Neal Morse
“In 2003 i decided to check out spock’s beard – that was my first port of call [for neal morse].
The first hit on youTube was the track Wind at my back, and then i discovered Transatlantic. i became a neal morse super-fan and started collecting all the records that were available. We released our first album, aquarius, in 2010, and at that time i was really into neal’s stuff and i think a lot of the [spock’s beard] snow album inspired a lot of the lyrical content in aquarius. i’d never try and copy what he does, but it certainly was an influence.
“i was fortunate enough to perform a couple of songs with him at 2015’s cruise To The edge – myself and mike portnoy put on the chris squire tribute concert, and i was invited to sing two yes cover songs with neal in the band. That was a really important milestone in my career – here’s an artist i’d looked up to and he’s on stage with me! he took haken on a short run of scandinavia shows in 2015 too, and it was just such a joy. The quality of his output is so consistent. he’s such a prolific artist.”