James LaBrie interview (excerpts)

Peter Orullian: I want to tell a quick story to frame the whole rest of our discussion. I was a fan from almost the very beginning, by which I mean I had heard When Dream and Day Unite just prior, and then you came to the group. One of the interesting things about your fan base is there’s a lot of musicians and a lot of accomplished musicians, and this has the interesting effect of a lot of people who really acknowledge the expertise in the band, and the songwriting, the way you approach the songs, all of these things. But it also has the consequence of folks who can get in your business about critique, which isn’t in and of itself bad. It’s not the kind of fan community that all bands have, and it’s because you guys are where you are as musicians. There was a list server a mailing list way, way back called Ytsejam, and there was a thread that got rolling where you’d missed a note or something live which...

James LaBrie: I’m under the microscope all the time!

PO: ...and there’s not a singer on the planet ever who hasn’t missed a note. Because of Dream Theater and this regard that you have – which is I think comes from mostly a good place – they just started to kind of go at you. So I started to watch this happen and I jumped on that list and I went into all of this explanation: “Even in opera there’s this notion they have of the nine C’s, where that was a big deal if they would hit nine C’s. It made news when Pavarotti did that. Now look at what James does every night on a grueling tour with the catalog.” And I wasn’t I wasn’t trying to get into a fight, I just wanted to try and enlarge the perspective of the conversation. I did that because of how much I appreciate what you do as a vocalist and you sent me a mail and it was the most surprising, delightful email I ever received, and you just said, “I just appreciate you jumping on there to say a few words.” That’s where our friendship began.

JL: I distinctly remember that period of time. You were probably a blessing in disguise because I recently had my vocal injury where I had ruptured my cords there and I bled and all that from food poisoning. I was basically being lambasted every night and being raked over the coals, and I was just trying to get back to being strong and consistent again. It was extremely difficult, because as you mentioned earlier, our touring is grueling; it’s not a friend for a singer. We’re doing on average three nights and then a night off, three nights, night off. So you’re looking at five or six shows every week and you’re out there for seven weeks. Long story short, it’s something that I’ve really had to come to terms with, because on my own there’s been many moments that I go, “Why did it have to happen? Why did I have to get that food poisoning? Why did I have to be so violently ill? If I’d have been a guitar player, who cares?” I could have been that sick and no one would have been the wiser, but being a vocalist and doing that to your instrument, I lost a lot of my power, I lost being able to wake up every morning and sing like a bird. It was not a problem. Then all of a sudden it was a challenge, and it had never been a challenge for me ever in my life before; it was just there. From the time I was a kid, I was able to just sing. So all of a sudden I walked into this prison and it was very difficult for me to wrap my head around and then deal with the negativity that was out there. But I had to reach deep within and transcend all that and just say, “Look, just go out there and give it all you’ve got.” I think everyone wants to focus on when you’re having an off night but then they don’t see all the other great nights. And that’s fine that’s human nature.

PO: I’ve seen you guys countless times, and there isn’t any of those nights when there was something that I thought was off. In fact, there was a tour you came through Seattle and you were at the end of a very long evening, no opener, just you guys for two plus hours, and the last song of the set was ‘Illumination Theory.’ And I thought, “No way did they do that to James! No way!” [laughs] And then you just nailed it! You found a gear in that song and I was just floored. This sounds like me just because I am a huge fan of your voice, but I believe I’ve developed enough objectivity about voice to look at it for more than just...

JL: Well you’re a great singer yourself, so you have an ear for that. That is your instrument as well, so you’re very attuned to that. So I appreciate that it’s not just you coming from an angle like, “Oh yeah man, I think you got a cool voice!” You realize what it takes to get there, to maintain it, to sustain it and to be able to go out there night after night after night. The crazy thing with me as a singer, and even I remember John Petrucci saying, “It’s so bizarre.” He says, “The longer you sing, the stronger you get. It’s really weird.” And it’s funny because when we actually put the song list together for any tour, I go, “OK guys, so listen: if we can start with these songs,” and it’s almost like you’re warming up for a workout, [laughs] even though I warm up before I go on stage. I’ll go, “Well these songs, they’re more like in that mid-range; that’s cool, whatever. Let’s start with that and then let’s save the freaking huge ones and the ones where I’m screaming my head off for later, for the second set.” And they’re like, “OK, all right,” that’s fine with them. It’s funny because some of the songs that we’re saving for the end for me, the other guys will be like, “Oh man, that’s a grueling tune!” like as far as they go. Mike Mangini might go, “Oh my God, man! I’m going ballistic on that dude!” and it’s like, “Yeah, but you’re not out there right in the front singing, and I got to think about my voice...” So it’s pretty funny, because where other singers love to come on and go, “I’m gonna give you my best at the beginning of the night, and then we’ll trail off as the night goes...”

PO: You have this this uncanny ability to hit this other gear the deeper you go. The regimen is just athletic. Something that’s deceptively unacknowledged in the Dream Theater catalog is there’s a great many songs that just start in a higher register compared to others, so if you’re going to sort of extend upwards, you’re already kind of doing some athletic work. One of the ways I’ve been trying to stay warm as a vocalist during Covid is I’ve been singing some of your songs, and some of those songs I’m just like, “He’s starting at places in many of those tunes that other singers top out!”

JL: It’s funny because I’ve had some other vocal teachers get in contact with me, they’ll come to the show, and they come back and they go, “Oh my God man! I was just watching you for the last three hours. How did you do that?” Well I warm up very slowly and then I cool down. I make sure that I cool down every night. One guy was saying, “You started out with ‘Untethered Angel.’ You’re going way up there right to begin; with how do you do that?” And I go, “Believe it or not this is how I go about that,” and he was amazed. I have this thing called the Doctor Box where you blow bubbles but you’re blowing into a water bottle; basically it’s a glorified water bottle with a straw and you’re making bubbles. What it does is it vibrates on your cords and it loosens them up. Jaime Vendera is the one that turned me on to it, and he said there’s been people that have had polyps and they’ve gotten rid of them using this. Knock on wood, I’ve never had anything like nodes or polyps or anything like that, thank God, but I do this like warming up that Jaime actually turned me on to. Then believe it or not, I actually sing through a lot of the songs that are in the first set, but very light; not too light, but not full out, not full voice but pretty light. I do that and then I hit the stage. I take about 15, 20 minutes before I hit the stage, I get quiet, I walk around, maybe [James vocalizes], doing stuff like that, and then I hit the stage and it’s just there. Unless I’m sick and then I just hate life.

PO: I want to get into a conversation about your tone. I have this thought process around vocal tone that very often in singers that we remember and gravitate to, and that have these long careers, there’s something unique about their tone, and some of that I think is a gift and some of it that has to be honed. You gave me some backstage passes or something at a show in Seattle again, where after the band had done their sound check, you came out – just you and sound guy – you just did some vocal check and some vocal warm up. I was sitting out in the dark and you didn’t know I was there, but I sat and listened to you dial into what I think was intonation, and you found this resonance in vowels – and I don’t know if they were vocal exercises or what – but it was remarkable how you, without expending more energy, [found] this place in the tone that just became so expansive inside the theater. So I wanted to ask you: how much do you think about that and how much of that is instinctive?

JL: I think initially I’m extremely focused on the sound that I want for any particular song, so initially I would be extremely focused on the tone, on the placement and even the embellishments or nuances that are within a melody. I’m very, very focused on that initially, and then it becomes almost instinctual, becomes second nature. As I’ve established that palette, then I’m good to go and then I know exactly where I’m gonna have to go, where I’m gonna go with the placement and the sound that I want to achieve. A good example of this would have been when I was doing The Astonishing and there were seven characters. When I was coming to each one of those characters, I had to think first of all who they are, what they are, try to imagine or interpret their personality; the personality is what gives somebody – I think – their voice. When I was approaching any one of those characters, I was working with Rich Chycki at the time and I said, “Rich, this is how we’re gonna do it: we’re gonna do whoever it might be, like let’s do Nafaryus. Once I establish his sound, then all I need to do when I come back to Nafaryus [is] you’re going to play me just a little snippet of what I’ve created, and then we’re gonna do the next section.” And then I went on to the next character, and then on [to] the next character. That’s how I built it so that by the time we were done doing the album, I already knew before we were even touring the sound and the placement.

PO: I was looking back over your career and it’s interesting to me. You worked with Arjen on The Human Equation and you voice a character there. You worked Ayreon again and played the character of a historian. You played a role of an arrogant doctor in Babysteps with Henning Pauly.

JL: I did Leonardo da Vinci as well.

PO: That’s right. So you have this pedigree of being able to do characters inside concept albums. Did you evolve this matured approach for characterization or is that something that you just naturally did right from the go when you were asked to do this kind of singing?

JL: I have to be completely honest – it’s just kind of natural. It’s something where once I’m presented with whatever that project might be or whatever it is that I’m going to tackle, I immerse myself within whatever that is. I sit with it, I keep reading over the lyrics to my part and then essentially become it. I find that the more intimate I can be with that person, it almost becomes you yourself, then what comes out of you is natural and it’s not forced, it’s not contrived. I think that’s what makes the difference. I really do. The more comfortable you are with the character that you’re gonna play vocally, then that emotionally feeds through that spectrum to become your voice.

PO: It makes sense to me. I wanna talk just a little bit about some of the formal education that you did. You already mentioned Jaime Vendera. Your original coach that I think you credit with a lot of pointing you in the right direction was Rosemary Burns, yeah? What is one of the big pieces of advice or training that helped establish you on this path that you learned from her?

JL: I was 22 years old, and I just went to her because I was curious. A friend of mine knew this manager, and this manager had sent some of his bands’ singers to her, and I said, “So what about it?” because back then, I was able to sing songs like ‘Barracuda’ from Heart; I was able to just get on stage and sing that and have a fricking great time with it. I was in bar bands, and I was going to all these sleazy bars and smoke-filled rooms, doing three sets a night, sleeping in bug-infested beds. [laughs] It was horrible, but it was rock ‘n’ roll, and I was young. But what I found is that it was very taxing. We had to do six nights a week, six nights in a row, and then the one day that we would have off on a Sunday was us driving to the next town so that we would have our residence at that place for the next six days. And I found it very tiring. I’d be OK, but I just could feel that it was starting to wear on me, and so I went to see Rosemary.

I was telling her about this, and she was listening to my voice, and she goes, “Oh my God! First of all, you’re singing up in the stratosphere! You’re setting yourself up,” and I said, “Yeah, but it’s very natural for me. It’s because I’m doing six nights in a row every week.” She goes, “That’s a big problem too; you shouldn’t be doing that.” She said, “Well if you’re gonna do it, you’re not gonna change, right?” I said, “Well, I’ve gotta do it at this point in my career. Maybe when I get into a band that actually records, is with a label, we’re on a tour, maybe it won’t be so arduous.” Little did I know I’d be getting into Dream Theater! [laughs] So she started teaching me this thing called the ‘mask,’ and it was extremely invaluable, where you’re pushing your notes through your cleft and your cheeky nose, your passaggio, and just actually driving the notes to resonate through your bone structure in your face. So she said, “No, you got to do a lot of humming so that you can actually feel it, and then once you feel the humming and the buzz in those areas, then you will be able to create those sounds even when you’re singing full and you’re very open.” It was amazing, because at that point, I was able to go out right after seeing her for only like three months, and I’d see her once a week. At one point she just said to me, “I really don’t know what else I’m gonna show you at this point. You can keep coming here if you like me.” I said, “I love ya,” but she said, “But you don’t really need to, I’d rather you stay at home and just keep working on what we’ve been going through for the last few months.” So I did that.

Years later, I started working with this girl called Victoria Thompson, and she was extremely well-trained as well. She had her schooling from a music conservatory down in St. Louis, and then she went to Europe and she performed operas for 20 years. She happened to be in the neighborhood where I live, and she was amazing too. She’s got this big, powerful voice, beautiful voice. So I learned some things from her. Actually, I studied with her for a bit just before we went out on the Train of Thought tour. She was of the same [mind] all about warming up and cooling down and stuff like that.

In the last few years off and on, I’ve been working with Jaime, because he has some very cool approaches as well as to being able to sustain oneself on a very lengthy and demanding tour. He’s all about endurance, he’s all about reading not only your voice, but your body, your mindset, your emotional set, because that’s a big drain on a vocalist too. The psychological aspects can wreak havoc on a singer when you have been ill and you’re on tour and you know you’re not able to give it. It kind of puts you in a very dark place, because you’re trying to get better, but at the same time you’re having to go out there and exert yourself, which most normal human beings would not be doing; they would be laying down on a couch and trying to recover. So everything’s working against you. There’s that whole psychological aspect that that singers have to really deal with; it can be demons or they can be your best friend.

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PO: Those of us who are hardcore fans have all heard the story – there were 200 vocalists who were in some way auditioning or up for the thing. Of course you got the gig. I wondered though, my mind conjures this huge line; I suspect it was not that. Were they just doing a lot of screening of tapes and then bringing in who would be a best fit? Because it’s pretty remarkable that there were that many vocalists and of course you’re the guy who got it. So was it like you were one of the few that they actually took care to bring to New York to hear live, and then it was a day of jamming? How did that process go?

JL: I’ll try to do the synopsis of how it all unfolded here. I was in a band called Winter Rose. We were out touring with Lee Aaron – she was referred to as the ‘Metal Queen’ in Canada. And what happened was, we were just doing a little Canadian tour with her – this was like 1990 – and she came up to me and said, “Hey, do you have a CD of your stuff?” I said, “Yeah, absolutely! Here you go.” She said, “I really love what I’m hearing here,” so I give her a CD, “Oh, yeah, check this out, this is all original.” And she comes back and she goes, “Holy s***! This stuff is amazing! Have you ever thought about a solo career?” I go, “No, this is my band. I’m in this band with Rich Chycki, this is our band, we write this stuff, we record it. And we were being looked at by Atlantic, we’re being looked at by some other labels out there, getting signed.” She was like, “Oh, well, OK. Would you mind if I hang on to this? I’ll make sure nobody gets this.”

Unbeknownst to me, she throws it to this guy, Pierre Paradis, in Montreal; he was one of the head A&R guys with Aquarius Records. Out of the blue, I get this phone call one day – I’m living down in Toronto at the time – and he says, “Hey, how you doing, James? This is Pierre Paradis, I’m with Aquarius Records, and I’d love to offer you a solo album deal. I’d like you to write the entire album with Aldo Nova.” I was like, “Yeah, that’s great, but no, I’m not interested. I got Winter Rose here and I’m gonna stick to it because we’re being looked at by some major labels. I really appreciate this. It’s not a solo album.” So he took the CD and he throws it down to MCA, the label down in New York, to this girl Charity, who was one of the head persons down there. And he said, “Hey, you were mentioning to me there’s this band down there called Dream Theater and they’re pretty much set on a singer. They were working with this guy Steve Stone for the last eight months, and they had recorded a bunch of stuff, but they’re not quite sure. They’re pretty sure, but they’re not sure.” And he told Charity, “Get this to them, and let’s see what they think about it – because I think this is their guy.”

So what happened was, or what was told to me by Mike and John and Kevin Moore, was that they were at rehearsal one night, Mike had the CD, they got into Mike’s van, and they put the CD in it and they cranked it up. It was a live recording that I had done with Winter Rose at Rock N’ Roll Heaven down in Toronto, which was a really popular rock bar down there; everybody and their mother played there and it was jam-packed every night. So they listen to [the CD]. They’re like, “What the hell is going on here?!” So they got in touch with me, they flew me down, I stayed at Mike’s place for a couple of days and I stayed at John Myung’s place for a couple of days. The very first day I got there, I jammed with them a whole night, and we just went through a lot of the songs from When Dream and Day Unite. Then we did ‘Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’’ by Journey. Right after the rehearsal, they brought me to this diner and they talked to me. They’re like, “Hey man, oh my God, that’s fricking amazing, holy s***!” And I said, “Yeah, I loved it.” I was also trying to see how I felt with these guys – is there a chemistry here? And definitely, there was. So the next day, they said, “Hey, can we start recording a little demo?” And we did, I think we did ‘Learning to Live,’ ‘A Change of Seasons,’ ‘Take the Time,’ I think. I don’t know if we did ‘Pull Me Under,’ but something like that or might have been ‘Metropolis.’ I was only there for five days, so we recorded all this stuff at John Myung’s condo, and in his bedroom, he had this little, I think it was an 8-track recorder, [laughs] and we recorded all those songs. And then I said, “OK, guys, see you later.” And the last day – or the second last day – they asked, “OK, we’re set on this, we want you to be in the band. Would you be the singer for the band?” I said, “Absolutely, I think you guys are awesome, I think we really got something going on here.” And then the rest is history, we just went from there.

PO: Let’s transition a little bit and talk about some of the collaborative stuff. It might have even been the first thing I heard you sing ever, but it was actually the backing vocals to a Fates Warning track called ‘Life in Still Water.’ As soon as I heard the [backing vocals] I knew it wasn’t Ray, who I also love, but I heard that and was like, “Who the hell is that?!” [laughs]

JL: I remember Mike Portnoy calling me, and he was like, “James, friends of ours, Fates Warning?” “Yeah, I’ve heard of Fates Warning. I know who you’re talking about. I haven’t really delved into them, but I know the band.” And he goes, “They’re up in Toronto right now, but their singer, he’s already gone back home, and they got this song where they wanna lay down these background vocals, and they were wondering if you would come in and Terry Brown,” who’s renowned for all his work that he did with Rush, “he’s mixing it, and he’s gonna be there.” I think I more or less jumped for the opportunity just to meet Terry Brown! [laughs] I was like, “What?! Terry Brown?! Are you fricking kidding me?! No no, I gotta meet Terry Brown!” And it was funny because, he says, “Are you OK if we just start playing you the song, and we just show you the parts? Do you want us to send you a tape and you can sit with it for a couple of days?” I said, “No man, let’s just go for it! How about I just come in, you show me the parts that I’m gonna sing, and we’ll do it?” And he goes, “That’s great.” So I got there, met Terry, and Jim was there as well. They said, “OK this is what we want, this is what we’re thinking about you singing.” I said “Great, let’s get in there. Let’s go for it.” It was just a really fun time. I think I was only there like an hour, maybe an hour and a half, and then I just sat around with them for a bit, shot the guff, and, “Hey guys, this has been a slice. Thanks a lot.” And they were like, “Thank you so much for coming in,” and that was it.

PO: It came out great. By the way, you mentioned Rush. One of the collaborative things you did do is you were on a Rush tribute and you did ‘Red Barchetta.’ I have to tell you it’s my favorite rendition of ‘Red Barchetta.’

JL: Thank you. I had a great time doing that. I actually recorded that with Rich Chycki, my longtime friend.

PO: Are you the one who brought Rich kind of into the Dream [Theater fold]? Because he worked with you guys on the production side.

JL: Yeah. Obviously when I left Winter Rose it was kind of a bittersweet thing, but Rich and I stayed in touch, and Rich went on to engineer and work with Aerosmith, Seal, Mick Jagger and the list goes on and on and on. He was really making a mark in that part of the industry. He’d keep coming to our shows and all the guys in Dream Theater got to know him, and it just came around when we were going in to do A Dramatic Turn of Events, I was like, “Guys, this is our opportunity. Let’s get Rich in to engineer this album.” And then eventually he went on to engineer and mix the self-titled and The Astonishing. But it was just because him and I had stayed in touch, he got to know the guys in the band very well, and it was perfect timing for him to come in when he did with Dramatic.

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PO: You did this really interesting thing when Awake came out. When I finally heard the album, I heard you taking this new approach. I was floored – in a good way – because it was like he’s taken all of the power and all of the range, and now he’s introduced this rasp or gruff, this extra layer, and I was like, “Where the hell did this come from?” How did you decide, “I’m gonna just go at this different with this record,” which has become a fan favorite?

JL: I think it was leading that way, it was going that way. If you go back to some of the shows live in Images and Words, as much as I kept it clean 90 to 95% of the night, the singing I was starting to really introduce [was] this other side of me that nobody really knew and that was to sing rasp and I could do it any time. I could turn it on, turn it off, turn it on, turn it off. So when it came time that the Awake material was being written, I’m in there singing the demos and I was [singing raspy]. I remember Kevin Moore, our first keyboard player, was recording me that night. He was hearing me and I was just turning on the rasp and then playing along with it, and I was making it clean and I was making it raspy, and he’s like, “Holy s***! James, that’s really cool! You gotta do that!” And I said, “Well I’m actually thinking about incorporating that a lot on the album,” and he goes “Man, fricking go for it! Especially with these songs, it just really lends itself, it accentuates the aggression.” I said, “Perfect!” So that’s what I started doing, especially with songs like ‘The Mirror.’ Even in ‘Caught in a Web’ and stuff like that, I would make it clean on the choruses and then ‘grit’ it during the verses or whatever. But at the same time I wanted to also let people know, “No, I’m still here, and I still want to be known as a clean singer.” So we were doing songs like ‘Innocence Faded’ or anything like that I was just keeping it completely... Even though there were a couple moments in that song too where I did just a little slight hint of a rasp. It was just something that I’d always been able to do and I just wanted to introduce it, and the Awake album was my was my perfect opportunity.

PO: It’s an amazing album with how you added this additional technique. I know that you’re quoted some place as saying that one of your favorite songs to sing live is ‘Scarred.’ That is a favorite of mine and that song hit me squarely in my personal life in a very powerful and cathartic way. I tell you that mostly because I want you to understand that – and I’m not the only fan of yours that feels this way – your music touches people. The way you sing that song just so filled with the emotion, and it couldn’t have possibly been life experience at that point because you were too young, but you somehow tapped into it.

JL: That whole experience – we’d just come off a big album with Images and Words, and we were recording down in LA and living down there... I can’t remember the actual song I was singing, but I got a good story for you. When I was in session one day doing vocals for one of the songs from the Awake album, it was so funny because I’m out in the room and I’m in front of the microphone and I’m singing – I think actually it might have been ‘Innocence Faded’ but I can’t recall distinctly – but Duane Baron and John Purdell at the time were producing us. They just they made their big name by producing No More Tears by Ozzy. So I’d be out in the room and I was singing and I’m looking at them, I got the cans on my head (the headphones), and music’s cranking. I’m just going nuts and all of a sudden I’m looking at them and they got this look on their face like, “Oh s***!” and I stopped and I’m like, “What the f***?! What are you guys doing?!” And all of a sudden there was a freaking earthquake and I see these two guys [laughs] and they’re bolting out of the studio. And I’m like, “Wait! Wait for me!” It was so funny. I’m throwing the cans down and I’m running outside and they’re like, “Holy s*** man! We’re having an earthquake!” It was just crazy, it was so bizarre. Then they’re like, “We gotta wait a bit. We gotta make sure the structure is fine,” and then there we are two hours later, we’re back in and we were continuing with the recording. But just the way that all went down... Because the music was just cranking, initially I didn’t even clue in to these vibrations coming up through my legs and feet and everything else, because I was so enraptured with that music. [laughs] It wasn’t until I saw their faces like, “Oh my God! What the hell is going on here?” It was funny.

PO: The first time that we [really] met was on the Falling Into Infinity tour at a theater called the Phoenix that has since closed in Seattle. You and I got chatting, and we’ve been talking so long, [the rest of the band said] “We’re going back to the hotel.” You stuck on with me for like another 20 or 30 minutes. I was a fledgling vocalist and it meant so much to me that you spent so much time talking to me. It was a testament to not just this guy who knows how to sing and has this career, but really cared about the fans. The moment was really poignant to me at that show was ‘Take Away My Pain.’ As can happen, the crowd was really raucous and as you were kind of introducing it, there was voices and cat calls and all this stuff. You took this moment to quiet the audience to set the tone for this song you’re about to sing and explain why, and it was just this really cool moment where everybody just locked into, “Oh OK, let’s get the context on this song and appreciate it for what it is.” I wanted to applaud you as a vocalist for taking command of the room for a song that clearly meant something to the group.

JL: It’s one thing to be there and to be thrilled with the environment and if we’re playing this bombastic song, then by all means go crazy and scream your head off and jump up and try and touch the ceiling; I’m all for that. But I’ve always been a firm believer that when you’re doing more of the intimate songs or more somber moments of the night, I think that everyone should really be on the same page, and I find that there’s some nights that the room just isn’t together, they’re not unified. If I sense that’s happening or that discord is there, I really like to set the tone, and I find that by doing that, not only does it make us that much more intense as a band when we’re playing that particular piece, but I find that the audience benefits from that as well, because they now have sunk into that song exactly as it was intended. That to me, that’s all part of the ride. That’s all what really, really matters throughout the night – it’s this dynamic ride, it’s this roller coaster. If you’re not going to be made aware of it, then you’re walking away and you haven’t had the full experience. So to me, that really does matter.

PO: You had the opportunity to play at the Marquee before it closed for a live thing, and that is one of the most historic, if not the most historic, venue in all of London. What was that like?

JL: Wow! We’re going back a little ways there! That was 1993. It was amazing. It’s funny because you hear about this room and you hear about everyone and their mothers played there – Rolling Stones – you’re thinking it’s bigger than life, and it is because of its reputation. Then you get there and it’s this moderate-sized room and it had this little balcony area, and it was it was beautiful, but everybody was building it up so much that when I got there, it was a bit of a “What? This is the Marquee?! OK, all right, whatever!” [laughs] We had a great time and it was an amazing night playing there, and the audience was just jam-packed; this was when everything was really going crazy for the band. Even us doing like the Ronnie Scott’s jazz club was so cool. All of a sudden you’re in this little jazz club and I’m singing, and I could basically reach out and grab that guy’s beer and start chugging it back if I wanted to. It was a completely different experience, but at the same time it was cool, it was it was novel to us, because we hadn’t played in that kind of an environment for so long. But the Marquee, for all intents and purposes was an amazing night, and it did live up to its reputation in the sense that we were jazzed going on stage, we were amped up, we knew that this was an iconic room, the audience was jacked up and we put on a great show that night just because of all those things lending themselves to the moment.

PO: I know that you can’t say a lot about the new Dream Theater record because you guys do an artful job of disclosing and revealing tidbits as you get the run up, but I want to set the I want to set the stage with this quote that we’ve got from Mangini about you. He said, “James LaBrie is doing vocals now, and I was listening to some that he has put together, kind of the final rough mix – it’s not mixed but it’s just a rough mix if you will – and I was like, “Holy s***! People are gonna freak out! I can’t wait to share this album!’” I know you had this period where you were working through some things with your voice and honestly, every time I saw you live and certainly on the sound recordings, that was never in evidence, so I think you tackled that admirably. The last several albums [are] so strong vocally, so I’m just wondering what you can share with us even if it’s just enthusiasm about what you guys have started to put in the can for the new one.

JL: Wow! I’m gonna have to thank Mike for that! “Wow!” is a good description of this album; Mike nailed it. When the songs were done, and we were constructing the melodies – John and I got together – and it was really cool. I’m the kind of lyricist that I like my melodies written before I start doing my lyrics, because I just find that that also lends itself to the emotion. Then the emotion lends itself to the subject matter. I’m so limited to what I can say – I’ve got my hands tied here. I know everybody says, “Did you ever notice that every band, when they talk about their new album, they go, ‘Oh my gosh! This is the most incredible stuff that we’ve done!’” I’m starting to sound like Jerry Seinfeld! [laughs] But it’s true, I guess because the band’s excited, and every band wants to really set up their new album and get people amped up.

I’ll just leave it at this. I said to John when I was finishing the last vocal, I said, “You know what? We just upped the ante. We just hit a whole new level. This is our 15th freaking album, and we’ve done it again. We’ve upped the ante. There’s something going on here that I think the fans are just gonna flip out when they hear it.” And he goes, “I said that to my wife the other night. I was sitting down. I was listening to the album from front to back, and I was freaking out.” And I go, “Same here. I’m listening to these songs when we’re done, and I’m going back to the hotel room and I’m listening to them, and I’m going, ‘Holy s***. What the hell is going on here?’” Even Jordan was FaceTiming me, going, “Holy geez!” He’s all amped up. He’s like, “Holy s***! Is it just me or are you hearing this stuff?” And I’m like, “No man. There’s something really cool going on in here.” And he’s going, “The fans are gonna freak out.” I go, “Yeah, they are. They really are.” Now, all that being said, I can’t really delve, and I’m sorry for being so ambiguous. But that’s about as accurate as I can get. I will say this: in a few weeks, I take off, and I’m going down, and we’re doing a big photoshoot, and we’re shooting the first video for the first single, or what we consider a single. What the hell’s a Dream Theater single? What is that? What the hell is a single anymore? [laughs] So I’m going down and we’re shooting a video for that. So we’re all pretty excited about this. The ball’s starting to roll. The label’s really, really psyched. They can’t wait to get this in the high gear. As far as the release, let’s just say fall sometime, and I think that would be pretty accurate for the release.

PO: Obviously it can change, but it looks like touring is gonna be back in swing later this year. I know that there’s already some bands planning even for festivals late summer so fingers crossed.

JL: Originally we were thinking, “Maybe we can be out there in November-December.” Just start getting a tour going. Now the latest that I’ve heard – but don’t quote me on any of this – is the new year, you know January-February we’ll be getting out there and we’ll be starting to really hit the road and getting things back to normal. I think it’s a matter of how fast are the inoculations gonna happen worldwide. You’re still hearing about areas that are just going through a wretched period right now, so I don’t know. I’m gonna be more optimistic and I’m hoping that by October-November that the world will be back to a certain level of normalcy.

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JL: I didn’t do the Dream Theater stuff [in my home studio] because John and I wanted to be together in the same room when I was singing. We figured that the last time that I actually sang in the studio with John was Black Clouds – that’s the last time. Everything else I’ve done with Rich since then. We had a blast, it was a lot of fun. It was Jimmy T, James Meslin, who’s our engineer now, and it was Maddi Schieferstein, who’s our right-hand man and our production assistant with everything and is also John Petrucci’s guitar tech when we’re on tour; so he’s a big part of our corporation. So it was just the four of us because we were quarantining, making sure that we could do this without bringing any harm to one another.

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PO: The last frivolous question is this: I believe the story on how you came by the nickname ‘Pirate’ is from Jordan. You’ve got this extraordinary tattoo...

JL: [shows sleeve tattoo on right arm] Yeah, it’s pretty crazy. What happened was that I have a propensity to really wear my heart on my sleeve sometimes, and I become an extremely moody, emotional person. On tour there’s so many demands on the whole band, but vocalists are dealing with a lot of stuff all the time because of environments, whether it’s too cold or it’s too hot, or it’s too dry or it’s too wet, or whatever; you gotta find that perfect balance basically. I always have this tendency on the road – and the guys kind of sense that, they know that I can be getting into a mood – and so one day many years ago, I got on the bus and the guys [are] like, “Hey man, what’s happening?” and I just kept going on my way. And Jordan yelled out “Hey Pirate, you think you’re gonna have a couple words for us at some point today?” and I said, “Hey, you might wanna just leave things well enough alone.” So he just started calling me ‘Pirate’ from that moment on whenever he’d see that I was a little edgy, and then the other guys did, too. They’d go, “Oh, here comes the Pirate.” Then it just morphed from there and everybody’s aware of it out there. I even have a lot of fans, when we’re doing the meet and greets, “Hey Pirate!” They wouldn’t even call me James. As the years went on, like about 10 years ago, I started thinking, “I do wanna get at least one tattoo,” and I did. The original one is like the whole pirate ship thing [referring to the tattoo on his left forearm], and then I started thinking, “Well, I’m gonna do at least one more, and it’s gonna be something that really is like a broad stroke of the alter ego or whatever it is.” [referring to the sleeve tattoo on his right arm] It’s just something that Jordan started calling me, and bang! bang! here we are today; I’m the Pirate.