“I just had to say, ‘I don’t want to work on this unless you’re comfortable with having it torn to shreds,’” says five-time Grammy-nominated virtuoso Steve Morse about the writing sessions for the self-titled debut of Flying Colors—his new supergroup with fellow Dixie Dregs bassist Dave LaRue, ex-Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy, former Spock’s Beard keyboardist/vocalist Neal Morse, and Alpha Rev vocalist Casey McPherson. “Otherwise, it’s just like somebody’s solo album.”
Morse can speak authoritatively about walking that fine line between solo work and a true group effort. With 48 album releases over the course of almost as many years, he’s enjoyed both an illustrious solo career and stints as a team member in various high-profile bands. For the Steve Morse Band and the Dregs, he meticulously wrote out parts for all the instruments, leading critics to describe it as “electric chamber music.” Conversely, when he plays with iconic classic-rock bands Kansas and Deep Purple, compromise is the order of the day. “If you’re in a group of five and you get your way 20 percent of the time, that’s pretty good,” says Morse.
Though the Flying Colors project was a bit like a blind date for some members, LaRue had worked with Portnoy before, and of course Morse and LaRue have enjoyed a 20-plus-year working relationship that began when LaRue ended up on a record date with the late T Lavitz, keyboardist for the Dregs until his death in 2010. That meeting led to getting work with Dregs drummer Rod Morgenstein. At the time, the Dregs weren’t together, but they eventually got back together for a one-off demo that ended up kick-starting a reunion. When founding bassist Andy West wasn’t interested, LaRue got the first audition and quickly nabbed the gig.
“He totally knew the stuff—everything we asked him to audition,” Morse says. “That was one of the first times I saw someone walk in and play difficult things after transcribing them all on their own—and with an amazing accuracy ratio, I might add.”
Considering the virtuosity of its members, you might expect Flying Colors to be a self-indulgent spectacle intended to knock Dream Theater off its perch at the top of the prog-rock heap. And it might have gone in that direction had the band not also recruited pop vocalist McPherson, whose previous band’s 2010 album, New Morning, debuted on two Billboard magazine Top 5 charts, to temper the flames.
The band’s self-titled album was released on March 27, 2012, but the fact that the record even happened is somewhat miraculous given the enormous scheduling difficulties inherent in getting five mega-successful musicians together. It took almost a year of attempts and a zillion emails for them to squeeze in nine days in January 2011 to write and record. (To give you an idea, Morse was on tour with Deep Purple when we spoke to him—and he had just wrapped up a tour with his own band nine days prior.)
In addition to giving us insights on their prodigious technique and the gear they used to make Flying Colors soar, Morse and LaRue tell us how Portnoy impacted their symbiotic relationship and reveal how they managed to keep everyone’s strong opinions at bay for the greater good of the album.
You guys have a firmly established
working chemistry. What was it like
adding Mike Portnoy to the mix?
LaRue: I’ve played with Mike a lot, so
we already had a certain chemistry, then
Mike and Steve fell in together. I guess
I was kind of the bridge there. It wasn’t
radically different.
Morse: I was surprised to find that Mike had so many ideas during the writing process. It gave me a little insight into how he sort of spurred on the guys in Dream Theater, too—not that they needed it, because they have so much talent. Mike was surprisingly eclectic. He had a very wide range of things that he was interested in doing. Everyone imagines him doing the double-bass thing at maximum volume up on a riser with Dream Theater, but he sang, too—he sang great. He sang the third harmony. He was really encouraging with things like lyric content, and he was a [veritable] encyclopedia on arrangements.
Given the strong personalities involved,
did the writing sessions require a lot of
compromise?
LaRue: It was interesting [laughs]. As
with any kind of group that’s put together
like that, we have different strengths that
we wanted to be able to exploit, and
everybody was cool about it. Some people
had to give a little here and there, but it
was a real good working arrangement.
Everybody wanted the product to be as
good as possible, and that was the driving
force behind the whole thing. So there
wasn’t conflict.
Morse: It did take some doing, though. I think the first thing is knowing what to expect. I even suggested to these guys that they just bring in an idea, a starting point. That way everyone’s personality will come out by joining in. Having written with groups like Deep Purple, that’s the best way to do it, rather than bringing in a complete song.
Considering the lineup, the record is
fairly restrained in terms of pyrotechnics.
Steve, your solos in songs like
“Fool in My Heart” or “Shoulda Coulda
Woulda,” are more focused on bending
and melodic playing than flash.
Morse: Yeah, technique is most effective
for me if I don’t use it all the time.
LaRue: That’s one of the things I like best about the record. There are a lot of great compositions and the vocals are really nice, but Steve’s stuff kind of sets it apart. It’s pretty unique sounding.
Steve, your bluesy playing on those
songs and on “Kayla” sounds like it’s
coming from a different place than your
average blues fan. Your phrasing and
bending choices are less obvious. Where
does that come from?
Morse: Three big ones I can think of are
Jeff Beck—he’s the guy who can bend one
note to four different places. Then Lynyrd
Skynyrd—they also use bends a lot as part
of their vocabulary. And Ravi Shankar.
When I was a teenager I saw him play
live, and I thought it was cool that you
could bend so many little microtones.
Steve, your solos in “Kayla” and
“Infinite Fire” sound like you’re using
a lot of bebop-ish, strategically placed,
chromatic approach tones. But, given
your strong country and bluegrass influences,
I get the feeling these lines aren’t
coming so much from a jazz thing.
Morse: Well actually that is it. It’s the
same exact leading notes, as you said. I
tend to use any chromatic notes as grace
notes or leading tones to very tonal,
diatonic notes. That works over jazz and
it works exactly the same for bluegrass
and, I think, over melodic rock. Different
producers have different ideas about that.
Some would say, “Jazz Police!” and make
a noise on the talkback microphone like a
siren and stop you and say, “Let’s not do
any of that.” Some producers think rock
needs to be very restrictive.
So you’ve actually had people ask you to
tone it down?
Morse: Oh yeah. A lot.
“All Falls Down” is the most over-the-top
cut on the album, in terms of virtuosity.
Morse: I’ve always written very difficult
parts for guitar—I’ve enjoyed challenging
myself that way. I think you have to
work hard on technique in order to have
it available.
Dave, you play a wicked-ass solo with
a gnarly tone on that one. Are you tapping
there?
LaRue: Yeah, it’s two-handed tapping. I
used a Chellee Odelya distortion pedal on
that one. It’s made for guitar and allows
you to substitute chips [IC modules] in
the unit itself to get different sounds.
It also has two 3-way mode switches to
change the tones up.
Your tapping is really clean. Some players
put hair elastics on the headstock to
keep the open strings from ringing. Is
that how you achieved that clarity?
LaRue: Sometimes I do use that trick—
and I think I did for that one, actually.
Steve, “All Falls Down” demonstrates
your unwavering allegiance to alternate
picking. Even when you play triads
super fast on nonadjacent strings, you
alternate-pick every note, as opposed to
using, say, hybrid picking. What are the
advantages of that?
Morse: Accuracy and the ability to improvise.
In other words, I can play pretty
much any arpeggio and I don’t have to
plan out where the pick’s going to go
or which strings I’m going to cross. The
down side is, ultimately, I’m playing with
less speed than someone who’s using a
hybrid or sweeping approach—there’s no
question about it. There’s a price you pay
in terms of sheer speed, somewhere around
20 or 30 percent. But, more importantly
to me, I can hear something or imagine
something and play it as long as it’s within
my technical capability, speed-wise. With
string skipping, depending on the way
I hold the pick, I’m just about the same
speed going across the strings as going
linearly. But that’s down a good notch or
two or more from somebody like John
Petrucci, who can play much, much faster.
It’s a different approach.
Flying Colors enjoying a moment of levity: (left to right) Dave LaRue, keyboardist Neal Morse, Steve Morse, vocalist Casey McPherson, and
drummer Mike Portnoy. Photo by Joey Pippin
A few months ago, John told us he’s
started combining legato techniques
with alternate picking to get to what he
calls the “hyper-speed” level. Have you
ever considered something like that?
Morse: I’ve tried it just when I’m noodling
around through an amp, and unless
I put in a lot of gain—and I mean a lot of
gain, like, with a booster or a distortion
pedal—before the amplifier, I can’t even
come close to making it sound the same.
I’m picking hard and the results sound
too obvious. It would be more successful
for me if I used a thinner pick and really
dedicated some time to it. The reason I
like the alternate picking is to have the
flexibility where I can pick up an acoustic
and, after a brief period of adjusting, be
able to play basically the same stuff that
I could on an electric. Whereas, if I were
incorporating a mixture of, say, hammering
and alternate picking, it would be
super obvious on acoustic.
Do you keep your picking hand at a
specific angle, and if so, what are the
advantages of doing it that way?
Morse: I do spend a lot of time working
on my right hand. I’m left-handed,
too, and that may be part of it. As my
body gets more miles on it, I’m preparing
to deal with tendonitis, arthritis,
and stuff that inevitably happens when
you’ve been playing for 46 years. I have
three different right-hand techniques
involving the pick. One of them is that
I rest the heel of my right hand on the
bridge and make an opening between
my fingers and that heel, and I pick in
that opening. I play that way for control,
especially at high volumes, like when I’m
trying to get sustain and feedback from
the amp. That’s the super-controlled
way—everything is muted except the
string I’m playing.
For faster stuff, I hold my pick between two fingers and my thumb, and use the twisted motion in the wrist that I normally do—but it’s not as tied down. That’s the position I tend to end up with when I’m playing fast. I have to be very careful to keep [extraneous] notes from running away by muting with my left-hand thumb a lot. The third technique I’m working on is a traditional grip like John Petrucci, John McLaughlin, or Al Di Meola might use, with the thumb inside of the finger. That’s very relaxing, but I don’t have the control to jump strings with that technique. I basically do that when I’m jump to that technique in the middle of a phrase if I just have an eighth-note, or I can change to that technique to rest my wrist if it’s kind of cramping up from doing the other one too much.
How about you, Dave—pick or fingers?
LaRue: I’ll use a heavy pick, but only
rarely. I’m much better with my fingers.
I can play almost any kind of grooving,
straight-ahead kind of thing with a pick,
but anything that’s really, really intricate,
forget it. I prefer to play with my fingers,
although sometimes it’s just idiomatically
better to play with a pick. For most of
the fingerstyle stuff I do, I usually play a
Music Man Bongo.
What other basses do you use?
LaRue: All I play is Music Man basses. I
think on this record I played the Bongo 4,
the Bongo 5, and the Sterling. I love the
slap sound of the Sterling, and used it on
“Forever in a Daze.” I also used a Bongo
fretless on one of the ballads.
Steve, you’re also a big Music Man
advocate. Which of your signature
models—the original or the newer
SM-Y2D—are you using nowadays?
Morse: The Y2D is the one I use most for
Deep Purple. For some reason, it sounds
more like a rock ’n’ roll guitar—a little
bit more Les Paul-like. My original fourpickup
signature model is my most versatile
guitar and has more of a live sound.
It may be because it’s got a bigger [pickguard]
cavity and the pickups are hanging
from the pickguard. That’s the one
I could play country stuff, a jazz thing,
rock, or Dixie Dregs stuff on. That’s my
main axe when I do solo things, Steve
Morse Band things.
Steve, when you play lower on the neck
you use the bridge pickup, but when
you play higher up, you switch to the
neck pickup. Why?
Morse: It’s part of finding the sweet
spot. Basically, I just use the pickup with
the most harmonics for low notes, and
as I cross over somewhere around the
10th fret or so, then I switch to the neck
humbucker or sometimes both. As I get
a little bit higher, then I go to the neck
position only. I don’t like shrill sounds,
so doing that fattens up the sound and
relieves some of that ear piercing that
can happen. When you distort the signal
by turning up the input gain, it’s
basically chopping the wave, and those
chopped edges make a very sharp harmonic.
Those are perceived as high end
by our ears. It’s nicer sounding to me to
take away that edge.
Do you change between pickups in the
middle of a solo instinctively?
Morse: Yeah. A lot of times the producer
will say, “It sounds like you did an overdub
there.” Well, I just changed the pickups.
Steve Morse's Gear
Guitars
Music Man Steve Morse Signature model,
Music Man SM-Y2D Signature model, Buscarino nylonstring,
Larrivée steel-string, Babicz steel-string
Amps
ENGL Steve Morse Signature E656 heads
driving ENGL 4x12 cabinets
Effects
TC Electronic Flashback Delay and Looper,
Ernie ball volume pedal
Strings, Picks, and Accessories
Ernie Ball electric strings (.010, .013, .016, .026,
.032, and .043), dropped-D guitars have a .046 or
.048 for the lowest string, Ernie Ball medium-heavy
picks, TC Electronic PolyTune, DiMarzio ClipLock,
and Ernie Ball straps
Dave Larue's Gear
Basses
Music Man Bongo 4- and 5-string, Bongo
fretless, and Sterling 4-string
Amps
Ampeg SVT4-Pro head, Ampeg SVT cabinets,
Ampeg SVX software (studio)
Effects
TC Electronic G-System, Ernie Ball volume
pedal, Chellee Odelya distortion
Strings, Picks, and Accessories
Ernie Ball Extra Slinkys (.040, .060, .070, and .095) on
4-strings, with an added .125 on 5-strings, Music Man
heavy picks, Music Man straps
What amps are you guys using?
LaRue: I use Ampeg SVT4-PRO heads
and SVT cabinets. In the studio, I use
[the IK Multimedia AmpliTube 3 Custom
Shop plug-in] Ampeg SVX. When I sort
of virtually hook up my rig, it sounds
just like my real rig. Any amp track on
the record is the Ampeg SVX software,
although we did mix in some amp on
some things.
Morse: I’m using my signature ENGL E656 amp, which has three channels. Channel 1 is beautiful and clean—yet so smooth sounding. I even plug my electric classical guitar into it. There’s also a boost that will get it distorted on the clean sound if you want to get that ’60s sound. The clean and distorted channels are set up so that if you put all the dials at about 1 o’clock and plug any guitar in, I guarantee it will sound great. Channel 3 is the thing I like best. It’s just a do-it-all, great distortion sound that’ll clean up as you turn down the guitar. It will still have clarity. And when you play with distortion, it has a certain transparency in the high end that, to me, is less irritating. It cuts through and the clarity is there without having to be loud.
Channel 3 has four mid controls, too.
What’s that all about?
Morse:The third channel is all about
bringing lines out without making them
louder. In Deep Purple, for example, it’s a
real struggle to get the guitar to come out.
Especially when we’re playing European
shows, because they don’t want us to turn
the guitar up loud—they think it’s offensive
to the European audience. I don’t quite
follow that, but my solution is to try to
change the sound of the guitar when I solo
so that it will come through. It may not be
the ideal sound for rhythm, but by changing
the midrange you definitely make it
sound more audible. You can set up channel
3 with this midrange, and then hit a
button and have a different range.
Dave, your rig is pretty simple these days.
LaRue: I took all the crap out of my rack
and got it down to the TC Electronic
G-System. I love that thing. Now I just
have that, with two cables running back
to the SVT4-PRO. I use an Ernie Ball
volume pedal in front of it, and in the
inserts I patch in the Odelya. It’s a really
nice sounding unit that I use live and in
the studio.
I have the overdrive set up to get that lead sound that you heard on the record, which is more of an out-front, soloing distortion. The one thing that I would like to do is be able to switch to a less-distorted but still kind of a grungy sound for playing a dirty bass track behind everything— not an out front kind of thing. Just to get a little grunge in sometimes. Right now, it’s either all or nothing.
Before we end, let’s settle one thing
once and for all: Although the playing
is more restrained on the Flying Colors
album, people generally regard you as
chops guys. Where do you stand on the
eternal feel-versus-speed debate?
Morse: I sort of have to distinguish myself
from the guys that have soooo many chops,
and John Petrucci is the perfect example.
In terms of being a virtuoso, John has
taken it as far as anybody I’ve ever seen
on electric guitar. I guess I just think of
myself more as a writer than a guitar guy.
Guitar is my instrument, so when I solo
I’m basically writing a little bit on the
spot. For me, the content is everything.
If I’m ever in a situation where I time it
wrong, where I run overtime in a solo and
end up putting in a few bars of just stuff
that doesn’t mean anything, it deeply disappoints
me. Sometimes things like that
do happen if you guess wrong.
LaRue: It’s all about music. The reason I love Steve’s music is because there’s such a depth of melody—he always plays melodies. Although the facility thing kind of separates us [from the pack] a little bit, it sets us apart because we can do so many different things. Steve has this intervallic kind of depth that a lot of guys who just play scales can’t get into their lines. They play too fast and too much of it, and it just sounds like they’re practicing. Steve’s lines have always had more depth.
There are guys with chops who have feel and there are guys with chops who have no feel. I’m not going to name names, but we all know these guys who can play riffage for days that really has no musical value. There are also guys who just use that as an excuse—they have no chops and they have no feel. It’s kind of an insecurity thing.
YouTube It
For a taste of the fretboard phenoms that make Flying Colors soar,
check out the following clips of Steve Morse and Dave LaRue.
Watch Morse and LaRue tear it up on “Tumeni
Notes,” one of Morse’s signature scorchers.
Before Flying Colors, Morse and LaRue blew
audiences away with their jazz fusion-meetsbluegrass
band, the Dixie Dregs. This full-length
concert video of the Dixie Dregs from Toad’s
Place offers a stunning display of the duo’s
super-human virtuosity.
In this live version of “Cruise Control,”
Morse and LaRue go absolutely bonkers
trading licks shortly after the drum solo
(beginning at approximately 2:31).