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Interview with Neal Morse - Neal Morse
On December 15th 2003 I was fortunate enough to interview Neal Morse in person at my own church here in Nashville, TN. I had a lot to ask and he had a lot to say! Soon after the interview I got real sick and it has taken me forever to get this typed up. So sorry to Neal for the delay and apologies to anyone else who wanted to read this sooner. I found Neal to be as genuine a person as I have ever met, sincere and very friendly. I hope you enjoy reading this and find yourself as enamored by him as I was that day in December.
(David) Now that you're a Christian do you have a favorite Bible Verse or Character that inspires you on a day to day basis?
(Neal) 2nd Corinthians 10:5 "Bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ". I think about that a lot, I think about bringing all my thoughts under His obedience, guidance and Lordship. So yeah that's one, there's a lot. I've been thinking about just the simple statement that Paul makes in 2nd Corinthians,"Oh Corinthians our heart is enlarged". I have been thinking about Him enlarging our hearts! I felt that in Europe. I felt like "oh my heart is enlarged to You". That's the great thing about Jesus, He's the only one who can change the heart of man, to take out the stony heart and put in the one made of flesh so you can really feel His love and you can love your wife and children properly. I feel like until He does that work you can't really love correctly. You can love but it's gotta lot of other stuff in there, stuff in there that binds you, all these things, but it's not like a free gift. There's something about when you know God has given you something as a gift then it's free to you and if you take it for yourself then it has something that binds you, but anyway we could probably just go on couldn't we? (Laughter) That's the way it is with Christians man there's never really any struggle to find things to talk about (laughter) it's more like a struggle to find a way to get a word in(laughter) well it's because everyone's excited about what God's doing you know?
(David) I used the word character but really its people, so who is your favorite person in the Bible?
(Neal) Well Jesus is really good! (Laughs)
(David) I figured you'd probably go there. (laughs)
(Neal) I identify with Abraham quite a lot, something about being a friend of God, it's great and you know the whole thing with him being willing to sacrifice his son and the angel of the Lord coming, saying you don't have to, I was sorta waiting for the Lord to do that with me and Spock's Beard. I was like, "I am willing now, I'm flying out here now [Nashville] You can stop me anytime!" ( laughs)
(David) I guess you've probably found out by now that Nashville seems to be a magnet for new Christians, old Christians too, hardly anybody here is from Nashville originally?
(Neal) Yeah isn't that interesting? Well first of all the church I go to moved from California to here[Nashville] so it's almost all Californians or people that were in California for along time anyway, but then it seems like everybody I hang around with is from some other state, like this guy I was just having lunch with he's from Chicago and there's Rick Altizer He's from California. It is interesting most of the people at Church are outside of here. Where are you from David?
(David) I am from Virginia actually, but raised in North Carolina. Moved out to Nashville once before but God brought me back here and I met my wife here at my Church.
Well here's another question for you, Does life get easier after Salvation?
(Neal) Wow!(Laughs) So many things are so different you know? The biggest thing, and there are tons of things, as the great gospel song says "He's done so much for me I cannot tell it all"(laughs) The greatest thing is, besides just like the lifting of the general burden of sin and not having the guilt, is being able to come to God without condemnation you know? (Quotes Bible) "Therefore there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" and " walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh. There's that thing of just being able to come to God with that kind of a clean feeling and I'm making mistakes but the Lord knows my heart and that I am trying my best to do His will and it's sincere and it has to be I think or there just wouldn't be any point.(laughs) It reminds me of this Church marquee I saw once and my wife and I always joke about it, it said, " First rule: Never lie to God" and I thought that that was really a funny notion, i think I saw that when I was unsaved, and I thought it was really funny then like, "hey God I made a million dollars last year" it's like what, lie to God? You know it's really funny.(laughs)
(David) Do you understand what it means now? [The Marquee]
(Neal) Yeah I understand that there are things that are hidden in our own hearts. The Lord reveals those things. Thank God He doesn't reveal them all at once! (laughs)
(David) Oh yeah it's like you'd blow up or something! Hehe
(Neal) The thing I'm most relieved about is that I'm no longer trying to make it in the world, that was a huge burden on my life. I thought God's will for me was to get my music well known in the world and if I hadn't done that I was a total failure and I was just miserable because I felt like I had not fulfilled who I was. So that's the greatest burden lifted! I've given my life to God and I'm no longer trying to climb that tree of worldly success. I don't care about that, I care about what God wants. You know if God wants me to tour, I'll tour. If I don't feel like the Lord's in it I'm not interested in doing things just to have success in the world because if that was the case I would have stayed where I was because we were getting fairly successful between Spocks and Transatlantic. Between both of those things I was doing pretty well, but if you're outside of the will of God then it's all pointless you know?
(David) Well yeah it probably would've failed eventually anyway!
(Neal) Oh yeah I'm sure it would have! That's what I told the guys in Spocks,"if I stay this will be bad for you too". It'd be like Jonah getting in that boat, you know he's gonna take everybody down! (Laughs)
(David) Who have you been listening to lately music wise?
(Neal) My brother Richard was down last week and I was listening to his stuff and he was wanting my opinion on it. It's singer/songwriter kinda stuff. So I been listening to a lot of singer/songwriter albums like Chris Rice's "Deep Enough To Dream" which is an album I really really like a lot and I was playing him Mark Cohn's first album which I think is a quintessential singer/songwriter. So I been rotating those in the car the last couple of weeks.
(David) So how is Richard's stuff?
(Neal) It's good! Real nice. Very poignant, sensitive, singer/songwriter kinda stuff.
(David) Full band type of thing?
(Neal) Yeah. We'll he's just trying to figure out how he wants to go about doing it and who he wants to use, who he's gonna get to produce it. So I was trying to help him with all that you know? It's gonna be a good one!
(David) Have you gotten any Michael W. Smith comparisons to your voice yet? The last few songs on Testimony seem to be in that style and you sound a little like him on those.
(Neal) Actually years before I was Christian in the 1980's some people would tell me I sounded kinda like him and I didn't hear that for along time after that. I went and saw him do his thing recently at an outdoor concert..
(David) So do you hear it a bit?
(Neal) Oh yeah I can hear it you know, particularly on the ballads. It's kinda bright. I have a bright voice sometimes, depending on how I'm singing, but I haven't heard that comparison much because I think the worlds (Christian Music and Prog Rock) are so separated. You know everyone in the progressive rock world, I don't think they have even heard of Michael W. Smith (laughs) It's interesting how separated all the musical worlds are these days you know?
(David) Oh yeah I know. Well in my opinion about it God bringing you into His Kingdom, it's probably gonna cross-pollinate a lot. I think it's gonna help Christians who don't know about progressive rock music, particularly really talented musicians playing and that skill level, you know God called the Benjamites in the Old Testament to be really skilled, not that that's lacking in the Christian world.
(Neal) Yeah it says in the Psalms to play skillfully and play loud! (laughs)
(David) hahaha yeah play loud! So yeah I think that hopefully future albums will bring those two worlds closer together you know!
(Neal) Yeah I hope so! I mean I want whatever God wants. I didn't have any idea what I was gonna do. This whole Testimony album kind of exploded in my mind and I felt like God was doing something you know, cause I was ready to give it all up and clean toilets or whatever!
(David) Oh yeah I know, you get there to that point of surrendering to Him and letting Him worry about it all.
(Neal) I felt like it was important for me to tell my audience what happened and I wanted to tell them in a way that they could hopefully feel what happened. I like to give people not just a mental thing but an actual emotional experience that they can actually feel what I'm talking about and I think that has happened particularly at the live shows for a lot of people and they maybe thought "I don't really believe in God but I feel like something's there or I felt something different at that concert". I don't know if you have read on the message board but early on after Testimony released there were some really cool posts that were like, "you know I am an agnostic but I was driving along in traffic and I was listening to "I Am Willing" and I just started crying, what's the deal?' and some other guy writes back," yeah me too ,what's going on?' (laughs a little) Yeah it's kind of amusing cause you should probably be able to figure it out because I'm singing about God's love and it's all about if this is true and You can come into my heart I am willing to have You do it. Saying that and then someone listening to it and them having that kind of emotional reaction to it, there's something in their hearts that feels that way towards God. The heart is deceitful so they don't know it's in their hearts, like there's things still in my heart I don't know about yet but that's the great thing about music that can get in there and unleash these things that we don't even know is there! Praise God it's a wonderful thing! You can bypass the brain and go right into the heart and start massaging the heart, and it's just cool, real cool!
I just want to say that Beethoven used to write on his sheet music, "From my heart to THE heart". Meaning you know from my heart to your heart and that's the goal isn't it? To pour out your heart in piece of music and like you put it out there and they can receive it, they can kinda pick it up and actually feel what you're writing about, wow!
(David) Yeah that's pretty heavy!
(Neal) It's a wonderful possibility and it's a dangerous one too! Because out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks [Bible quote]. So if you're really angry and have a lot of ugly things in your heart that will come out too. So all the people that can relate to that and are attracted to it, they get it and put that in their minds and feed each other on their anger and things, and so it can be a bad thing too!
(David) What are your thoughts on being self-taught vs. being a trained musician?
(Neal) Wow that's interesting that should be coming up because someone else asked me that in an interview this morning. My son is in piano lessons and he just figured out he can play by ear and he is starting to not want to read so his teacher is trying to make it fun. So she's calling him like the Music Investigator. She wrote out a bunch of well known Christmas songs and wants him to identify it so he's got to read it and play it close enough to how it is to recognize it and then write out the title. I have been dealing with him about that because he's really resisting doing it. So it's kinda funny you asked that because we are dealing with that in our house right now and we want him to do both. It seems like a lot of times people don't do both and a lot of times it seems like people are really good readers. Like they're really good at reading and playing right off the page or they're really creative and they write but don't read a note .So I don't know, I'd like for my children to do both. So I think it would be best if you could do both. It hinders me that I don't read well. Like if I wanted to orchestrate something I would have to go back to college to learn how to do it. I don't do my orchestrations, I have to hire people to do it. I play it on a keyboard and I know what I want so I can write out string arrangements and stuff to a very simple degree but I write it all in concert pitch you know but I don't know how to write it all in their keys. It's just something that's a little complicated so I usually end up hiring somebody to do it. I hired Chris Carmichael to write out the arrangements and stuff for Testimony and it worked out great.
(David) oh yeah, yes it did! Ok here's a fun question, Analog versus digital recording?
(Neal) I think Analog sounds better but digital is so functional. The editing capabilities are so fantastic. You get used to that really fast. You know the whole concept of UNDO! (Laughter) Like with tape there's no UNDO and if you've recorded over it it's gone! (We both laugh) After you work on Pro-Tools for awhile that's becomes a really weird concept to you. I did something on tape and we recorded over a bit of it and I was like wow it's just gone forever, there's no way to get it back! Doing Testimony was my first album on computer and I really think it had so many advantages.
(David) It's still a very warm record though.
(Neal) Well what we did was we took everything out of the Pro-Tools rig and ran it into an Analog board and into as much analog stuff as we could. So I would say a combination of the two is best.
(David) How hard is it to produce yourself? How do you drive yourself when you get to those places where you're banging your head against the wall?
(Neal) It is hard to make a record because I have all the responsibility of making all the decisions and that's a hard thing! You know when Jerry came in to work on the Testimony album I really felt the Lord dealing with me to use him cause I had engineered my own over dubs by myself for a really long time. So here I am, I quit my job and I hired a guy to do what I used to do and that really just didn't make much sense, but the Lord kept dealing with me to use [Jerry]. It was really good cause we got to kick ideas off each other and deciding," Was that section good enough or not?" I'm the record company too, so basically I'll do the whole thing. Artwork, everything. I just produce the whole entire thing. Hiring everybody, plus me, to do it and there's nobody over me telling me what to do and approving or not approving. So it can be hard sometimes cause the entire responsibility is on me, and it's a blessing, but it can be hard sometimes. I think it's good, I like it, I don't think I'd do well under the old style of labels where they would reject your whole album or something.
(David) What's your favorite, if there is just one, what's your all time favorite piece of gear?
(Neal) Hammond and a Leslie man, (laughs) I mean come on yeah!
(David) Well yeah you're a keyboard guy right?
(Neal) Oh well I'm really into guitar too. I really like my Boss GT5 guitar processor from the 90's. I didn't even buy it. A friend of mine bought it. A guy who I think had a lot of money at the time, he bought it and I didn't have anything at the time. I was really struggling, but he was like "I don't really like this thing, I'm just using it for tuner, you want it?" So he gave it to me and it's really cool. I really like the spacey sounds in it and that's basically what I used for my guitar rig on tour, that and a Marshall amp.
(David) Did it find it's way onto Testimony?
(Neal) Yeah. I used the POD also and it was kinda split between the two depending on what I was going for. I pretty much know immediately what I want to use on a song. If I just want a regular sound I use the POD, but we did end up re-amping stuff later on, but when I was doing those guitars I was in demo mode and I didn't know that that stuff was gonna stay. A lot of times when I'm working on a piece of music I just like to get stuff down as quick and easy as I can so I can evaluate it and see if I still like it.
(David) What POD did you use, the XT or 2.0?
(Neal) Oh the old one (2.0)
(David) I've got the POD XT myself and it's cool. It's got some good sounds on it but the old one, the 2.0, has got some sounds on it that they failed to include on the new one that I liked better.
(Neal) Oh really?
(David) yeah.
(Neal) It's funny how they do that. A lot of times I don't upgrade. If I'm happy with something I just leave it cause a lot of times you upgrade and it doesn't have the thing you really like, it's strange but they do that.
(David) Yeah they do that with software a lot!
(Neal) Oh Yeah you're right, they do that with software a lot! (Laughs) Yeah you're happy with something and then they always try and dangle the carrot," Oh but this version does this and that and you really should have this one". Back to the GT5 thing, I used it on the solo for the 2nd Overture. I thought that was cool in particular. I just really like the spacey sounds in it, a patch called Fantasy I think. I've never programmed anything in it I just use all the factory stuff. I'm really simple that way. I just use whatever sounds good!
(David) Well that's all old stuff. What about anything new? Any new gear you're digging right now?
(Neal) Well I shouldn't talk about it cause they didn't give me an endorsement(laughs)but I really like this Roland Combo keyboard I got for the tour. It's cool except for one fatal flaw. I'll talk about the good things first. It has good synth, pretty good organ, VK7 quality organ, decent piano and strings, and you can layer and split between any of those things where as before, like on the Transatlantic tour, I had to have one keyboard for piano and synth and then the VK7 for Organ but the Roland Combo has drawbars on it too.
It worked out on the tour ok but it does this thing, well like my old keyboard you could hold the patch. Push the Hold button and change the patch and it will Hold the sound till you start playing again. So you could change sounds seamlessly live, which is great, but with this Roland Combo thing no matter what you do, it has almost a full second of silence when you change patches, no matter what you do! So I called them up and I was like " This can't be, how are you supposed to use this for a live gig?" and they were like " Sorry that's just they way it is" but I managed to work around it live. I would just stop playing a couple of bars early on something and with an 8 piece band you really don't catch it much in the live sound, but it bugs me (Laughs) but it's still a cool piece of gear regardless, even though they didn't give me one. (laughs)
(David) How about your home studio is it done, you still working on it?
(Neal) No it's done. I haven't done anything in it so it's just sitting there till I work on the next record or something.
(David) Do you use it for business or just personal, do you let people use it or anything?
(Neal) Well I would let people do it but it's in my house you know. It has a separate entrance, it's attached to the garage. So I would have to know them real well before that kinda thing would happen. It's mainly just my personal studio.
(David) Is that what I saw in the Spock's DVD?
(Neal) No that's not what you saw on the DVD. That's the office.
(David) There's a song on Testimony called "It's All I Can Do". I can really relate to that song, even as a Christian, but I have felt myself at that place sometimes, even lately, but not to the intense degree that you wrote that song from, but still having a hard time. Not with belief in God or anything, well it's personal and I won't get into it here but I was wondering have you gone back there since you have become a Christian? Maybe not to that degree but have you gotten close or anything? I mean I have been on the upside like "Oh To Feel Him" and then to "It's all I Can Do" you know?
(Neal) Well yeah, sometimes you can go to both places on the same day?
(David) How long have you been a Christian now?
(Neal) 3 years.
(David) Have you found yourself hitting those parts on the album yet? You know when you first come to Christ there's this fire that just consumes you for Him and living in the world they try and throw buckets of water on you and try to dowse that out of you sometimes.You really have to try and struggle to keep that fire going sometimes, so have you hit any of those places yet?
(Neal) I hit some of those "It's All I Can Do" moments when I was in the Valley Of Decision [biblical reference] about whether or not to quit Spocks. That was really a hard thing, that was real trial, but I haven't been back there very much to that degree. Yeah, so Praise God! But everyday, honestly, has been so much more love and wonderful since I gave my life to the Lord and that's what I want to tell people about and He's so good you know? That's the message man. He is a loving Father and he knows what's best for you and you know I think a lot of people have it that God's out to get them you know, sometimes life can seem that way man and I can understand that. That's me sometimes you know? It's like " Oh God why have You cursed me?" You know when I said, "Why give me this ocean that nobody wants to get too near?"(lyric reference) What I was really saying was "Why did You give me this gift of music that nobody seems to want to hear?" I was like Why? Why?! (Laughs) I know it's hard sometimes but I keep telling people to just keep seeking Him and He will answer. He's a great rewarder of those who diligently seek Him [bible quote] and He will deliver you, yeah Amen!
Ok so that's all I got this time. Neal had to jet off to another interview. Thanks for reading and make sure to go to Neal's web site for tour info and a cool message board to chat on as well as a link to his own record label called Radiant records where you can find all of today's coolest progressive rock albums to buy!
www.nealmorse.com and www.radiantrecords.com
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Written by David - 1/30/2004 |
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RevelationZ Comments
| Comment by Mads (Anonymous) - Friday, January 30, 2004 | I had the pleasure of talking with Neal back when Snow was released and he really is a nice person... p.s I really dig "Testimony" even as a non christian, the the lyrics and the music really speaks to me in a really cool way...
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| Comment by The Fat Friar (Anonymous) - Saturday, January 31, 2004 | Yeah Mads.
I read that interview actually....he is such a cool cat...not stuck up or full of himself at all....very humble and average joe kinda guy. Testimony is awesome! So was Snow although they are both alot to take in at once...takes a while to get the whole thing in your head! hehe
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