Neal Morse

Neal Morse was born in 1960 in California. He started learning piano from his five years and guitar from his nine years. In 1992, he founded the Spocks Beard band with his brother Alan, in which Neal took care of keyboards and singing. The band will release no less than six albums in less than ten years, under the leadership of the prolific frontman. Spocks Beard thus became one of the most important rock prog bands of the late 1990s/early 2000s. At the dawn of the new millennium, Neal Morse began to create music with other formations, a mania that would never leave him. His first solo album (in which he sings and plays all instruments except drums), eponymous, was released in 1999. In parallel, he created Transatlantic with Mike Portnoy (known at the time as the drummer of Dream Theater), Roine Stolt (the guitarist of The Flower Kings), and Pete Trewavas (bass, Marillion). The supergroup still operates in the very progressive Rock, and almost only consists of stones of more than a quarter of an hour. Transatlantic released SMPT:e and Bridge Across Forever suddenly in 2000 and 2001, each accompanied by a live album (Live In America in 2001 and Live In Europe in 2003). In 2002, just at the time of Snow's release (the first double-album by Spocks Beard), Neal announced that he had become a "born-again" Christian and decided to leave his two bands to devote himself to a solo career by Rock Chrétien. If Spocks Beard will continue without him (without turning to defend Snow, nevertheless), this is the end of Transatlantic. Neal Morse will then multiply the outputs, the tours, and the bands; to a point that it is difficult to have any landmarks in his discography. He released eight Rock Prog albums under his name between 2002 and 2012, and returned in 2018 with Life&Times . If Neal Morse manages writing, singing, keyboard, and guitars on these albums, he is supported by Randy George (Ajalon ) on bass and Mike Portnoy on drums. The three musicians will also release two cover albums under the name Morse Portnoy George (Cover To Cover in 2006 and Cover 2 Cover in 2012). At the same time, between 2005 and 2016, Neal Morse published ten "worship albums", always with lyrics directed towards religion but exploiting a less progressive dimension and more Folk. He is often alone on these albums, which feature simple, much less progressive and generally acoustic tracks. Neal Morse and Mike Portnoy created Yellow Matter Custard , a tribute band to the Beatles , surrounded by Paul Gilbert ( Racer X , Mr. Big ) on guitar and Matt Bissonette on bass. They will not release studio album, but two live double albums exist (2003 and 2011). After working together, Portnoy and Morse decided to reform Transatlantic in 2009, after an intervention by the famous drummer and Roine Stolt at a Neal Morse concert in 2008 to play some Transatlantic songs. The Whirlwind was released in 2009, then Kaleidoscope in 2014. In 2012 Flying Colors was born, a project that brought together (in addition to Neal Morse) the unreducible Mike Portnoy, Dave LaRue (Dixie Dregs) on bass, singer Casy McPherson (from the Indian band Rock Alpha Rev), and Steve Morse (Deep Purple) on six-cords. After an eponymous release in 2012, Second Nature was published two years later. In 2013, he participated in the writing of two tracks of Brief Nocturnes And Dreamless Sleep by Spocks Beard. Finally, Neal Morse announced the creation of The Neal Morse Band , composed of the faithful Randy George and Mike Portnoy (what a surprise), as well as Eric Gilette (guitar and main song) and Bill Hubauer (claviers). Neal Morse takes care of the choirs, and sometimes the second guitar, sometimes the second synthesizer. The Grand Experiment was born in 2015 and The Similarness Of A Dream the following year. In parallel, just over the 2010s, Neal Morse released four live albums under his name alone, two with The Neal Morse Band, three with Transatlantic (in addition to the first two, before the band's hiatus), and two with Flying Colors. The songs written by Neal Morse are often epic, very long, and therefore his concerts last up to three hours. All the live albums mentioned are at least double albums, and many are triple albums.