"I had a lot of fun working on the two discs with James, and was glad to be a part of it. How did it all come about?

"Shadow Gallery worked with James LaBrie when he made a vocal guest appearance on the 1998 release of "Tyranny"- His talented voice added such a great dimension and emotion, and my only complaint was that his part was too short.

"He hit it off with Carl, and Carl engineered his parts for the EXPLORERS CLUB release. They kept in touch and down the road discussed writing songs for a LaBrie solo album. Carl turned to Brendt for a couple songs, then to me, and that is how I got started in the songwriting process with him - although at this point it was kind of indirectly.

"Songwriting is such a personal, unpredictable and ever changing process with varying degree of difficulty that produces great rewards. Still it can be quite a challenge when incorporating the ideas and directions of others. If you are not a songwriter, imagine yourself a painter, blank canvas and deadline ahead of you. Now pretend that there are two other painters aside you, ready to splash their colors and emotions on to the page with you. It can be a real mess, or the colors can compliment each other forming a new scene unobtainable from the single artist. For the Mullmuzzler writing sessions, there were multiple paint-brushes that were handled with ease portraying an aural compliment to the artists aside each other. The process was similar to some of the song crafting in Shadow Gallery, in that, the songwriting tasks were tackled initially in layers. Person 1 starts the music, passes it on etc.... For the latest Mullmuzzler, we had more of a chance to work together as well, and this was a terrific experience. You never know what to expect sometimes from other authors, but in the case with James, it was natural, professional, productive and very fun. He is such a talent, and his vision is well beyond his incredible singing. His focused nature is part of the key to the success of the songs and I can see a long side career in his future twisting sounds and song to his charming desire.

"It is also interesting to hear the contributions and their developments after they leave your hands. I am always initially a little shocked and surprised when I hear how the song takes off, after all, it would never be exactly the same way as if I had written and performed it myself - But what comes next is the letting go, and the grabbing on to the additions and changes. This is an expandingly fun chore.

"I felt a bond to James and his approach. He has a good sense of humor and divides that between the tasks at hand. We have a great deal musically in common, and if he hears the song folding in a certain direction, I felt I was already right there with him.

"I spoke with him and Pete Morticelli in Feb. of 2000 and the attitude was "If it isn't broke, don't fix it". He was interested in working with all the same players, writers, etc. in quest of building on the foundation that was laid on the first record. I am glad he did, and I think he did the right thing. I think he owes me a beer though, and I am sure he will try to push a Canadian Brew on me next time I see him (or actually, more likely Bottled water) but that is ok with me.... He continues to be a driving force and great part of Dream Theater, one of the worlds best bands, but I am glad that he shows how he can rock in a different context!

"For those looking for somewhat meaningless details:

"Some of the working titles I had for the musical ideas as they were developing were:

"Venice Burning : "No Limits" - I later inadvertently changed it to "Without Limits" adding confusion to my sequencing files...

"Confronting the devil: "Animal Assignment" - I was inspired to write something that sounded like the ending guitar coda found on "SHEEP" from Pink Floyd, Animals - and spoke with James the night before about something exotic sounding and a bit Zepplin'ish... so the way I remembered this was as an assignment to compose in a direction that James requested (which was Great fun to do) and remember my Animals-ish riff (that ends C.T.Devil).

"There was another song we had written, worked on, and demo'd and redemo'd many times that didn't make the record. The sequence name was "Bree-La" then after it took some shape it was initially Called "Kevin's Leftovers" (and then subsequently just "Leftovers" )because I wrote the music to give to Carl (and then he would send something to James) to work on a bit for "Keep it to yourself" but time deadlines left that one off, after LaBrie had enough material, and he ever heard it.... so it was kind of scrapped.

"I never heard the melodies that Carl wrote to it, but he called me and said "I never gave it to James, it was too late, well...let's keep it for Shadow Gallery" So then, as we started demoing songs for what was to become LEGACY, I set that song up, and we tracked it...Joe Nevolo did a great job with drums, and it had a great "Comfortably Numb" ending section - I was quite excited about the song, although the front was quite simple, and repetitive and without words and melodies (Carl wrote them but still I never heard them) It got a bit boring. Also, it was a little slower, and I was starting to fear that Shadow Gallery's new LEGACY record had to much soft stuff and not enough heavy material. So We were contemplating leaving it off.

"In the mean time, I was very inspired and writing all the time - I think I wrote 9 songs in all for James to pick a few from (and the same time writing new SG pieces like "The Crusher") and one of these was a song Called "Forever" - I wrote this right after "Confronting The Devil" - and it was similar and heavy but a little different - to me the music to both of them sounded like a heavy metal pink Floyd song. When I heard that James was going to go with the other two songs, both rockers, I had the idea to send him, "Leftovers" which was for him to begin with anyway, and keep "Forever" for Shadow Gallery, which would give James 2 heavy/ 1 softer songs from the LaBrie/Cadden-James/Wehrkamp camp AND it would allow SG to have one heavier song, which I was beginning to believe we desperately needed. I had to make this decision on the very last day of recording drums - It was the last day the studio was booked for and SG drummer Joe Nevolo never heard the song before.... When he did, he immediately liked it a bunch and had no problems trying it after we finished everything else if we still had any time left.... We cut that, and it ended up becoming the Song LEGACY from the record.

"A few months later James flew down, and we were reworking his/our NEW song (new, yeah right!) - He has some suggestions and it required another changed demo.... At this point I had recorded all the parts to the song 5 separate times. He then proceeded to have his team of mullmuzzler performers record the song. When all was said and done, for whatever reason, the song didn't make the record...

• Slated for "Keep it to yourself" - Too late for demos
• Kept for "Legacy" - swapped with "Forever(Legacy)"
• brought back for MMII - wasn't good enough?

"Anyway, that is the interesting tale of how some songs go though years and years and are recorded and re-worked with and for different people, only to remain a blurb footnote on a web page such as this one."