Eric Martin wants to do new Mr. Big album with couple of different drummers to honour Pat Torpey

Eric Martin wants to do new Mr. Big album with couple of different drummers to honour Pat Torpey

Mr. Big lead vocalist Eric Martin was recently interviewed by Rock Radio N1 and spoke about a potential new Mr. Big album that could possibly be the last one.

Martin advised: “…. I’m the one getting everyone together for conference calls and e-mails and what we want to do. I really want to do it and I want to spend more than six days on it like we did with the “Defying Gravity” album. I want to be a little more prepared. I want to do a new record and I also want to have a couple of different drummers on it – one’s that Pat really liked; maybe Mike Portnoy, Gregg Bissonette, Ray Luzier from Korn, I really like his playing. Just get some great drummers to do something to honour Pat Torpey. We don’t know if we’re going to do an album or an EP; it kinda depends on the songs. If we only have six songs then there’s your EP, but if we have more we’ll cut an album. We only have a little bit of a window of opportunity because Paul is on the road pretty much the rest of the year and then we might have an opportunity in February to cut something. But we are going to do a tour in June and July and then come home for a couple of weeks and then try to do it as much as we can for about three or four months. But yeah, that’s the last hurrah, that’s it. It just feels a little uncomfortable to keep going without Pat Torpey.”

In terms of Mr. Big‘s writing process, Martin indicated: “…. I think the last time we got together; me, Paul, Billy and Pat, was when we wrote “The Stories We Could Tell” album. We wrote “Gotta Love The Ride” as the first song on that. It all depends; everybody is gone all the time doing their own projects and trying to get everyone together is hard. Here’s what we used to do – Paul will write a few tracks, he calls ‘sniglets’, that’s kinda weird, and he will send that tape or CD or whatever to me and I’ll write lyrics and melodies. Then when we eventually get together for two or three days at a rehearsal studio, it’ll be – you know that song that has that weird off timing thing in C or whatever – it’s called “Merciless”; something like that. That’s how we had been doing it for years. A lot of times, Billy, Pat and Paul would just jam out ideas and they’d send them to me and I’d break it all down and try to get five good songs out of it. (Laughs). It was like so many solos, trust me, you know what I’m talking about!”

You can read the rest of the interview with Martin at Rock Radio N1.