One of the most prolific and profoundly well respected progressive rock artists in the business today, Neal Morse has earned the acclaim of his peers and millions of fans around the world for his exceptional compositional skills, his ability to weave a compelling story arc through both music and lyrics and for being genuinely a nice fella and solid human being.
Formerly of Spock’s Beard and Transatlantic, Morse had a religious epiphany in 2002, becoming an ardent Christian, which helped cleanse him of some demons, but also revitalized him as an artist as it gave him a renewed sense of purpose. Much of the work he has done as a solo artist since then has been either overtly Christian in tone and tenor, or infused with a tone of positivity, redemption and hope that is applicable and open to those of little or no faith.
In 2014, looking for another creative outlet, one that would allow him to continue to exercise his considerable chops as a writer, musician and vocalist in the world of progressive rock music, he formed the Neal Morse Band, drafting in legendary prog-metal drummer Mike Portnoy (already a long-time friend and collaborator) of Dream Theater, Sons of Apollo and Winery Dogs fame, alongside bassist Randy George, keyboardist Bill Hubauer and guitarist Eric Gillette.
The band released the well-regarded album The Grand Experiment in 2015 and followed it up a year later with the magnificently epic and enthralling double-disc album The Similitude of a Dream. On Jan. 25, they will release a similarly powerful and compendious collection of music, The Great Adventure on Radiant Records, via Metal Blade Worldwide.
The album is a direct sequel to the 2016 opus The Similitude of a Dream (see our interview with Morse about that record here) which was based on the classic book Pilgrim’s Progress, a well-regarded and beloved book, particularly amongst those professing the Christian faith. While the Neal Morse Band album was based loosely on the main narrative from that book, focusing on the primary character, called Christian in the book, but The Traveller on the record, The Great Adventure takes a different perspective, that of one of the Traveller’s sons, who was angry for being abandoned by his dad while he went on his spiritual quest.
But as Morse says, the process of deciding on creating the album as a follow up to Similitude was by no means simple and took a great deal of thought and time.
“The Great Adventure was truly different than any other adventure that this band has been on. And it’s like each guy in the band had a little piece of the puzzle, so there’s this whole mosaic, this whole big picture that God’s trying to create through us. That’s how I see it. And our job, our mission was to discover what that is, what it’s supposed to be. And you don’t always know. It was a hard discovery for me because the band didn’t really want to do another double album; they didn’t want to do a follow up to Similitude that was as big as Similitude,” said Morse, from his home in Nashville.
“I didn’t really want to either, except that I felt like maybe that’s where this was supposed to be, but we only had a few pieces of the puzzle. When we got together last January, we made a single disc version of what would become The Great Adventure, and that was supposed to be the new album. There was just supposed to be the single disc version that we recorded last January. And never in my history of working with Mike Portnoy has it ever happened where we have come away from a 12 to 14 day session and made an album but then one of us felt like it’s not quite there, that we needed to keep working on it. But that’s what happened this time.”
The critical piece of the puzzle, to maintain the analogy, was changing the perspective and point of view of the storyteller throughout the piece to that of the angry younger son.
“In February, I was listening to it and thinking that it was really good, but I didn’t think it was what it’s supposed to be. And around that time, I had a revelation, because I was still mulling over this Pilgrim’s Progress stuff; it wouldn’t leave me alone. And for all the music that we did in January, we didn’t have much in the way of lyrics, just a few key lines. That’s when I had the idea of writing from the angry son’s point of view. Sometimes when I get a key lyrically, it kind of unlocks the path, it unlocks that music for me as well,” Morse said.
“Mike was supposed to return in March to do the drums on the single disc version, and I kind of had to drop the bomb in February that it didn’t feel like that was the right move; it didn’t feel like that was the right thing to do. I felt that we needed more time for it to simmer. I worked on it on my own for a bit, I cut and pasted everything that we did in January and then I wrote a bunch of other stuff and connected it all together. And I wasn’t even keeping track at the time, I was just throwing things against the wall and just going for it and ended up creating a version of The Great Adventure that was two and a half hours long.
“And I presented it to the band and was really surprised that they liked it. I thought I was on a good path, but I wasn’t sure. A lot of times when you’re working on these things, you’re not sure, you’re trying things and so when the whole band got back together, they liked it and wanted to work on this new longer version, which was great because it meant we were all on the same page: Hallelujah, praise the Lord. Then we got together in August and sliced and diced and worked on this version and cut it down to just under two hours, which was the goal. So that’s The Great Adventure that people will be holding in their hands. It was a real walk of trust for me, personally. I say in my official thank yous in the liner notes, thank you Lord that you taught me to trust you even more, because it just seemed like it wasn’t going to happen the way I was feeling it. But it needed to happen the way it did because as a band we need each other. I needed all of the stuff that the band brought, and I needed that extra time to figure out how to fit it all together. It was really meant to be.”
Thematically, although there are overtly Christian overtones to the message of Pilgrim’s Progress, in both the album The Similitude of A Dream and A Great Adventure, people of faith can take the overarching messages as written, or they can be taken in a somewhat different way by those who follow other spiritual paths – or those who as yet haven’t found one.
“With The Great Adventure, the son is angry at being left alone in the City of Destruction, but then he feels the call to follow his father, even though he was angry with him, which I thought was really compelling. Part of the time he wants to confront him, and by the time God finishes dealing with him and he goes on his own journey, he gets to the River of Crossing Over and finds that his dad has already crossed over, so now it’s his time. It’s all metaphoric of course, but that’s kind of the overview,” Morse said.
“He passes through a lot of the same places that his father did, but he handles them quite differently. And I guess the overall message of the album is to seek the higher things, seek the higher spiritual things. You are a spiritual being and you should continue on your journey, wherever you are in it. If you haven’t begun it, begin it. If you’re in the middle of it and are challenged, persevere. What I like about Pilgrim’s Progress is that it’s always progressing, we are always progressing.
“Some people think ‘I should have arrived by now, I shouldn’t be dealing with this struggle any more,’ and it can be a comforting thing to know that it is part of your journey and that you are still on it. If you are still seeking the Lord and still going after him with all your heart, you should expect to have trouble. I want to encourage people, come on, seek your heart’s deepest desire for a love that never dies. That’s really what it’s all about.”
While the band contains his name, and he comes up with most of the musical and lyrical ideas as well as acts as producer and his own record label, Morse is insistent that the Neal Morse Band is a band, and as discussed previously, he feels there is no way he could have made both The Great Adventure and The Similitude of a Dream without Portnoy, George, Hubauer and Gillette.
“The band is a collaborative effort in every way. I wrote a lot of parts, but they aren’t the sum. The other guys brought a lot to the table as well. And then with the organizational part and the structure of the records, just us all sitting in a room together saying, ‘where do we want to go now?’ I don’t even remember who wrote what now exactly, because it became so collaborative. I think that these are definitely band albums all the way and they wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for all five of us,” he said.
The Neal Morse Band hits the road this winter for dates throughout North America, including Feb. 18 at Club Soda in Montreal, Feb. 19 at Salle Sylvain Lelievre in Quebec City and at The Opera House in Toronto on Feb. 21. A jaunt to Europe and the U.K. happens in late March and April.
For more information on the band, tour dates and The Great Adventure, visit http://www.nealmorse.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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