Preston Frazier 

 Tim, welcome.

I’ve been a fan since ‘ Transformation” first came out back in 2005.

– Tim Morse

Wow, yes, the original album came out 20 years ago.

 – Preston Frazier 

I’m unsure if I got it before your book,  “Yes Stories”.

 That book started me down the rabbit hole of your music with the original version of ‘Transformation’ first. I know I have three of your albums on vinyl too.

Last year, you released a brilliant album called ‘Soundtracks’.

You have at least twelve albums, including Parallels, on which you performed a bunch of Yes songs.

– Tim Morse

Thanks. That was an interesting project. I had been in a Yes tribute band for about 10 years. At one point, we were doing PR and hustling for gigs. We were in a friend’s studio, laying down five songs. Each one was just one take.

Then our singer left, and our guitarist left.

Those recordings were forgotten until about three years ago, when our bassist said, “I’ve just found something on my hard drive.”

This is good. So we listened, and we all agreed. We had to add vocals to Awaken and redo some guitar parts.

But when we heard it, we thought there was something here. And I still had connections with Rick Wakeman and John Anderson.

They were both, Rick especially, effusive about it. He said, That’s the best Yes cover I’ve ever heard. And 

My 15-year-old self is jumping up and down right now.

– Preston Frazier 

Fast-forwarding to ‘Transformation 20th Anniversary Edition,’ I was unsure what to expect, given that it was initially such a fully developed project.

You added much fascinating content. 

– Tim Morse

Around the time ‘Soundtracks’ was released, I was conversing with Mark Dean, who had produced ‘Transformation’, and we commented on the fact that it had been almost twenty years.

We quickly agreed that there should be some way to commemorate and honor it for ourselves.

I felt confident there was a lot of good material left, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get my hands on it quickly.

I came up with about an hour’s worth of stuff, 

It’s nice to have the new album and its remastered version, which can be a real revelation. Plus, having the associated recordings, live stuff, and demos from that era makes it fun to mine through.

The live stuff was an adventure, since we originally had an album release party with a full band performing the music. I had, for my very first website, I had clips of those songs, but I didn’t know if I even had access to the full length versions or not, and if I did, it was just through this video recording that my friend Andrew had done, and again, I said, okay, well, let’s start digging.

I found the whole thing, top to bottom. I realized that the mix is pretty atrocious, especially with the first song, “Present Moment.” 

I decided to investigate using AI to restore the sound, but not change the performances.

I just had a stereo master. I could break it down into all these stems, including vocals, guitars, keys, drums, and split them up into kick, snare, and everything else.

From that point on, I could make a reasonable mix. It was quite an adventure.

– Preston Frazier

How did you capture the demos?

– Tim Morse

They were cassette recordings.

– Tim Morse

I had one of those Tascam 4-track machines many musicians had in the ’80s and early ’90s. And that’s what I demoed on.

I had a Korg M1 and a couple of other keyboards, too.

It was about capturing an idea so I could present it to someone else.

– Preston Frazier 

Some of the songs have been released on other projects, such as “Apocalypse Vision Redux 25.” A more extended version is available on the Archaeology Project album.  

– Tim Morse

‘Archaeology’ was a retrospective of my greatest ‘hits’. 

It was just trimmed up a bit because a friend pointed out that the intro is a bit long.

 If I could redo it, I’d trim that up, so I did for this album.

I’m very pleased with most of the songs, and I’m not touching them, but if I could do a few things, I would maybe bring down this organ part a little bit and touch up that vocal over here.

Minor things that made it better for me as a listening experience.

 I usually hate those kinds of revisions. I’m a huge Kate Bush fan. And when she did director’s cut, I’m shaking my head, going, ‘No, this is terrible’.

I offer both versions. 

There were a few things from the original that I wanted to enhance. 

I love the new version of “Temptation”.

The violinist was technically a fiddler; he came out, and Mark was keen to have him play on my session, and I was okay with it. It was Scott Jess. He played with major stars, Dwight Yoakam and Merle Haggard, and he’s actually in the Fiddler Hall of Fame.

His solos are great.  But those other bits needed touching up. 

It’s a tiny list of changes.

– Preston Frazier 

Has your compositional style changed since the original release over 20 years ago?

– Tim Morse

Yeah!  Certain songs were created even before that, at the first, probably the first inklings of any of this stuff on ‘Transformation’,  I got a mini Moog when I was 16 or 17. I saved up my money over the summer, got a mini Moog synthesizer, and was just in heaven.

I was initially more interested in instrumental music. I was exploring vocal music, but it wasn’t necessarily a passion of mine.

I started to enjoy creating vocal melodies and thinking about the lyrics.

I am also starting to hone down the message a little bit. 

To me, as a writer, “Apocalyptic Visions” is one of the most successful songs on “Transformation.”

It fits together nicely, with the verses working well with the bridge and chorus.

And then you jump to ‘Faithscience’, and probably the strongest work on that is “Voyager”, and that’s a 10-minute piece.

I’m capturing this emotion and the gist of what I’m trying to express in a more compact package.

 I think I’ve become a much better pop songwriter. 

– Preston Frazier 

 How do you approach vocal arrangement? The vocals are powerful in the original. And I know that you sang some, you had Bert Morse for spoken words, Jennifer Price for spoken words, Ami Romness, and a female chorus.

And of course, Rich Zeller on lead vocals. 

– Tim Morse

Yeah, it was the combination of Mark and me working together in that way. There’s not a lot of harmony or big harmony vocals.

There are certain exceptions, like in the song “Present Moment,” which Mark recorded himself, I think, 28 times to make the Mark Dean Tabernacle choir!

We had a bit of that big sort of Queen, you know, stratospheric vocal thing.

When Amy came in, we knew we needed a vocal, sort of a female choir, and Mark and I picked out the notes when she was there; it was done fairly spontaneously in that moment.

Rich Zeller was a good sport. We lacked the tenor lead singer needed to complete the rest of it.

Thank God. A friend of a friend recommended Rich. He came in, and we were like, “This is the guy.”

He was a good sport to stick it out and do as well as he did. We were ‘Steely Danish’ in our approach….

– Preston Frazier 

Let’s discuss some bonus tracks, starting with “Sacred Skies”.

 Tim Morse

Yes, ‘ Transformation’ was done and finished.

Mark and I were doing some recordings. He had a guitar student. And they were exploring playing different modes.

Mark said, “I’d like to make some backing tracks. Why don’t you come out? “ 

 I had this idea based on chordal harmonies. If you strip it down to its original intent, it’s almost like a Weather Report song in its original rhythm.

It had a shuffle feel. And I said, I got this thing, you know, I think this could work.

 I played it for him. He wrote a bass part against what I was doing.

It existed only as a backing track with the drums, the bass, and the keys so that the guitar student could play guitar to it.

While searching for bonus tracks, this song came up. And, funnily enough, it was originally called “Mr. Mister” because it had a kind of Mr. Mister (the band) flavor to it. 

 We couldn’t release it as is because it was missing the solos and melodies. 

When Mark was remastering ‘Transformation,’ he gave me a couple of days to do my bit.

I took some time to come up with my parts, and I thought, “This is good.”

We initially planned to use just a piece of it, but we ended up using the whole thing.

When it was done, I thought, Well, we can’t call it Mr. Mister, I’ve got to come up with something better than that.

And I was at a museum with some friends, and there was a piece called, I think, ‘the sand, beach, and skies’.

And I was like, Oh, that’s like, I can make an alliteration here and make it work. And so it all came together.

– Preston Frazier 

How about one of the demos, “Haulin’ Oates“?

– Tim Morse

The song “Apocalyptic Visions” was one of the songs that was very well-defined when I was initially working with Mark, and some songs were not so well-defined.

 The intro to “Apocalyptic Visions “where the vocal was going to come in was still not quite figured out.

 I had this idea that I liked rhythmically and harmonically, and I played it for Mark, but he shook his head and said, ‘Too Hall and Oates‘. 

That’s such a great line from him, but I thought I liked this piece.

How can I make it palatable for him? What could I do to make it a little less Hall and Oates?

 I changed it from major to minor, and that worked the trick. 

 – Preston Frazier 

I’m going to jump to the last track, “The Last Wave”.

 – Tim Morse

It’s actually on ‘Faithscience’. And I thought, this is an associated recording, because Mark and I had worked so closely together to create ‘Transformation’.

 I had many music bits.  I worked them together and created a 10-minute instrumental piece.

Mark and I had great fun putting that one together.

It was quite an adventure. 

– Preston Frazier

I’ll jump to the live song, “Present Moment”.

– Tim Morse

The original is a bonus cut on ‘Archaeology’.

As we prepared for the release party, we browsed through the materials, and “Present Moment” and “Apocalyptic Visions” immediately stood out.

I want to do those and “Adrift” as well.

I was in the band Parallels at that time, and they were going to be the backing band.

We didn’t have much rehearsal to pull it together. I think no more than three rehearsals to pull all of that music together.

It was the first song we played that night. The curtains opened, and we went into “Present Moment”. It was a decisive moment. 

The creation of the album is a window in time. It’s something that could never happen again. 

Mark and I met, actually, indirectly through Patrick Moraz. Patrick was doing his solo piano tour in the mid-nineties, the Coming Home America tour or something like that. You could book Patrick to play in your living room or any other space you had.

A buddy of mine in the Bay Area and I pooled our resources to book a show with Patrick in the North Bay, and we invited some guests.

He was terrific, of course, an extraordinary musician, and he’s quite a character too. 

 He took his break, and I sat down at the piano, and it’s one of those things you look back at afterwards.

You’re like, man, I must have some pretty big balls to sit down at the piano after Patrick Moraz had played.

I’m not sure what possessed me to do that, but I did. Fortunately, I did that because, after playing, I decided to find Patrick.

What I didn’t know was that his guest was Mike Varney from Magna Carta Records. And Magna Carta was a part of that progressive rock resurgence in the early mid-nineties.. 

I’m chatting with them, and Mike said some nice things about my playing, and he asked me about my background. 

He said, ‘Oh, I know someone who lives an hour from you. ’

He’s moved out to the middle of nowhere. He has a studio, and he’s a great musician. I should put you guys in touch with each other.

Mike is one of those people who’s about finding people to work together and pairing them up.

The person was Mark Dean. 

I went out, we had this discussion, I played him my demo tape, and we hit it off right away.

He saw the potential in the music. We rolled up our sleeves and set out to create the “Present Moment” and “To Set Sail” demos.

Unfortunately, Mike passed on it because he didn’t like our singer. 

Eventually, Mark and I decided to undertake this project on our own, and it became a mission. It was not just about recording an album.

This was a way of life. And we lived it for a year easily. I would work my day job, then drive around dinnertime to where Mark lived. 

We would go all night, recording, mixing, or whatever we were doing —writing, arranging. Maybe we’d take a frisbee break around sundown.

Mark was so good about it; he’s a fantastic producer with incredible ears who can hear things. He has vision and can see what’s going on.

And there were so many times where he said, Oh, let’s try this, and I’d be shaking my head, going, ‘That’s not going to work.’

It always worked!

It was an incredible adventure!