NEAL MORSE BAND TO DROP DOUBLE LP
Renamed NMB, the quintet’s Innocence And Danger is the record they “set out to make”.
The Neal Morse Band – now named NMB – will release fourth album Innocence And Danger on August 27 via InsideOut.
Unlike its recent predecessors, it’s not a concept album, but despite their attempt to avoid it, it’s another double album.
“I don’t want it to sound like I dropped the ball,” Neal Morse says, “but I told the guys before we started that I wasn’t going to bring much music in. I stepped back and they stepped forward. It all came together so easily.”
When drummer Mike Portnoy realised they’d amassed 80 minutes of material, “we decided we didn’t want to relegate anything, so we had to add a little more music.”
Among two epics of 20 and 30 minutes in duration, and a couple of “poppy” four-minute pieces, there’s also a cover of Simon & Garfunkel classic Bridge Over Troubled Water. “Someone else suggested it and I said, ‘I love that song… maybe we could do a sort of Yes-style version?’” Morse recalls.
Yes were also an indirect influence on his lyrics, which he says “flowed” out of him. “They’re very personal,” he reports. “I was thinking things like, my kids just got old enough and moved out, and bringing them up was very important to me, so Do It All Again came out because I would do it all again. Another time, I was talking to Jon Anderson in a podcast and he inspired some lyrics too. There was a lot of freedom because it didn’t have to fit with a concept.”
The rebadging to NMB came about after they all agreed they wanted to be seen as a group. “We didn’t ever really want to use my name, but the label needed a name they could sell,” Morse says. “And it is a band – you don’t always get everything you want!” He illustrates his point with the album title: “We went through lots of things and someone said, ‘Innocence And Danger,’ but I wasn’t feeling it until I saw Thomas Ewerhard’s artwork, the two masks, which Mike had a lot to do with. Then I got it.”
But he has no reservations about the finished product: “This is actually the album we set out to make. These guys just elevate me.”
NMB will soon release US tour dates for October 2021 and European dates for spring 2022. Morse reports he has more projects “in the queue”, which will also be unveiled in due course.
See www.nealmorse.com for more information.
“I stepped back, they stepped forward. It all came together.”