I N T E R V I E W

Interview Dave LaRue (face to face)

Hi Dave! Thank you for answering a few questions for auxportesdumetal.com.

Hi, it’s my pleasure.

How has this tour been so far?

“Fantastique” (imitating the French accent)! The band’s really starting to come together. Playing the new material is a lot of pleasure. And for me, it’s always great to get on stage with musicians of this caliber. That’s why I’m here, really. I just love playing with all these guys.

Tonight is the final date of this rather short tour. Do you plan on doing another longer tour later?

We’re hoping to. It all depends on everybody’s schedule, we’re all involved in other projects or bands but all of us would really like that to happen. We’d like to do a more extensive European tour and a more extensive US tour as well, probably next year.

Do you plan on doing special for the last show?

No, we’re just gonna play the show and we’re gonna videotape tonight again.

Oh, you’re recording this tour?

Yeah, absolutely. Some of the footage or maybe all the footage might end up being the DVD for this tour.

Great! That was actually one my next questions, I wanted to ask you if, as Progressive bands like Dream Theater, Transatlantic or others tend to do it, you would like to record a new live album every time you have a new album and go on tour.

Well, we talked about that and some of us, me included, thought that we shouldn’t do that every time… but I was outvoted (smile). But it’s fine, you know… it’s just that I’ve been kind of brought up in the school of thought that it should be something really special as opposed to “Ok, here’s our last tour, now it’s our new tour, etc.”. But it will be great and there’s so much of the new album on this tour that the DVD will be way different.

How has “Second Nature” been received?

Everything that I’ve seen has been extremely positive… So, I was very glad to see that. And we understand sales are doing well. I don’t know if it is entirely correct but our manager said that we were in the top 5 in billboard today. So for us, that’s great, that’s better than what we did with our first album. I think we made top 10 but not top 5.

Do you agree that “Second Nature” is quite different to your first album? Was it your intention to make a more progressive record?

Yeah, in many respects it is… and in some others it’s not. It’s still the same band but obviously more mature. Now that we’ve done the first album together, the tour, the live DVD, we know each other better and we’re more comfortable with each other and the new album is an extension of that… but it is a very natural process, we don’t try to force anything. We didn’t say “Let’s to something different, let’s do more prog, or let’s do less prog or anything like that”. We just get together, throw our ideas in the pot and see what comes out of it. It’s very organic and that’s one of the things that I love about that band. It’s very natural and it’s just about the music we want to make. Now, it’s true that the album is a bit more progressive than the first one even though we didn’t plan anything. It’s just the way it turned out. Actually, it’s when I had to learn the music for the tour that I realized and said “Oh, yeah, there are more prog things going on!”.

Did you start writing this record on the previous tour? I couldn’t help but notice that the Peaceful Harbor’s theme came from the vocal introduction Casey did when he covered Hallelujah at the time…

Yeah, I remember that. Casey brought that and we just went with it. We were not trying to write anything at that time. I think it’s Mike or somebody who said “Hey Casey, what’s that thing you were doing?” and Peaceful Harbor grew out of that. But it’s one of the only things that came out from that tour.

Was it easy to find time and put together an album with everybody being heavily involved with their other bands? How did you create, record and release this album so quickly?

Well the key-word is “quick”. We wanted to find time to get together, like two weeks, but it was very hard at first so what we actually started to get together on skype. I think “Bombs Away” came out of the ideas we threw during one of these sessions, and maybe a part of “The Fury Of My Love”. But then we found a three-day window and a four-day window and we just got together and cranked out the stuff.

How was the writing and recording process for “Second Nature” compared to your first experience together two years earlier?

It was pretty similar. It’s just that it was harder to get together as a group this time. Last time, I think we wrote all the material in nine days in Nashville, in Neal’s studio. This time, as I told you, there were skype sessions first and then two small sessions… and it all came from there.

Did you feel more pressure with this second record, maybe because of the fans’ expectations?

None whatsoever. We just do our thing. Of course, we want to be well received but this line-up is really a bunch of matured and experienced musicians who do this project out of love. We just love the music. Getting together and creating that music is what it’s all about. There’s no preconceived notions of what should happen, we don’t say “Maybe we should write something like this to get more airplay”, we just don’t do that. And that’s how I like it. I don’t want us to chase the trend or worry about that kind of things. So we just get together and do it, and these guys are so amazing that I’m totally confident that we’re gonna make a great record.

Have you agreed to continue the Flying Colors experience in the years to come? Can we expect you to return in a couple of years?

Hopefully, we’ll return next year. I mean, not with a new album right away but if things open up, we’d like to spend more time with this band. It will not be a full time project but a bit more than an every other year type of thing. That’s entirely possible, we’ll just have to see when it happens. But yes, what’s sure is that you can definitely expect more from us.

Any updates on your current projects?

There are several projects I’m working on at the moment. I’m producing, co-producing or playing on some but the main thing I’m working on now is my second solo album. I want to finish this one up over the holidays when things are slow. That’s my main goal for the next couple of months.

And finally, your last word to conclude this interview:

Thank you so much for the support, we love coming to Paris, it’s always great to be here… and it’s thanks to the fans so “Merci beaucoup!”

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