DEEP WATER

Cosmic Cathedral - Deep Water Another Neal Morse group?. This time with Genesis live member Chester Thompson, long time CCM guitarist Phil Keaggy, and versatile session bassist Byron House. The result is Cosmic Cathedral. The album follows a familiar setup that Morse has followed on several projects: Two epics bookending some shorter pieces. In this case, leading off is a 14 minute epic "The Heart of Life", followed by three very different middle pieces then finishing with a 38 minute epic. Being a Neal Morse homer, I was probably going to like this album regardless. However, what I wasn't prepared for was how excellent the performances are by Thompson, Keaggy, and House. Chester is a much different drummer than Mike Portnoy and his style adds more of a jazz or funk feel to many passages on this record. I was concerned about him going into the record because he's 76 years old. I should have learned my lesson after recently seeing Ian Paice with Deep Purple who is the same age. He's still got it. I have been a fan of Phil Keaggy's since his days with Glass Harp in the early 70s. There's an urban legend that Hendrix referred to Keaggy as the world's greatest guitarist. Keaggy points out that they did record the first Glass Harp album at Hendrix's studio but this was only a couple of weeks before Hendrix died so it's unlikely he could have said this in an interview. In any event, Keaggy is a monster and has been for a long time. On "Deep Water", Keaggy is excellent. His solos are spot on and his vocals match very well with Neal's. The biggest surprise for on this album is Byron House. I had to look him up. As it turns out, he's got around 300 album credits to his name; many well known, and many in my collection. His playing on this record is just terrific. The concept for the album comes from Neal's autobiography where he describes his Christian conversion as a vision of standing at the top of a waterfall and being encouraged to jump into the water below. The Deep Water Suite goes back to the "launch out into the deep water" as a central theme of the epic. I am thoroughly enjoying this album and am regretting that I didn't get the signed copy. If you're a prog fan, you need this. If you're a Christian, it's a must have.

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