JAMES LABRIE Interview
from BW&BK
BW&BK sat down with DREAM THEATER frontman James LaBrie recently in the midst of completing his current solo record, due out through InsideOut next March.
When asked about Dream Theater walking similar career footsteps to that of Canuck prog legends RUSH, he was quick to respond: "Yes, absolutely. It's been a slow climb. We feel that each and every tour, each and every release - I mean obviously sales, because of technology - once again - isn't really a true reflection of what you are doing as a band. It all comes down to how your tour is going, and it's been going great. When you think of it, when we started out we were playing little clubs of anywhere from 500 - 1,000 people and in a lot of areas in the world now we are playing anywhere from a club that holds 2,000 to playing in front of 20,000 people, depending on where we are. We're in a good situation and we do feel that things are continuing to climb. We did this tour with YES, that we just came off of, and you know what was the amazing thing? As long as we've been doing this, and in the kind of style that we're first always mentioned for, being progressive - even though there is many other sides to us - the classical, jazz, hard rock approach, but a lot of these fans from Yes are like, 'Oh my God, I'm going out to buy your stuff, I can't believe it.' We were thinking to ourselves, 'Wait a minute, you are into this kind of music?' But Yes is more of the light, classical approach progressively, where as we're like taking in a much harder, edgier approach to the progressive elements. But it was incredible because we were out with a band that has been noted for it's progressive smarts or brilliance and here we were playing in front of people that were going, 'I've never heard you guys before.' In fact, a lot of them were saying, 'Oh, so you're just a new band, you just came out, what a couple of years ago?' I kid you not. And your going, 'What? No.'"
