Neal Morse & The Resonance – interview met Neal Morse
Neal Morse: “It is really a group effort. It was the goal. Not a solo album, but a creative meeting. We also have different voices and musically we mixed different bits and pieces from everybody’s ideas.”
Neal Morse is van alle markten thuis, maar beweegt zich toch voornamelijk in de progressieve rock sfeer. Ook met zijn jonge begeleidingsband The Resonance is dat het geval. Wanneer we ontdekken dat hun debuut ‘No Hill For A Climber’ weer bulkt van frisse ideeën en leuke vondsten, besloten we de doorgewinterde muzikant nog eens aan de tand te voelen over dit nieuwe project en zijn huidige leven en activiteiten. Het resulteerde in het volgende hartelijke gesprek.
Vera Matthijssens Ι 26 november 2024
Are you safe and sane? I hope you don’t live in Florida, because there is a hurricane coming and everybody has to evacuate…
I know, it is terrible. I am living in Tennessee, all good.
A new adventure in music has started for you. How come?
Well, I was thinking what to do in 2024, I didn’t have anything on except a singer-songwriter album, but I did not have any progressive rock. Mike Portnoy was going back to Dream Theater and of course that put all of my bands in a ‘no possibility zone’ for a certain amount of time. So I started thinking about what to do and my wife suggested ‘maybe you can do an album with some of these talented young people that we know.’ There is like a whole group of really talented younger people that we see a lot and hang out with. Some of us go to the same church – not all of us – but we are travelling in similar circles and so I thought: ‘that would be worth trying’ and I kind of felt a good thing inside about it. Then we got together in January 2024 and did an exploring write and jam session and that went pretty well. I think we might have done two, before I went to Colorado in February, that was when I was reading that ‘Demon Copperhead’ book. I was reading the line ‘no hill for a climber’ and then I had the idea for that chorus and then after that trip I brought that idea to the group. We met again by the end of February and little by little, step by step, I began to think: ‘yes, this is happening, let’s do this’ and then we all committed to make the record in April.
These people are younger. Which age shall we think about? Twenty, thirty?
Let us see. Philip (Martin – one of the drummers) is 22, Chris Riley I think is 30, Andre (Madatian – guitars, orchestration) is 33 and I think so is Johnny (Bisaha – lead vocals). Philip is in that way the youngster.
Chris Riley happens to be a very important man I think, because he plays keyboards, guitars and bass and does vocals, just like you…
Yeah Chris is a really interesting artist. He is an interesting person, you should meet him. He thinks very differently. He likes to do a lot of really avant-garde kind of things. He was the one… I started to listen to his music more and more as he was coming to the Radiant School – which is something that I do here in the studio – having people in to work on their music and talking about how I make records and Chris came to that for many years in a row. I noticed in his music that he was really good in soundscapes, unusual soundscapes with weird talking and that was something that inspired me on the Joseph albums. I actually got Chris coming making the soundscapes for the Joseph albums and it went really fast and it was really fun and really fruitful. So that was another reason that we definitely wanted Chris on board.
That’s nice, let us say that we enter the wider circle around you now…
Yeah there you go (laughs).
Please tell me something about that novel from Barbara Kingsolver ‘Demon Copperhead’ who wrote the inspiring line…
A friend of mine said it to me and I was reading it on a plane to Colorado. It is not that the album is based on that. It was just that line ‘no hill for a climber’ in that book and it somehow jumped out on me. I don’t know if you have ever got that experience when you are reading a book and there is a line making you think: ‘ah I have never heard that before, it is a really cool line’. That was how it went and so I got up on the flight and I was walking in the aisles and I was singing that to myself. The whole chorus of ‘No Hill For A Climber’ was born during that flight. So it was a very fruitful flight.
It illustrates the use of reading books…
Yes, sometimes I get really inspired on airplanes, I don’t know why that is. But I know I am not alone. I talked to many other songwriters and artists and they experience that as well.
The two long tracks on the records are divided in different parts, they all have a particular subtitle. Is that very important for the listener?
In classical music they usually do that too. It is like a symphony has first movement, second movement, third movement. It is all conceptual to be one piece, but there are different spaces that you go through. It is a sort of identify the sections and I thought that was a good thing. Yes did that on a lot of their records. ‘Close To The Edge’ also has subtitles. I think that’s a good thing.
The beginning of one of the shorter songs, ‘Ever Interceding’, reminds me of the acoustic parts in Yes…
Oh yeah, maybe the beginning of ‘And You And I’ or something like that.
In the song ‘Thief’ the vocals are amazing… It reminded me of Queen…
Oh yeah there’s a couple of Queen moments in there. That’s a weird song, it has a lot of really interesting stuff in there.
I am really enthusiastic about it, but it seems to have quite a negative lyric, isn’t it?
Well, I was thinking about… you know… as a Christian, there is something called the enemy or Satan or the devil, depends on how you look at it. That’s what I am singing about in ‘Thief’. The negative parts, you can think about it as the negative aspects of your own mind, but it can be very destructive, you know. The things that can lead to really negative behaviour which can destroy your families and it is like ‘you took my family, my heart, my hope’. People can really be left tempted to by addictions and depression and all of that kind of stuff and that’s what I am singing about in ‘Thief’.
For everyone the seduction of the evil part is constantly present I think…
Yeah and I as a Christian of course I am looking to the Bible for things and some of the things become clear. One verse in the Bible says: ‘resist the devil and he will flee from you’ or ‘the devil only comes to steal and kill and destroy, but I come to give life’, those kinds of things. So I say: ‘you come to steal and kill, but you cannot deceive me. I resist your will and you are going to leave me’. If you resist these things, then the trouble flees from you, that’s what I am trying to say.
Do you still discover new things when reading the bible sometimes?
Yes. Just this morning, I discovered something new this morning! In Peter 1 it says: ‘the community of God should show forth its presence.’ It is right in there. You should show forth, meaning it is not a secret thing. It must be shown forth. Like our praises to God should be shown in the same way like Jesus’ crucifixion was shown. It wasn’t done secretly. It was done publicly. I find new things all the time.
What can you tell about the first long track ‘Eternity In Your Eyes’?
That is actually also taken from the bible. There is a verse that says: ‘God planted eternity in our hearts’, but I say eternity in your eyes, because it sang better (chuckles). I didn’t change it. I was playing it for Chris Riley and he said ‘eyes’ is better too, so we are safe with that. The interesting thing about ‘Eternity In Your Eyes’ was that it was originally not a long piece. I had just written the song, the first song section, and then I started fooling around with some instrumental before it and as a producer on this album, what I did was I got a lot of the demos and pieces of music that the other guys had written. Mainly Chris Riley and Andre and I was listening to those things and calling out (you might say), finding the parts that I liked the best and then figuring out how to make a piece out of all our little bits. So I had the ‘Eternity In Your Eyes’ thing and I thought it would be a good opening song and also a good ending song, but I ended up taking Andre’s orchestral piece – he writes classical music as well as other things – so the beginning was Andre’s orchestra piece and I brought it to the end to sort of bookend the thing and then the ‘Northern Lights’ section and the ‘Hammer And Nail’ section, those were from demos of Chris Riley and we actually took the multi-track of these demos and put it in our session and played what he already had – because it was also cool the way it was – I think some of the parts on the album are exactly the same, like the synthesizer we did not change, the acoustic guitar I think is from his demo, I played piano on it and we put real drums on it and I think it got a little Lesley guitar on it and we changed the bass, but anyways, it was pretty cool finding the flow from going from one of my pieces and to one of Chris’ pieces and then into a jam session and back to Chris’s demo and then back to my thing. Andre has made the end, so it is really a group effort. It was the goal. Not a solo album, but a creative meeting. We also have different voices. We got Johnny Bisaha coming in on vocals, a really different flavour. I think the way these guys play and how they approach the music in some way changed the way that I was writing for it. It all kind of blended it together, in a good way.
The guitars are wilder….
Yeah there’s some pretty interesting stuff. Andre did some things, I also played guitar and so did Chris Riley. So there is a lot of interesting stuff.
Which moment is really somebody else singing?
Chris Riley is singing in the ‘Northern Light’ and the ‘Hammer And Nail’ section of ‘Eternity In Your Eyes’, Johnny Bisaha is singing the quiet middle section and then he is singing the high harmony with me at the end of that song. In ‘Thief’ – you can see in the video coming who’s singing what. The video is coming up tomorrow and in ‘All The Rage’ I am singing the first verse and Johnny is singing the second verse and the mix and the chorus together. Then Johnny is singing ‘Ever Interceding’ really by himself. In ‘No Hill For A Climber’ it is Johnny and me trading off for the rest of the album. Chris Riley is singing the ‘Burn It Down’ section.
Are there plans to play live with this outfit?
Not at the moment. We are all very busy. I am particularly busy, trying to get ready for these ‘Morsefests’ that are coming up. I have got three Morsefests coming up, doing both ‘Josephs’ albums, ‘Jesus Christ The Exorcist’ and a debut set of the trio I have with Nick D’Virgilio and Ross Jennings, so it is a huge undertaking. I am not thinking really much about anything else but that. I also made an album over the Summer with Chester Thompson, the well-known drummer. That’ll be coming out in the Spring and I am trying to sing my parts on that too, so… When all that stuff is done, maybe we will pick our heads outside of the clouds and do what we can do.
That was also one of my important questions: what are you doing now, at the moment? Chester Thompson, he has been drumming in Genesis I remember….
Yes and with Zappa. We met backstage at a Steve Hackett concert here in Nashville and we had a lot of fun and said we should do something together. We started jamming and we got together with Byron House on bass and Phil Keaggy on guitar. So yes, we’ve made a lovely album and it is written and the drums are done. The bass is almost done and later comes my stuff and Keaggy’s. So right now I really got to get ready for Morsefest. I have been doing the horn and string chords and the background vocal dye-tracks and it is a lot of work. It is crazy how much work it is. But of course it is great. I mean, when we actually get together and do it, it is a lot more fun than preparing for it (laughs).
Which dates are these?
We have been doing it in the Netherlands at De Boerderij, the 15th and 16th I guess. And then we are also doing it in London the second weekend of January. The USA Morsefests are sold out.
Was the record with The Resonance a single adventure or will you create more albums in future? Is it possible that it goes on?
It is possible that it goes on. I just do things and then sort of stop and pray and figure out what I need to do next, so… we have to wait and see, but I am certainly open. It has been a really great experience and it seems like it has been really, really well received. So we are all excited about that.
This was the full collection of questions I had in mind. Please feel free if there is something you want to mention…
Yes, please tell the people about Waterfall. Waterfall version 2 just got launched and it is my own streaming app. It has all of my music and all of the music of my bands. Also real cool stuff from solo albums, from projects I did and so on. The new version just came out from it and you can sign up, it is in the app store. You can sign up at waterfallstreaming.com and you can listen to everything and then you can go looking for CD’s and vinyl’s (laughs)
That streaming is for the younger generation…
I had that too man, but once you get used to it, it is so convenient. Everything on your phone, you don’t have to look for anything and you can listen wherever you are. By the pool or while hiking, you can listen anywhere. It is great and it sounds really good too.
