Via Blabbermouth.net: Neal Schon of Journey has a new album, "Universe," due to arrive in early December. The effort, which was produced by current Journey drummer Narada Michael Walden has been in the works for several years. Schon tweeted out appears to be the "Universe" album cover, and he included the following caption: " Coming early December." And in a later tweet: "There's some very healing music for this Christmas".
In a 2018 interview with Michael Cavacini, Schon talked about "Universe": "It's very melodic, powerful and majestic. There's also some fusion on it. We did some cover tunes, but most of it is written by Narada. He produced it and played the hell out of it, on drums. We got his bass player, Buddha, playing on it. It sounds really solid and it's probably one of the best-sounding records I ever ma de. Kudos to those guys. His drum sound is just phenomenal. And the guitar sounds great. Everything just came together. It was an easy project for me because I didn't have to worry about writing material. I just let him take me in a different direction."
Regarding how the project came together, Schon said: "I went to Narada and I said, 'Write me a record, man.' He had enough free time and he said to me, 'You want me to?' I said, 'Yeah.' I figured he'd come back to me in a couple months and play me a couple tunes. Instead, he called me four days later and he had seven tunes written and I was, like, 'What?' [Laughs] I thought for sure that maybe some of these songs had been sitting around for somebody else and they got shelved and he goes, 'No, man. I just wrote all these right now.' He's very prolific, fast and on-the-spot like that. It's very cool."
Neal Schon founded Journey in 1972 and has been the only consistent member, having participated in every album and tour to date. He is a Grammy Award-nominated guitarist, songwriter and vocalist who was also a member of Santana and Bad English. He has released 10 solo albums, including his last "Vortex" in 2015.