Guitarist Steve Morse spoke with Glide Magazine recently about a number of topics including the status of a new DEEP PURPLE studio album. Here are a few excerpts from the chat:

Glide Magazine: Can you believe you have been in Deep Purple for almost 20 years now?

Morse: "No. Time has gone by very quickly and some clichés are clichés because they’re true. And one of those clichés is that time seems to accelerate the older you get. And right now I feel like every time I get ready to relax and say, 'Ok, now what do I do?' another year has gone by. Every time I’m able to catch my breath, it’s a year later. So yeah, the time went by very quick."

Glide Magazine: What do you have planned for the rest of the year?

Morse: "In a couple of weeks, Deep Purple has a writing session and we’re producing an album with Bob Ezrin, who’s done KISS, PINK FLOYD, PETER GABRIEL, ALICE COOPER, and he also worked on the last KANSAS album, when I was with Kansas. So he’s one of my favorite producers and that’s going to be our studio album. It’s probably going to be more of an extravaganza. Everybody realizes we’re not going to do this forever, so to me it feels like this is a really important album to do well. So we’ve got that coming up and mixed in with that, and that is most of the summer with the album, and then I have to leave when they’re doing vocals on that to do the G3 tour. Then I have to come back, repack my suitcase and we go out with Flying Colors and the plan is to do a couple weeks in the US and then a couple weeks in Europe. That brings us to the end of September. Oops, I’m late for the G3 tour and got to get on a plane to go down to South America. Then before they go to Mexico, I have to leave the tour to come back and go straight to Russia with Deep Purple. Then I may have to come back from Russia all the way to the US and repack my suitcase and go back for another five weeks in Europe. Then it’s Christmas and then another year has gone (laughs)."

Read more at Glide Magazine.