John Petrucci, James LaBrie interview (excerpts)

The question of switching to acoustic initially had the duo laughing during the latest Roadrunner chat, with LaBrie saying “Yeah you know we - no.”

“I would have to be honest and say no, we haven’t really considered that,” Petrucci chipped in. “Would we want to do that? I’m not sure, I don’t know if I’d want to do that. The closest thing I can personally say is I did a duet album with Jordan that was mostly acoustic. Actually it wasn’t even all acoustic.”

The singer jumped in to explain further. “The way I look at that initially, when you said something like that - it would be very limiting,” he stressed. “Because of the kind of band we are. If we were a band that was based on pop sensibility and three-minute, four-minute, maybe five-minute songs, and it’s all coming down to melody and a nice guitar-accompanied riff, something that’s very flowing and melodious I guess - that would bring us to something that makes more sense to do something like that.”

James continued, “I think it would be really counter-productive for us if we were only able to show certain sides and express ourselves to a certain point and then we’d be like ‘OK, where do we go from here?’ I don’t think it would work,” he concluded.

The two were then asked to name their favorite young bands, with Petrucci instantly singling out Periphery as a group he’s “really proud of.” LaBrie on the other hand, named Two Door Cinema Club, Young the Giant, Mutemath, I See Stars, Sleeping With Sirens, Bring Me the Horizon and August Burns Red as personal favorites. “You making this up?” Petrucci said.