James LaBrie’s Domestic Battle!

Like many (read all) Canadian musicians, James LaBrie has been concocting plans to escape his homeland for years. Not that it’s so terrible to find success in Canada, but the allure and the true pot of gold lies south of the border. Sure, he wants to bring his family up in one of the finest locales in the world (northern Ontario to be exact), but the sheer economy of the situation sees LaBrie striving to conquer that finicky, fast-food American market. Although Canada is small population-wise, the pride factor is still hard at work and LaBrie is intent on getting the northern exposure he deserves, and you’d think Canada’s rather tough and stringent content laws (requiring 40%+ of Canadian born and bred talent to be aired on TV and radio) would be in his favor. Afraid not. LaBrie explains.

“On Mullmuzzler 2, I produced it. I write all the material with whoever it is I’m writing that song with and most of the stuff I write mainly with Matt, the keyboard player. But, I’m producing, writing the music, writing the lyrics and I’m the singer. And you know what? I’m not considered CanCon. I don’t fall into the category of CanCon and the reason being is because they say that because I’m writing with writers from the States. Now if I wrote everything, if I wrote the songs from beginning to end, if I wrote every single lyric then that would be one thing.”

And that’s only one side of the radio dilemma. “They don’t understand,” he adds with an ounce of discomfort, “they don’t have a clue. You can’t tell me a song on Mullmuzzler, for example ‘Falling’ or ‘Believe’ or even for that matter ‘A Simple Man’, couldn’t be thrown on the radio. Any one of those tracks could be, but it’s all a matter of education, educating the powers that be, but whatever. It’s too exhausting and as you can tell, you hear the frustration. But it’s OK, because with a band like Dream Theater we’re guaranteed to sell almost a million albums each release worldwide and our fans are fanatical enough and they all come out to the shows, so the tours are wildly successful. We’re fortunate in that sense, that we don’t rely on radio to make or break us.”

And with his current Mullmuzzler career seemingly taking off, does LaBrie’s current balancing act find him stretched a bit thin?

“At times, absolutely. The only way I can do it is at times I just have to say ‘I have to forget about it for a day or two and decompress.’ And if I don’t, then I’m going to snap. So, I do. Every so often I’ll just forget that I have a computer, forget that I have a phone, and just get away from it all. And I’ll say to my wife and my kids, ‘We’re gonna do this or that and we’re not going to be accessible.’ I really do try and stay balanced. I really do take the time to sit back and go, ‘OK’, look, I need to do this, I need to do a bit more of this with my family, or I need to put this time aside and get back into whatever it is musically that I’m invoved in or whatever.’ It’s a whole matter of just establishing that balance and retaining it. That’s what I find very difficult. I guess it’s the way you want to approach it. You can either make it work for or work against you. So far I’ve made it work, just because I’m doing this when the kids are in bed or even when the wife goes to bed I’ll sit up and get some things done on the internet or whatever, get some writing done. A lot of when I’m writing this Mullmuzzler stuff, I’m either on the road with Dream Theater when I’m writing Mullmuzzler or I’m home and it’s one o’clock in the morning. From 10pm to 2am is when I can be most productive, a little more creative. It’s complete silence and nothing else is going on. Mind you, the next morning I’m up at seven o’clock with my kids (daughter Chloe and son Chance Abraham). Needless to say, I drink a lot of friggin’ coffee.”

In his early 20s, LaBrie began working with a number of Canadian bands, most notably Winter Rose which were almost snapped up by Atlantic Records (eventually Winter Rose released their debut in 1989 with guitarist Richard Chycki). Voivod’s manager at the time, Pierre Paradis, told LaBrie about a New York-based band called Dream Theater who were looking for a vocalist (the band had released their 1989 debut, When Dream And Day Unite with vocalist Charlie Dominici).

In his back pocket LaBrie now has nine Dream Theater releases (Images And Words, Live At The Marquee, Awake, A Change Of Seasons, Falling Into Infinity, Once In A LIVEtime, Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From A Memory, Live Scenes From New York and the newly released Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence). James has also appeared on releases by Fates Warning and Shadow Gallery, Trent Gardner’s Leonardo The Absolute Man and Explorer’s Club, as well as tribute albums to Rush, Queen and Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

And the debut from Mullmuzzler hit the streets in 1999. About Mullmuzzler 2, released last September 11th, he says that it’s “much more mature. There was more time to create the songs and craft the songs and shape the songs. I think because of that, the songs are a lot stronger. There’s much more color to this album; it’s much more diversified, more intense, more powerful, and I think it’s because I took more time and actually got together with the guys in the same room to write the songs, to get things ready to record the songs. It all made a difference in the end. I got Vic Florencia from Toronto, a mixer, and another engineer from Toronto (Greg Beacock) to engineer it in Barrie, Ontario (one hour north of Toronto). I think because I concentrated so much on the sonic elements of this album that the production on this album is much, much better than the first one. I think it all made for a much better album.”

Featuring a host of musicians including keyboardists Trent Gardner, Matt Guillory, guitarist Mike Keneally and drummer Mike Mangini among others, as expected M2 is being eaten up by DT fans that can find the record.

“The response so far, even in other areas of the world, everyone’s really enjoying it and it’s got some great reviews so I couldn’t be happier in that sense.”

And very few musicians have a flourishing band and side project, let alone the opportunity to do so.

“Absolutely, how many bands would you say you’re dealing with on a daily basis that are actually doing this and making a lot of money? I’m just curious. A percentage? 10%? 20%? There is a lot of talent out there, but meanwhile they still have to go to their jobs everyday.”

But aside from his family commitments, LaBrie had only one job at the end of the day: write and perform.

“And how many of those guys would go, ‘F***, I’d give anything to be in his situation, trying to figure out how he’s going to balance family and career.’ That being a music career. All of us in Dream Theater, we realize just how incredibly fortunate we are, that we have such a loyal and faithful fan base that allows us to come out with each album and they grow with the band and they expect change and they expect experimenting. Each album we’re pretty well guaranteed that we’re going to sell so many copies and it’s enough so that we can have a successful album sale and we can have a very successful tour to kind of give us longevity to what we do. And you’re right, it’s very seldom heard of these days. It’s because of the nature of the music industry now though. It’s so fickle man; I mean it’s all these flash in the pan bands, these artists that are hear today and gone tomorrow and it just seems to be what’s promoted through many media channels, whether it be radio or the huge national magazines. They tend to go with the flavour of the month. It just makes it that much more difficult for somebody to make a new statement. Guys like us in Dream Theater, we’re freaks. It’s like, ‘Who? What? No we don’t play that.’ So many fans tell me they call up their local radio station and ask for Dream Theater. They tell them, ‘we don’t play Dream Theater.’ They know who we are right away, right? And the fan will go, ‘why is that? Why aren’t you playing them? You know who they are.’ The radio station will go, ‘Their songs don’t tend to come under our format; they seem to be lengthy.’”

But if the industry can embrace an entity like Tool and watch it explode...

“Exactly. I guess there’s just some sense of coolness in Tool that I guess is not found in Dream Theater. That’s the only thing I can think of. I don’t know what the hell it is. I guess Maynard is a cooler guy than me. Seriously, I love that band, and there’s a reason why we love the band, because there’s a lot of similarities. I love a lot of bands that are nowhere near what Dream Theater is, stylistically or musically, but I still appreciate many different styles of music or many different bands. But yeah, when I listen to Tool, I’m going, ‘Man, what’s going on here? This doesn’t add up; this band is selling millions of albums, each album, and they’re very similar to us, they’re very bizarre with their compositions and very extreme.’ Meanwhile, they’re getting the publicity, they’re getting the notoriety. We are doing really well and our fanbase is growing every album and we’re selling more albums but, I mean, it’s at a level that... it’s nice, it’s nice to talk about, but it’s not at that level. It’s not multi-platinum. We’re not selling millions of albums each album; it’s nowhere near that level. But that’s OK, too, because we’re still in a really nice situation that we are doing great business aside from all of that. We’ll see what happens; we’ll see what the future holds. I think the internet, in that regard, is great for a band like Dream Theater because you have the CDNow’s and Amazon.com’s that really kind of push it. With our latest DVD release it shot up to #1 at CDNow and Amazon.com for sales and it was great. You see Dream Theater – Scenes From New York and they you’d see underneath it the Brad Pitt movie Snatch at #2 and then you’d see all these Hollywood productions and then you’d see Bob Dylan. It was great; it was kind of like, ‘Wow, holy s*** man, look where we are.’ It was kind of bizarre.”

And it is the supposed computer geeks/geniuses that are the true prog fanatics. Place the words Dream Theater, Rush, Fates Warning, Queensrÿche or Yes into your web browser and you are immediately lost in a sea of sites, most created by the fans themselves.

“Absolutely. We say stuff like, ‘Do you realize that these kids that are into us right now, these young 17-20 year olds, are getting into computers and are going to be the entrepreneurial type people of the future?’ These guys are gonna grow up to be CEO’s of multi-billion dollar companies and they’re gonna go, ‘You know, I was thinking I’m going to back up this movie production but I want somebody like a Dream Theater to do the soundtrack.’ At some point you start getting the call.”

But you are more apt to get the call if you start tapering your writing to a certain demographic. Metallica were selling millions of records early in their career, but that didn’t satisfy them. They craved more.

“Dream Theater have sold about 4 million albums,” LaBrie explains, “and we’re really proud of that. But then you’ve got bands like Iron Maiden and Metallica, that now have their catalogue up to 50 million or whatever it is. That’s what happened; one of the albums went right through the roof and then all of a sudden they were like a dinner table conversation. There’s always that slight chance that Dream Theater could do that, although we all joke about it and say, ‘No way, not in our lifetime.’ I just can’t see it happening unless, for some reason... Obviously on the new DT album that’s coming out in January, it’s a double album, 96 minutes of music, two CDs. The title track of the whole second CD, it’s a 40 minute piece with five pieces within that 40 minute piece, all talking about the Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence which is dealing mainly with mental illness and that whole psychological twisted approach or realization. You listen to the music on this next DT album and there are, believe it or not, there are some areas where it could do something, just because of the sheer energy, the sheer intensity of it. It could really take off and do something, but who’s to know? Who would have known? Now we look back at that Black Album from Metallica and we go, ‘Oh man, it was destined to be huge,’ but you know what, nobody really knew. I’m sure they were excited when they worked with Bob Rock and all that, that it was a pretty powerful album. Nobody really knew it was going to go like that. I’m sure they thought, ‘Hey guys, we might have a platinum album here or double platinum.’ But that thing friggin’ exploded and it stayed that way for a couple of years.

But radio and video was the guiding light to success. Dream Theater’s closest brush with success on that level was way back in 1992 when ‘Pull Me Under’ began to take off. And no other piece of their writing has come close since.

“You’ve got radio, you’ve got MTV or Much Music or what have you, and absolutely, if you get onto one of those formats in a big way, sure, your whole world changes overnight because you are being pumped into the masses. People can’t help but... you know, you hear something enough, it becomes memorable, you become a part of it or at least feel a little bit attached to it and the next thing you know it leads to becoming even that much more familiar with it and that means purchasing it, right? And it’s a whole process, but the process speaks in big volumes, big volumes as far as monetary gain and business, it goes right through the roof. Those formats, there’s no doubt about it, they’ve proven it since the beginning that if you get played a lot on radio or MTV, hey, you can become an overnight sensation and a household name and the financial benefits of it are beyond estimation. It’s still the truth, absolutely. With the little bit of radio that we’ve gotten, even going back as far as ’92-’93 when ‘Pull Me Under’ was going through the roof down in the States. It was the top five request, it was the #1 request in rock radio in the States for five weeks and then it was in the top five for 20 weeks. I remember that, as little as it was. I remember all shows were sold out, all the time, way in advance; things were just turning incredible. Being taken out here and there and the label doing this and that for you and it was a friggin’ merry-go-round. That was only at that level so I can imagine these bands that are selling eight, nine, ten million albums; it must be a friggin’ whirlwind.”

Some would say that if you purposely tapped into a certain writing formula, success is moments away. Megadeth fell for it and Mustaine says that it became an addiction. Metallica are in another world entirely.

“There’s so many different ways you can look at that. You can say, ‘Well, that’s unfortunate because then it’s not the band that it was originally,’ but then again you could look at that and say, ‘But that is the band now, and that’s who they are.’ I guess they’re being true to themselves. That’s exactly what they want to do, but you’ve got to wonder how much of that is being dictated to them through the beautiful greenback. You’ve got to wonder at which point did it stop being all about music and then it started being business. As much as you are playing and you are writing for the true blue essence of the music and the integrity of the music, you’re also writing saying, ‘This has got to be, to a certain extent, the only way the band is going to continue to exist, or move on or be around for a long time is through success.’ Once again, that’s a fine balance, too. You've got to keep things in perspective. The way we went into this album, is once again we just said, ‘OK we’ve got to top Scenes From A Memory, which I think we did. This next album is by far our best that we’ve ever done. With us going in there and thinking, ‘You know, let’s just be who we are; let’s be Dream Theater. Let’s push the envelope once again, let’s take this music as far s we possibly can, and we’ll make it. But it will be intense, it’ll be extreme, it’ll be very powerful.’ And it is. It’s a very progressive album, a very heavy album, very aggressive and I think our fans are just going to eat it up. I think they’re really going to appreciate where we’ve taken it. Because it is true blue Dream Theater. We haven’t been affected yet, so far. We’re still trying to be who we are and if anything we’re pushing ourselves further away from any radio potential.

Box

A Horror Comes To Life!

Upon release on September 11th, 2001, Dream Theater’s Live Scenes From New York became an eerie prophecy of doom! DT vocalist James LaBrie recounts that dreaded day in New York...

“Well, actually my first thought was, ‘this is surreal.’ I was in Manhattan on the day of the terrorist attacks; I was down there finishing vocals for Six Degrees. I was in my hotel and a friend called me up and said, ‘You’ve got to turn the TV on.’ I turned the TV on just in time to see the second plane hit the second tower live and I was going, ‘This is a bad movie’ and then yes, immediately, when we could get through – because all the lines were tied up – once we were able to speak to each other, in the band Dream Theater, and to our management and label, we had made it perfectly clear to everyone that we wanted this pulled from the shelf. This was purely coincidental and it was a bizarre situation. We couldn’t believe it. Who could have foreseen something like that, something as tragic as that happening? It just didn’t make sense; it was very disconnecting, very disturbing, very unsettling, so we knew immediately that we had to let everyone know that in no way do we want this to be construed as being tasteless on the band’s behalf. We never saw this coming – take it off the shelf, let’s create a new artwork for the cover and we’ll put it back out as quickly as we can. So yeah, the first thing you think of... if you really wanna know what went through my head, and I’m sure it did to a certain degree with the other guys, is I just thought about how insignificant our release was with the horrific happenings at that point. It really put things in perspective of how little importance this album is with this unfortunate similarity in the artwork to the actual event. You kind of move on. This is pretty frightening and the world is in a very precarious time right now and hopefully this can be resolved and terrorism can be eradicated. We did as much as we could as a band to kind of let the public know that we wanted to show our respect to the unfortunate thousands of people that lost their lives and left their loved ones behind. That was the least we could do. If there’s something more that we can do, if we can organize a concert and take all the proceeds and put them towards the victims and their families and what have you, then we’ll do that. We’re talking about that now, if we can make that happen or not. It was a very bizarre day; that whole day just went by like a blink. Even walking around the streets of New York that day was very eerie. It was a really eerie feeling because it became a ghost town within three hours. It was an exodus of the city. It was myself and whoever else was at hotels that were the only people there and they closed down all the shops, I mean literally every shop in New York was closed down except the restaurants, because the mayor made sure that the restaurants were kept open so the people could eat, if need be. But it was really an unprecedented situation.

Album Cover Madness – DT Fans Scurry To Pick Up Rarity!

“You know what was a bizarre thing? I walked into a CD store; I think it was HMV in New York. I’m going towards the rock area where the D’s are, Dream Theater, and I saw a few guys, and I kind of walked by it so they didn’t see me, but that’s what they were doing. I saw a few guys grabbing – I’m not talkin’ one copy – but three copies of the stuff and then going up to the counter with them. I just kind of hung out in the background, didn’t let them see me, and I went up to the spot where Dream Theater is and there was like one left. I go, ‘Holy s***.’ I know the word had already gone out because I was talking to one of the tellers and they said, ‘Did you see those guys?’ and I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, we’re supposed to go over there right now and pull anything that’s left,’ and I said, ‘Well that’s one copy.’ (laughs) I saw things like it going on line for sale on Ebay and all that s***, people starting at $100 a bid and I’m going, ‘What the...?’ You know, give me a break. It takes something like that for people to get a little snaky and want something, a collector’s item. On the heels of a tragedy, it’s not worth it.”