Flying Colors
Flying Colors
Mascot Label Group/Music Theories Recordings
Release date: March 26, 2012 (U.S.) CD | MP3
March 27, 2012 (UK) CD | MP3

When your band Dream Theatre or Deep Purple takes a rest, what is a man to do? Stroke your blond hair and cradle your guitar? Trim your beard and twiddle your drum sticks? Well, no. Late in the year 2010, guitarist Steve Morse and drummer Mike Portnoy decided to start a new band.

For facts’ sake, it was around this time that Portnoy and DT parted ways. But the prog-metal powerhouse and the hard rock fret flyer made for an impressive, if slightly unusual, pairing. The Flying Colors band started to stretch its wings with the addition of Neal Morse, the keyboard player from the spectactularly nerdy-named Spock’s Beard; bass player Dave LaRue; and lead vocalist Casey McPherson. In nine intensive days at the beginning of last year the album Flying Colors was finally recorded.

Great Gypsy Soul
By Tommy Bolin and Friends
429 Records
Release date: March 26, 2012
MP3* | CD Exclusive | CD

The late, great Tommy Bolin, one of the most prolific and underrated guitarists arguably of all time, is getting the royal crown tribute firmly affixed on his sonic memory with the release of Great Gypsy Soul. The eleven song album, which was released in MP3* format today, March 25 (it’s actually on sale right now for $3.99) has a stunning array of guests on it that reads like a who’s who line-up of some guitar and vocal greats of the 1970s and 80s and today, like Peter Frampton, Joe Bonamassa, and Warren Haynes.

Bolin, who was born in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1951 and died in Miami, Florida, in late 1976, was yet another guitar player in the annals of rock whose bright future was stilled, a victim of a heroin overdose while on tour with Jeff Beck.