{"id":23144,"date":"2014-09-23T07:00:18","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T21:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/?p=23144"},"modified":"2014-09-21T19:58:19","modified_gmt":"2014-09-21T09:58:19","slug":"mike-portnoy-of-flying-colors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/2014\/09\/mike-portnoy-of-flying-colors\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Portnoy of Flying Colors"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n<\/a>\u201cThis time around we were able to breathe and enjoy as we now knew what each other\u2019s personalities were like and we now knew what the sound and style and direction of the music was because we had already established that. So I think this time we were able to just relax and let everyone breathe a little more.\u201d<\/p>\n

From Bio: It started with a simple idea: virtuoso musicians and a pop singer joining to make new-fashioned music the old fashioned way. A band followed, evolving into Flying Colors: Mike Portnoy (drums, vocals), Dave LaRue (bass), Neal Morse (keyboards, vocals), Casey McPherson (lead vocals), and Steve Morse (guitar). Together, they create a unique fusion of vintage craftsmanship, contemporary music and blistering live performances. \u00a0What began as an unlikely premise had become a reality more rewarding than any had imagined. Refreshing, classic, old and new\u2014Flying Colors is saturated with the many styles, tones and hues of its artists.<\/p>\n

Being the last victim in a long day of interviews for Mike, or as he put it and found amusing, I was the last guy in the gangbang, I was lucky to chat with Mike Portnoy about Flying Colors, how they came to be, their new album \u2018Second Nature\u2019, touring and why we may never see them in Australia\u2026<\/p>\n

So for those unaware of Flying Colors, is there a\u00a0summarized\u00a0story as to how it all fell into place?<\/strong>
\nWell the quick version is there\u2019s a guy named Bill Evans who is the executive producer of both albums and essentially he was the one that had the grand idea of starting this, and he started with assembling Neal Morse and Steve Morse along with \u00a0Kerry Livgren of Kansas, and Kerry eventually had to bow out for health reasons. Steve and Neal starting working together and Steve brought Dave on board and Neal brought me on board and then I brought Casey on board, and that\u2019s how Flying Colors was born and basically the whole idea was to try to get a bunch of guys from other well-known prog \/ instrumental bands, that would be me, Neal, Steve and Dave to come together and make more concise pop oriented music and ultimately I think it was Casey that was the X Factor to really bring us together in that musical sense. So that\u2019s the basic story of how it began.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the best way that you\u2019d describe the music of Flying Colors?<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s like pop with prog overtones, but it\u2019s also slightly alternative\u2026 I don\u2019t know, man, it\u2019s a little bit of everything, it reminds me of when you listen to old Queen albums, like one song will be a hard rock song, then they have a ballad, then they have a ragtime song, then you have a folk song, and Flying Colors is kind of like a modern day version of that, it\u2019s like every song is something different, one minute it may have a Muse vibe, the next minute it may have a Chili Peppers vibe, next minute it will have a Yes vibe, so I don\u2019t know, it\u2019s just a giant melting pot of all these different sounds and styles.<\/p>\n

\u2018Second Nature\u2019 is due for release at the end beginning of October, now as it isn\u2019t out yet, can you give us one word that you feel sums the album?<\/strong>
\nEclectic\u2026 pretty much like what I just said, so many different things and we kind of joked when we first got together that we were like The Village People of rock, they had the police man, then you had the motorcycle man, then you had the cowboy and we\u2019re kind of like that, if you look at us and our five personalities and backgrounds are so different. You have the metal guy and then you have the prog guy and the alternative guy and the pop guy and the jazz guy, that\u2019s kind of like all our personalities coming together in this giant melting pot.<\/p>\n

The album is called \u2018Second Nature\u2019 can you tell us how that came about and what it means to you?<\/strong>
\nIt was a title that I suggested, I had it sitting in my back pocket for the last fifteen years, just waiting for the right band to use it, I always thought it would be a great name for a band\u2019s second album, and I suggested it and it made perfect sense to this band, and with a name like Flying Colors which is so vivid and so filled with imagery, second nature is another phrase that would fit perfectly with that in terms of imagery and different images, and obviously the second album it made sense in that sense, and it also makes sense because it\u2019s the second band for all of us, we\u2019re all in other main bands, and also second nature means it comes natural and very easy and I think you can say that about the music we write, it comes very natural for us. On so many levels it works.<\/p>\n

I took it as \u2018second nature\u2019 meaning it was so easy being in this band as it sounds like you\u2019ve all been playing together for twenty years\u2026<\/strong>
\nWell we have we\u2019ve just been doing it in different bands for that long *laughs*<\/p>\n

In going into making this new album, did you set out to do anything differently from the debut?<\/strong>
\nNot really, we had an amazing experience with the first album and we were really happy with the end result and we were really happy with the chemistry, so this time around we wanted to continue what we started.\u00a0 First time around was like a blind date so I think we were all very stressed out and it was like a giant whirlwind that it all happened so quick and nobody knew what to expect. This time around we were able to breathe and enjoy as we now knew what each other\u2019s personalities were like and we now knew what the sound and style and direction of the music was because we had already established that. So I think this time we were able to just relax and let everyone breathe a little more.<\/p>\n

In terms of the songs, what\u2019s the creative process like for this band when writing?<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s the ultimate definition of collaboration, lots of guys in this band are very prolific writers on their own, most specifically Neal, Steve and Casey, all three of those guys are just constantly writing music on their own. So we had a plethora of ideas to work with and there was just all these demos being thrown around and nobody would submit completed demos because they knew that once something is submitted to flying colours that it\u2019s going to get torn to pieces and get re-written. So everybody submitted like a verse here, or a chorus there, or a progression or a melody and once we had this giant pool of ideas to work from, then we got together and started planning ideas and piecing them together, we\u2019d mix Casey\u2019s verse and mix it together with Neal\u2019s chorus and take a bridge that somebody else had and an instrumental section that Steve had and we just work on these things together and literally you can hear all five of us on every one of these songs, there\u2019s not a single song on the album that wouldn\u2019t have sounded the way that it sounds if it wouldn\u2019t have been for all five of us being in the same room at the same time.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve gotta love an album where the shortest song clocks in at just under five minutes ha ha but for the longer ones, is there just that freedom of essentially jamming until someone says stop?<\/strong>
\nNot really, actually it\u2019s funny as you\u2019re saying this as if this album is filled with very long songs but the funny thing is these are some of the shortest songs that I\u2019ve ever been a part of *laughs* and same goes for Neal Morse, Neal and I usually in Transatlantic are dealing with thirty minute songs, we have at least six or seven songs that are past the thirty minute mark in Transatlantic, so with Flying Colors it really is about trying to be as concise as possible and not get carried away with very long songs. In a couple of places we did, \u2018Open Up Your Eyes\u2019 ended up being a little longer and \u2018Cosmic Symphony\u2019 ended up being a little longer, but really for the most part, the point of Flying Colors is to try to be concise and like I said if you look at what me and Neal do in our other bands, this is concise as it gets, but when the songs end up long it\u2019s not ever because we were trying to make a long song, it\u2019s quite the opposite in this band, we\u2019re trying to make shorter songs. In the case of \u2018Open Up Your Eyes\u2019 we just had a lot of ideas and it just took a little while to get them all into that particular song.<\/p>\n

What has this band allowed you to do that you maybe feel like you weren\u2019t able to do previously?
\nWell for me it\u2019s about this style of music and working with somebody like Casey, all the other bands I\u2019ve been a part of in my career were either rooted in progressive rock, or rooted in hard rock and heavy meal, and I didn\u2019t have any bands that really were in the vein of what Flying Colors does, and I\u2019ve always been a fan of pop music whether it be The Beatles and Queen\u00a0 or modern pop like Weezer or whatever, I\u2019ve also been a fan of U2 and Radiohead and Coldplay and I never really had an outlet like that and that\u2019s kind of where Casey\u2019s world is from, I mean Casey\u2019s favourite singers are guys like Thom Yorke from Radiohead or Matt Bellamy from Muse, or Chris Martin from Coldplay, that\u2019s really Casey\u2019s background. So once you have Me, Neal and Steve and Dave who are usually in more progressive, instrumental oriented bands, we came together as Flying Colors to try something that the four of us had never done before and Casey was really the voice and the glue that gave us that different direction, and that different background, it\u2019s kind of like the four of us are getting to play in Casey\u2019s musical playground.<\/p>\n

It would be remiss of me to not ask about possible Australian touring plans\u2026 anything in the works at all?<\/strong>
\nOh god I would love that, I would love to get down there, it\u2019s been way too long for me personally since I\u2019ve been to Australia and I\u2019m dying to get down there again, but I\u2019ve got a feeling it won\u2019t be with Flying Colors unfortunately, just because it\u2019s hard enough for Flying Colors as it is to play any of the places that we normally go to. Getting down to Australia for an American band is usually very difficult even if you\u2019re a fulltime touring band, but for a band like Flying Colors, we only have very, very small windows of time to get together where our schedules align, so next month we\u2019re gonna do ten shows and that\u2019s pretty much the whole tour because everybody\u2019s got other obligations in other bands. So we\u2019re gonna play three in America and seven in Europe and that\u2019s about it for now, getting to Australia would be amazing, but it\u2019s just probably not likely at this point. I have a hard enough time trying to get down there with some of my fulltime bands, you know pretty much I\u2019m working fulltime with the Winery Dogs now and that\u2019s pretty much my fulltime home and even we haven\u2019t been to Australia yet\u2026 it\u2019s tough to get the invite. We just need some promoters to step up to the plate and invite us.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll happily invite you, I just couldn\u2019t pay you\u2026<\/strong>
\n*laughs* Well if you can fly and airline that will fly us from America for free then we would love to do it. Well the Winery Dogs is my fulltime band now and I really, really have my fingers crossed that when we put out our second album next year and we continue our world tour, I\u2019m hoping to finally see Australia on the itinerary because it\u2019s been too long since I\u2019ve been down there and I\u2019m patiently waiting to return.<\/p>\n

You personally are a busy guy with projects all over the place, so what do you like to do in your downtime? (if you have any)<\/strong>
\nI don\u2019t have any, I haven\u2019t had any in about four years *laughs*, I have Transatlantic, I have Flying Colors, I have the Winery Dogs, I had Adrenaline Mob, I had to let that go because I couldn\u2019t squeeze that into my schedule anymore, there\u2019s just always something going on and I jump from band to band, from tour to tour, album to album and there hasn\u2019t been any downtime and god bless my family for being so incredibly supportive. Like here I am, I\u2019m home right now and I\u2019ve spent my entire day on the phone doing interviews *laughs* so this is my downtime, doing interviews and dealing with the emails for overseeing upcoming Transatlantic live package, or overseeing the upcoming Flying Colors merchandise, or overseeing Bigelf tour, there\u2019s just always something that needs to be done when you\u2019re a workaholic like I am, so I\u2019ll have downtime when I die, until then I\u2019m going to keep working.<\/p>\n

Lastly, let\u2019s predict the remainder of the year, so finish this sentence, by the end of 2014, Flying Colors will\u2026<\/strong>
\nhave finally gotten back on stage together and I can\u2019t wait to see the result.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Essential Information<\/strong><\/h2>\n

From:<\/strong> USA<\/p>\n

Band members:<\/strong> Mike Portnoy (drums, vocals), Dave LaRue (bass), Neal Morse (keyboards, vocals), Casey McPherson (lead vocals), and Steve Morse (guitar)<\/p>\n

Websites:<\/strong> www.flyingcolorsmusic.com<\/a> – www.facebook.com\/flyingcolorsofficial<\/a> – Twitter: @FlyingColors<\/p>\n

Latest release:<\/strong> Second Nature (October 3rd\u00a0– Mascot Label Group \/ Warner Music Australia)<\/p>\n

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