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
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—every-
thing 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 mem-
bers, 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 tem-
per 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.
