Michael Allen Moore advocates being an active listener.

The frontman for Belling The Tiger applied that skill after reading The Lost Art of Listening many years ago.

“I was shocked and embarrassed about how many mistakes I made in listening to others,” said Moore, the band’s vocalist, keyboardist, and guitarist.

“However, I was truly flabbergasted at how badly everybody else I was around at the time was. It helped immensely and allowed me to be a more empathetic human being.”

He also embraced that mindset while writing the title track for the Detroit prog-rock quintet’s latest five-track EP, Listen.

“I think writing music and lyrics is cathartic,” Moore said. “I’m happy to sneak in my self-expression as therapy with the music, and if people don’t pick up on the details, then I’m at peace with that. I have a Buddhist sensibility when it comes to the goals of making music.”

On the title track, Belling The Tiger attempts to help someone who’s on a destructive path before it’s too late.

Alongside Moore, bandmates Duane Harvey (drums, percussion), Andrew Harvey (bass), Ani Balalau (vocals, various instruments), and Nick Geiersbach (keys, trumpet, flugelhorn, various instruments) provide a melodic mix of serene and fearless instrumentation.

Moore sings, “Follow me if you can linear / Thoughts unforgiving and twisting / Speak to me if you can honestly / Unafraid of what we are.”

“The song is about a particular person—however—that person turns out to be a stereotype,” he said. “Therefore, it can have a universal application to others.”

I recently spoke to Belling The Tiger about its EP ahead of two Metro Detroit shows this week.

Q: How did you come to form the band in February 2019?

Duane Harvey (DH): The band you’re seeing now is a little different than how it started. Danny Grimm, who’s no longer with the band, was playing bass originally and singing with the group. He knew Michael from high school and I knew Danny from [my] day job. We both worked at the same company and he knew we were into music. I hadn’t played anything in about 10 years.

He sent me some demos of things he and Michael had put together, and I thought, “These tunes are pretty interesting; this could be cool.” And I said, “Yeah, I’ll play,” and the three of us started getting together. Danny’s hand developed problems at some point and he had to have surgery.

He was unable to play bass for about a year and that’s when Andrew [Harvey] joined the group. He started playing bass and he’s been playing bass ever since. Ani [Balalau] did a guest vocal on Lost, the album we released in 2021. Ani sings on one track [“Lost, Part 3”] on that—also in Romanian.

Nick [Geiersbach] joined us briefly last year—and then for scheduling reasons—he had to leave us for a while, but now he’s back. This last year has been a period of trying to figure out who we are and what we sound like after Danny’s departure, and some of the other people we had in and out of here in the time after that. It’s finally settled into this band and I think we have a solid direction to pursue now.

Q: How did you land on Belling The Tiger for the band’s name? How does it represent your music and creative vision?

DH: We had been batting around band ideas for months and nothing was sticking. Michael came up with Belling the Cat from Aesop’s Fables and it was inspired by that. We liked that, but then we looked it up and found out that somebody else had already used it. So we turned it up to 11 as it were.

Michael Allen Moore (MAM): Metaphorically, the fable itself, I thought was apropos from being in a band. The mice have to get together to put a bell on the cat so they’re aware of it and can avoid it. That’s an interesting premise because they don’t band together to kill the cat. They have to cooperate to understand where this cat is so they can make other plans and adapt to it.

With that, being in a band is similar. You’re constantly having to adapt and doing original music is hard now. It’s a labor of love and there’s not a real market for it. You’re spending a lot of time and energy, and your own money doing something you know is spiritually, intellectually, and expressively fulfilling. You realize the world will probably shrug its shoulders and not care very much. I’m OK with that and I accepted that a long time ago.

Q: How does the band’s current band lineup contribute to its melodic prog-rock sound?

Ani Balalau (AB): Michael has a lot of lyrics written down and so does [band co-lyricist] John [Willems]. Once they have the lyrics, they start coming up with a melody to it. First, Michael comes up with something on his guitar to see what will work with the lyrics. And then Duane says, “OK, I think I know what I’m gonna do with it,” and Andrew does the same thing. He works together with [Duane] on the drums. Most of the time when it’s all said and done, I do something flowery off the top of it.

MAM: There has been a lot of spontaneous jamming, too.

DH: There’s a lot of depth on tap here, so we’re still figuring it out. We’re still discovering what each other has to offer. Michael, Andrew, and I have been playing together for several years. We know each other fairly well. Ani’s becoming more and more of a fixture in the group.

And Nick is still fairly new, but he’s doing a great job on keyboards and brass instruments, too. He plays an array of wind instruments and he also plays percussion. Andrew plays a bunch of instruments and I mostly play drums and percussion.

I can play keyboard parts and things like that, but anything’s possible. Nothing is off the table because that gives you places to go. I don’t think we’re gonna feel like we’re painted into a corner and there’s nothing left to do.

Q: “Listen” was written during the first incarnation of the band, but now it’s been recorded and released with the band’s new lineup. How did the track evolve during that time?

MAM: “Listen” was written during the first incarnation of the band, but it was never recorded fully or fully fleshed out. It was never more than a demo that we did with the original singer, and I wasn’t quite happy with the result at the time. So when we began to address it with the current lineup, I had a few goals in mind. I had to take it back and make it my own—which wasn’t that difficult—but it was also the beginning of integrating Nick into the band. It’s been a lot of fun since Nick is a talented multi-instrumentalist who can play horns and keyboards. His input tied that song together.

DH: The addition of Nick had the biggest sonic impact on the track since the Hammond organ sound is so prominent in that song. That was a major shift in the sonic landscape … though the composition was already well set by that point. Of course, the change of lead vocals and the addition of Ani are what lock in the new sound of the band.

Q: “No Wings for Myself” explores the inner struggle of someone dealing with dementia and the frustration their caregiver experiences along the way. How did your personal and professional experiences of helping people with dementia prompt you to write this track?

MAM: “No Wings for Myself” is a particularly personal song. It comes out by experience and my exposure to people struggling with dementia and cognitive decline and their caregivers’ frustration. It’s endlessly fascinating, heartbreaking, and horrifying because I am an atheist and I do not believe in a soul in an afterlife or anything like that. I believe that you are your body and you are your brain. Therefore, cognitive decline is the slow disappearance of the phenomenon in the cumulative “you.”

I think my understanding of dementia must be very jarring and horrifying to some. I think people want to live in a world where they think there is a separate entity outside of the body that makes up the real “you.” To them, my understanding would be a jarring revelation.

DH: My wife’s past career was mostly spent working with dementia patients. I often worked and volunteered in this environment, so I have had plenty of exposure to how dementia manifests. I tried to make the percussion sounds reflect the haziness, confusion, and frustration the lyrics conjure for me.

Q: What was the recording process like for “No Wings for Myself?” How did the band take it to the next level sonically?

MAM: Duane and I played two or three takes together. I played a simple scratch acoustic track while Duane threw down some basic percussion and then we built on it from there. I think I re-cut the guitar with my 1958 Gibson hollow-body 350. Then Duane put on a cornucopia of percussion and then bass guitar and keyboards and finally Ani put on her vocals. I did one more keyboard track using my Roli virtual synth programs to glue it together. We are a very traditional band. Everybody does three or four takes and we take the best take and that’s it. I do “comp” vocals, of course.

Everybody’s very pleasant and focused. Everyone has excellent musical awareness and experience. Although we have unique backgrounds, we all understand basic music theory very well. Furthermore, we all have a similar interpersonal demeanor and that makes everything easy. Nick—for his age—is well-accomplished. He reads charts very well. He’s quick with recording. He’s not as experienced with using multiple synthesizers and programming, but I’m happy to help, and I enjoy doing that anyway. I hardly have a guitar part where I don’t automatically have a complementary keyboard part or idea for a soundscape that goes along with it.

Duane and Andrew are both indispensable in their own ways. Ani has a beautiful voice and is becoming much more independent with her ability to follow along and come up with melodies. It’s a unique sound, which is what I’ve always wanted. The downside to that is that it’s a unique sound in a world where people want familiarity and for things to sound very similar. It can be a bit challenging, but I’m not at all bothered by any difficulty that we might face.

Q: “Awareness of What’s Missing” explores the importance of finding meaning and purpose, especially when interacting with people who are receiving end-of-life care. How did your professional experiences in healthcare inspire this track?

AB: Both [Michael and I] work as therapists and we encounter a lot of patients that are at the end of their lives.

MAM: I wrote that recently on the spot. You’re watching people die and they’re in a lot of pain. You’re also participating in a healthcare system that’s the most inefficient and expensive on the planet. You meet a lot of interesting people, some who understand the straits that they’re in and [others] that don’t. Part and parcel is the type of culture I think we’re in where we don’t think about those things and don’t want to talk about them. “Awareness of What’s Missing” is a reflection of that and that struggle. I’m aware of that and I had a 92-year-old guy who’s realizing that he doesn’t have much longer to live and he asked if I ever thought about dying. I said, “Only about seven times a day.”

Q: “Doina Din Maramureş” is a traditional Romanian folk song about a woman spending time in nature and missing her partner while he’s away at war. How did Ani’s cultural heritage help shape your rendition of this song?

AB: Romania has gone through many wars over the years and centuries. If it wasn’t the Roman Empire, it was the Ottoman Empire. It was constantly under some kind of siege. The men would be drafted to war and the women would be left home. The women were always left behind to ponder if their husband or their son would ever come home. [In the song], a woman is going up and down the valleys, and it’s almost like she’s losing her cognitive capabilities and wandering off. She’s looking for the male figure in her life.

I didn’t know this particular [folk song], and I left Romania when I was 16. “Doina Din Maramureş” is a type of song that’s very sad and it’s [traditionally] being sung without a rhythm section. It has a droning in the background and the singer can find their own ups and downs rhythm-wise. Somehow I’m attracted to what you would call the blues here in the United States.

MAM: That song was an instrumental that we improvised and Ani was doing some vocalese over top of it and off the cuff. I like the improv nature of it. I said, “Ani, do you have anything for that?” and she said, “Yeah.” Then she came back a day later and said, “I know perfectly what to do. I have this folk song melody I want to put over the top of it.”

Q: How did your latest singles for Listen come together at Michael’s home studio?

MAM: They came together quickly. In most ways, we’re old school. I mic everything up, we click it in, and we take the best version. We barely need anything more than three or four takes and rarely is anything doctored or hodgepodged together. The only things to conquer are vocals … I take a lot more time to do that. I don’t think of myself as a natural singer, so I need to run through things several times to say, “OK, I’ve got this solo; I feel comfortable with it.”

It’s a different sound and texture than a lot of bands, too. You hear the percussion kick in, you hear a flugelhorn, you hear an odd guitar part, and then you think, “This is something different.” If you’re working this hard, you might as well be unique. And if you’re going to all this trouble, you might as well be unusual.

Andrew’s such an important part of the chemistry, too. I don’t tell people what to play other than saying, “Well, this is a chord progression.” But nobody tells anybody what to do; we listen and then respond. It’s a conversational type of group and everybody’s autonomous in that sense. What Andrew brings to the group … it’s expected and unspoken. He takes things off into a different direction … and underneath a repetitive chord pattern while I’m singing, he’ll imply a totally different harmonic structure.

DH: We’ve been playing these [songs] for quite some time. We have a couple of songs that we’ve been playing live for a while now that we haven’t released yet.

Nick Geiersbach (NG): The way I’ve been plugged into these songs is me bugging Michael to tell me what chords he’s playing. When we go to record it, I’ll say, “Here’s what I have been playing.” It’s a little give and take here. Then we find something that works and we record it. In that regard, Michael will say, “Hey, I think horns will sound cool here,” or “I was thinking something like this.” We brought it out and worked on it together, hit record, and that was it. There are still some instruments in our bag of tricks.

Andrew Harvey (AH): Usually when I come up with my bass parts, I listen to the direction the song has been going in already. I work closely with my dad [Duane Harvey] for the rhythm section. But on these songs, I’ve been experimenting more with dissonance and space. On “Doina Din Maramureş,” there’s some dissonance going on for my part. I’ve always liked dissonance and resolution.

Q: You’re performing December 4 at Ziggy’s in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and December 7 at Ghost Light in Hamtramck, Michigan. What plans do you have for both shows?

AH: My friend Alex Brown from Mooses … They’re doing some cool prog stuff, and they asked us to play with them that night. Sami Calamity is also performing with us and they sound awesome. It should be a cool night.

DH: The Ghost Light show should be interesting, too. It’s three other prog bands we’ve never seen before. Sons of Ra is from Chicago … and they’ve been around a long time. We haven’t played with SoZen and Flood the Desert before either.

MAM: It will probably be the same setlist we did at the last show because it’s all grooving together well. We won’t be playing any new tunes other than what’s on the EP along with “Listen” and “No Wings for Myself.”

Q: What’s up next for new material?

DH: We’re trying the Hiatus Kaiyote method of release they did for their last album. They put out two songs at a time … until they had a full-length album. But they released it piecemeal along the way, and in the streaming world, it makes a lot of sense. Promoting in the age of streaming pushes you in that direction because it’s hard to promote more than one or two songs at a time.

MAM: With another two [new] songs and then another two [new] songs [after] that, it will probably be around 45 or 50 minutes [of total material]. Then we’ll do another full-length album of not just those same tracks, but we’ll re-record them and do slightly different versions of them. At the end of the day, we’ll [tie everything] together in some kind of thematic way.

Belling The Tiger performs December 4 at Ziggy’s, 206 W. Michigan Ave. in Ypsilanti, and December 7 at Ghost Light, 2314 Caniff St. in Hamtramck.