James LaBrie interview

Alicia Atout: You are known as The Pirate. So I’d love to know where that fantastic nickname originated from and why they decided to call you that.

James LaBrie: I have a proclivity of being somewhat moody at times, but normally I’m usually straight and even and a real nice guy. But there’s this tendency of me, depending on what’s going on, on the road, and it’s usually if I’m not feeling well – like anybody – I can get moody. One day I was in one of those moods, just, like, “Hey, just leave me alone. I’m dealing with stuff. I’ve got a really wicked cold,” and whatever; that whole singer syndrome bulls*** that goes on. So [Jordan Rudess] goes, “No problem there, Pirate.” I looked over and I go, “What? What did you say?” And he called me a pirate, because he goes, “Well, you’re like an angry pirate.” I said, “OK. Whatever.” Then he just started calling me that all the time. So the days went on, and he’d just say, “Hey Pirate.” And then somebody else on the crew would hear him and they’d go, “Oh, Pirate. What, are you calling James ‘Pirate’?” That’s how it started – like, seriously. It was that easy. Jordan likes to put words behind what he’s always thinking, and it’s pretty funny. We call him ‘The Blues Man’ because he can sing like a blues man, but at the same time, right off the top of his head, he can sing these crazy rhymes, and it’s like it’s like listening to a blues artist. So that’s how it started. It’s nothing like the fans started going, “Hey, man. James, you remind me of a pirate.” It all came from Jordan. And it stuck. Well, he calls me ‘Captain’ sometimes too. “Hey Captain.”

AA: That’s amazing. Well, as I previously mentioned, your brand new record A View From The Top Of The World is officially out worldwide. So walk me through what runs through your mind leading up to a huge release like this, the excitement and just the relief now that it is finally out.

JL: First and foremost, it is great having something like this released because we were really excited, like we are with every album. But with this, it’s different times, right – we’re all going through this pandemic. I think that has a lot to do with just the overall sound, mood, the energy that’s on this. It seems very spirited. And it had a lot to do with the fact that we were sitting around like everyone else and going, “OK, what are we going to do? Are we going to do this for the next year and a half, two years? Why don’t we get together? Why don’t we do what we love to do and write some music and record another album?” That’s exactly what we did. Going into it, there wasn’t really that many preconceived ideas. Normally we discuss where we think we might want to go musically, the direction or what we find influencing or what we find might be necessary for us to challenge ourselves and to touch upon musically. With that being said, we did know going in that we were definitely going to do an epic, and it had been a while since we did something like that, like ‘Illumination Theory’. So we thought, “Yeah, let’s do this.” And that being said, once you know that you’re going to go that route – where you have absolute creative freedom – that allows us to be who we are. So we knew going in that this was going to be a part of the album.

The other part was that we wanted each song to have its own entity, and just what we felt would be an amazing adventure and experience. The first song we wrote was ‘The Alien’. So that really set the template, like we were listening to that song and going, “Oh my God, this is kicking butt.” I mean, the whole thing just opens up with Mike Mangini being the crazy man that he is on drums. This is phenomenal what he does, and it set everything else into motion. When we’re writing, there’s so many ideas – you have John and Jordan in the room and they’re just, throwing ideas back and forth. Then you have Mike Mangini coming in and he’s very meticulous as to how he approaches things. There is a method to the madness. You have all these guys that have been together for so many years, and we just fall into that that place of creativity seamlessly. And then everything else takes over and it just starts to happen – it’s ineffable. So that’s how we came to this.

Obviously like any band, you’re going to listen to every album from beginning to end. And when we were doing that individually, we would be talking to one another and saying, “Oh my God, I can’t wait for our fans to hear this,” because I think they’re going to really feel that true essence of classic Dream Theater, but still being contemporary. The album, to me, is so full of high octane energy from beginning to end, but it still has those dynamics and those little subtle hints, very eclectic but cohesive, and I think that’s really what makes it.

AA: It’s so amazing to hear a band who’s been together for that long [who] can have such a cohesive sound still, especially when you’re 15 albums in. Because you hear these nightmare stories where people are just banging their heads against the walls for ideas.

JL: What surprises me – a couple of us in the band were talking about it – is like when I read where some of the fans, and I’m talking very, very few, will say, “Yeah man, but they just sound like themselves; they sound too much like Dream Theater.” I’m like, “Do you want to explain that? Because I don’t know if I can really fathom what it is that you’re getting at. Are you saying that we’re copying ourselves? Well, God forbid that we copy ourselves because we are ‘us’! And are you saying that we’re repeating? I don’t think so. Au contraire. When I listen to this stuff, I think that there’s always a purpose. We are going to maintain that familiarity, that identity musically. So if that’s what you’re referring to, that’s great. That’s what we want. We don’t want to completely shift gears and come out sounding like Gino Vanalli all of a sudden,” but whatever. And I love Gino Vanalli.

AA: Everyone’s a critic now. This record’s a really interesting one as it has its dark moments, but it also shines in positivity lyrically. As you mentioned, it’s very energetic. And just bringing up ‘The Alien’ again, for example, to me, it’s a really hopeful song kind of about being that alien, the odd person out, but finding a purpose. That’s how I interpreted it. So I just love to know what sparked the idea for that track and lyrically where it was taken.

JL: The spark for that track was the excitement of getting back into the studio, and then being together collectively and being able to just do what we love to do, and that is put our minds together and come up with something that we feel epitomizes who and what we are musically.

Lyrically, my son Chance [and I] were going on a drive one day to get some stuff. And he said, “While we’re on this drive, do you want to listen to Joe Rogan, his podcast?” And I said, “Sure. What do you got?” And he goes, “Well, he did this podcast with Elon Musk and they’re talking about interplanetary discovery,” Mars and all that stuff, because Elon Musk is trying to put that together. So I listened to some of it while we were driving. Then when I got home, I listened to the rest. It’s like a three-hour podcast with Elon Musk. And the whole conversation is based around interplanetary discovery, going out and basically, as Elon Musk was saying, that in fact, we become the alien. We’re out there terraforming planets. We’re out there discovering other planets that are inhabitable for us as a species and everything else that comes with us.

He said, if we don’t do this, inevitably, we’re going to outgrow this planet, its resources, the number of people that we have, so on and so forth. So he said, if we don’t start thinking about this now, when are we? When it’s upon us that it’s too late? He said, “It’s the only way that I see,” that we can continue the species is by going and terraforming other planets and becoming a part of that. And so that now we’re interspersed throughout the universe. So I took that, and I just said, “OK, I’m going to write a lyric about this. This is really cool.” I was extremely inspired. And it’s funny because Chance had to go into the store and while he’s in there, I am literally with my phone going crazy with these words, just writing down these words. And then I was able to put them into a better perspective later, but that’s usually the way it works.

AA: It’s always interesting hearing someone’s process behind gathering things for a song, especially when it’s a song that you can relate to so much, because my take on it’s completely different from where yours came from, but that’s kind of the beauty of it.

JL: Unless I’m asked, I never want to be literal with my lyric. I’m always like, “What does it say to you? What does that mean to you?” All that matters is how does it resonate with you? Does it, imply something that makes you feel good? If it doesn’t make you feel good, that’s also not a bad thing – maybe it’s conjuring up something that is a little more somber, and it’s something that makes you connect with something and makes you who you are. Everything that we experience is what creates who and what we are.

AA: The band’s obviously toured all over the world over the years. I’d love to know if there’s a stage, city or theater that’s eluded you throughout your career and just a place you would still absolutely love to perform, or if almost everywhere has been checked off by now.

JL: Oh, no, I think there’s still many places that we’d love to go into. Just off the top of my head, we’d still love to go into Vietnam, Cambodia, we still love to go into South Africa. Even North Africa, I don’t know about the middle and all that. I’ve never really heard of a lot of bands touring in that area. Places like the Middle East, if they could open up and it could be a safe situation; it’s very unfortunate because we have a lot of fans that come online from these parts of the world that say ‘the dream for me would be to see you guys live one day, or even if you came to our country’, but we’re thinking beyond the realm of possibilities at this point in life. It’s really sad because, as cheesy as it sounds, [music] does bring us together. It’s universal. Everybody is connected to it immediately.

New York [is] basically considered our hometown, so playing a place like Radio City Music Hall is gorgeous. It’s beautiful, but there’s so many; it’s immeasurable to say exactly which place is our favorite because everywhere we go is such a great experience.

AA: Hopefully over time things will be able to get a little bit easier and better for all those fans that are writing you.

JL: Well we first got to get over this hump, the pandemic.

AA: Right? Speaking to music and live music, since we’re all missing it so much right now, if you could see any other group right now live, who would you love to see?

JL: Do they have to be all alive?

AA: No, you can pick whoever.

JL: I’ve seen so many bands like over the years. I had the pleasure of seeing Queen when they did have Freddie Mercury in the band. So I’d love to experience that all over again. But I always wonder where Freddie would be today, and I always think [of] all the amazing stuff that they would have done – the albums, the material, the tours and who he would be right now. I mean, he’d be in his 70s, but I still think that he would just be a phenomenal artist and have so much to offer and bring to the floor.

But aside from that, I haven’t seen Young The Giant – I’d love to see those guys. They’re such a great band. My daughter turned me on to them and I was just like, “Holy s*** these guys are amazing.” And Needtobreathe – I’d love to see them. Both myself and my daughter would love to see Bjork live because she’s just such a great talent and obscure, but she’s amazing, she’s just incredible. I’d love to see U2 again. I want to definitely get out and see those guys again; they always put on a phenomenal show and it’s such a thrilling experience to see that band.

AA: The last thing I wanted to bring up and ask you about, because we are both Canadian, [is] what would you say is the most Canadian thing about yourself?

JL: I grew up with a very rich musical background. I guess I could say influence because my whole family were very into music. My sister played guitar. My one brother played piano and my dad sang and he played trumpet and stuff. And my mother had a beautiful voice – she sang as well. Then growing up and getting into a band like Rush or Max Webster or even Tom Cochran, a great Canadian artist. And Bryan Adams, too; the guy wrote such great songs. I hear throughout the years of other artists being Canadian, or they might be in this band who’s from America or this band that’s from somewhere in Europe. But they’re always a great talent. Even Sebastian Bach, who went out and did Skid Row, and then he’s been doing his solo material for quite some years now. The Canadians stand out. Rush was such an influential entity, a Canadian freaking powerhouse that influenced so many bands, including the band that I’m in. Just to have that background and to have that kind of citizenship with these other great musicians is something to be proud of for sure.