In preparation for The Neal Morse Band’s upcoming release titled ‘The Great Adventure’ Metal Wani’s Jonathon Rose had a chat with main man Neal Morse about the new album. As it is a sequel to the highly successful and critically acclaimed ‘The Similitude Of A Dream’ the background of the new album, and the desire to write a sequel was discussed at length.
‘Well sometimes things just want to happen and you can’t seem to get away from it… I had written a couple pieces, I think “Vanity Fair” was one and a couple other things that we wound up not using that were obviously pointing toward that Similitude 2, you know, a follow up. But, it didn’t seem like the band wanted to go there and it didn’t seem like I had enough ideas. I worked on it a little bit on my own and I think one of the ideas that came from that was seeking a love that never dies. It has a way to put it to talk about it sort of poetically about what he’s going after.’
Band discussions eventually reached the point where the idea was abandoned, and they instead wrote and recorded a single disk, stand alone album. But still the story kept nagging Neal, ‘I kind of sat with that for a while and then I think it was in at the end of January and February I just I began to feel like what it really wanted to be was this follow up to Similitude which would be called The Great Adventure. I remember Mike (Portnoy) had said if we ever do one it needs to be called the Great Adventure. Because we say ‘and let the great adventure now begin’ at the end of the first album. I thought that was a great idea but I just didn’t have it, I didn’t feel like I couldn’t push it through because I wasn’t receiving the whole thing. It was difficult, it was really difficult.’
Despite the difficulties, Neal formed a lengthy 2 ½ hour version of the album which he shared with the reconvened band, and this time they latched onto it. As Neal, and Mike are two of the busiest men in prog and are endlessly either recording, or touring, future plans were discussed. – ‘I told the guys in July, the thing to do would be, if we were really bold, we would say we’re going to release this in January and debut it on Cruise to the Edge even though it’s not finished yet. So that’s what we did. We put it out there that we were going to do it, but we didn’t really know if we were going to make it.’ It was also confirmed that their band Flying Colors has been reaching the end of recording their new album as well, and a release date can be expected sometime midsummer.
The band will begin their world wide tour in the beginning of February in Neal’s home town of Nashville, TN before continuing on to the wider premier during Cruise To The Edge. The highly anticipated, and already well received (insert link to review?) ‘The Great Adventure’ will be released in several formats on January 25th.
