t drink milk and shouldn’t eat a lot of cheese and things like that, because I find that gives me way too much phlegm and when I drink Orange pop or Ginger Ale, it gives me a lot of phlegm and he’s saying, that’s so funny, because other vocalists would tell him that they have no problem with that, but, meanwhile I can turn around and eat pizza, which is really weird, as some vocalist say, I can’t eat that, that really makes me phlegmy, so I guess each vocalist is different in that respect.

Is there anything in particular that you eat or drink before you go on stage?

That basically always stays the same, I like to get foods in me that are high in protein, whether it would be like a steak, chicken or fish, with a lot of vegetables. I try to eat mostly that, because I find it gives me the energy and pasta once in a while, I find pasta is really good for that too, it gives me energy, then as far as drink goes, usually it’s orange juice throughout the day and bananas, I eat a lot of bananas. Then there’s water, tea with honey and I take Zinc tablets, B12 tablets and Gingko, all these things kind of help me through, I also take this stuff called Immunotec, which is supposed to be good for keeping your immune system up and to its best optimum point, it really helps me in that sense. Basically I always have a glass of orange juice about an hour before I go on stage and I eat a banana too, again about an hour before I go on stage every night. I find that the potassium in the banana is very good for your voice, the other thing is that I’ll be drinking tea with honey throughout the day. Apart from that, I make sure I get lots of sleep, that’s vital. It’s not always easy when you’re on the road, but somehow you’ve got to make it happen and make it work. What I also like to drink is Chai Latte, it’s like a Chai tea, and I usually get it if I go to a Starbucks or so. If you ever go into a Starbucks and ask for a Chai Latte with non-fat milk, ‘cause you don’t want them putting on thick cream or whatever, try it, I think you’ll really like it. Actually Jordan turned me onto it, he was like, oh, you’ve got to try one of these Chai Lattes, so I tried it and I’ve been hooked ever since. You should definitely try it, it’s really good!

Are you happy with the finished result of the book?

Yeah, I think Bill wrote an amazing book there, I thought it was incredibly enlightening, if you read the book you’ll just see how diverse each singer is in their approach, that’s what surprised me. A lot of the points in there are echoes from what other people are saying, a lot of the same feelings or approaches are the same. You’ll read that everyone kind of finds what works best for them no matter if they studied or if they haven’t, they kind of find something that works for them and they stick with that, if that makes them feel most comfortable and gives them a sense of control and confidence. It’s quite interesting to see how everyone gets into their own routine, it’s definitely worth reading. I mentioned to Bill that I thought he’d done a great job, he’s very gracious and thought it had come up great and he’s very excited about it.

For more information about this book or if you like to buy it, check out www.secretsofsinging.com (Pro Secrets Of Heavy Rock Singing by Bill Martin [ISBN 1-86074-437-0])

Ayreon

There’s been some speculation that you’re going to do some work with Arjen Lucassen for one of his Ayreon projects, can you tell us a bit more about this?

I would love to do some work with Arjen Lucassen, I really would love to, but I haven’t heard from Arjen in, I bet you it’s been almost a year now. So who knows what the future holds! I remember Arjen contacted me, it might have been just before we started on the World Tourbulence tour, maybe a month or two before and then somebody, a friend of Arjen’s, came out to talk to me, the first time we came to Holland and said “Arjen says Hi, he had a gig tonight and really regrets having to miss this, because he really wanted to sit down and talk with you.” So I said, no problem, tell him to get in touch and to keep in touch and we’ll do this, we’ll definitely do this, but since then I just haven’t heard from him. I’d just love to work with him, that Star One thing he did, I just thought that that was incredible, I was freaking out on that stuff. I thought Russell sounded amazing, you know, the singer from Symphony X, he did an incredible job on that album and I just thought Arjen’s material and the lyrics and music was just fabulous, absolutely incredible. I’m still very much into it and would love to work with him. I just assumed that he had been busy with other things and he was doing other things. We were talking and he sent me three copies of his later stuff, you know, CDs, and I remember listening to it and thinking this stuff is friggin’ amazing. Very Pink Floyd-ish, just something that I was really taken by, I remember first hearing about this guy, even as far back as when we first started coming to Holland. I went and did a radio interview one day with Carola Hamer and she mentioned him to me, I remember she was talking about one of the local artists around here, Arjen Lucassen, “have you ever heard of him?” And I said, “no, but hey I’d like to hear it”, so she played me snippets of his work. That would have been in 1993/1994. I remember hearing about him as far back as that, then eventually, finally he contacted me and I started listening to his stuff. The other guy that started talking to me about that, was a guy I started working with on the first Mullmuzzler, Gary Wehrkamp, who has played guitar and everything within Arjen’s projects and Gary was mentioning to me that I had to check this guy out, he’s great, and he would play me snippets of his music and I was like holy shit! He’s got very original ideas, very ingenious, just the way he approaches everything and his whole lyrical approach, it’s very cool and conjures up a lot of thought and a lot of fantasy.

NHL.com

I’ve heard that you’ve done an interview for NHL, how come?

Yes I did. It all stems from Dream Theater having a huge fan base within the NHL organisation. I guess we have more fans within the NHL organization than we knew. One of them in particular, his name is Sammy Choi, and Sammy is director of promotions for NHL and is based out of New York and this guy, Doug Karda, who does interviews for NHL.com and magazines and all that stuff for NHL. So, anyway, Sammy Choi, who’s a huge fan of Dream Theater, has been coming to our shows for years, but has only let himself be known to us for about the last year and said he was a huge fan. Once he and I started talking to one another, he realised how big a Hockey fan I was and that I played it when I was growing up and all this. And he was like “Oh, man, I’m coming to Toronto, do you want to come and see a game?” So I went to Toronto and hooked up with him and we watched Toronto Maple Leaves and Ottawa Senators playing, you know, two NHL teams. We had a great time and he had mentioned to me that night that he would love to get me an interview with this guy Doug Karda, who writes for NHL.com. So I said I’d love to sit down and talk about hockey, talk about the players that influenced me and how excited I was about hockey, especially when I was much younger. So that’s how that came about. They set up an interview with me through this guy, Doug, and we actually did the interview the day before I left for Dublin. That’s how long it takes to get it all together and how it came about.

It just seemed a bit of an odd place, for you to feature with an interview, as most of the stuff on this site seems to be related to Hockey and Hockey players.

You know what’s funny about this, Doug even mentioned it, he talked to guys in, like Pantera and bands like that and they are all huge hockey fans, so he said, what they do, is they play snippets of these bands music during intermission, between periods or during big All-Star games. They were playing snippets of A Change Of Seasons during the Winter Olympics, when Canada was playing and during Down Hill Skiing, so you know that these sports people, within that end of the entertainment field, have some say into it and they obviously play bands that they are inspired by or taken by and they play their music! It was surprising to me, to find out just how much these guys are into these bands and that they actually play some of their music within the games. It’s kind of cool! Doug even went as far as to say, “hey, man, I’ve got all your Mullmuzzlers. You should write a song on your next Mullmuzzler album about hockey”, so I said “right, sure, no problem there, I’ll write about chasing a puck around the ice there.” He goes “no, no, do it man. We’ll play it during the games.” I guess it’s a good promotional vehicle, but these songs have got to come from the heart, I’m not just going to write a song about hockey for the sake of it.

Well, I think that’s about it, unless there’s anything else you would like to add?

No that’s it... That’s a wrap!