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 As Steve Morse recalls his
first inspiration to play guitar, memories of initially playing the clarinet
(because his brother played the clarinet); loving the Beatles for Lennon’s
mid-range sound, Harrison’s guitar sound & McCartney’s melodic bass; and
even his first guitar and the first song that he ever learned came rushing back…
“Playing the guitar was not
about me discovering music but just being able to play more stuff on my own.
With a woodwind instrument you can’t really do anything other than play melody –
for me. I wanted to hear chords and more powerful stuff coming out of it.
So, the first
time I saw somebody play it was at the little county fair. There was a guy
working one of the booths, sitting kind of behind it. I just snuck in between
the booths and kind of watched him just from a foot away. He was finger picking
kind of like (he demonstrates on his guitar a simple Dixie melody) just a simple
thing like that. I thought that was the coolest thing in the world. I was
blown away that the guitar could make music. It wasn’t just that you had to be
in a band, you could make music by yourself. I was really sold.
My brother took
a few guitar lessons, and I had a guitar – somewhere my grandmother had found a
guitar in her attic or something. It turned out to be useless and unplayable
because it was broken and cracked and the neck was bent. I took it to this
group guitar lesson, you know, ten people sitting around in a circle.
Basically, the first lesson is tuning up your guitar, and when he got to mine he
says ‘you can’t play this.’ I said, ‘I know that’s why I’m here.’ (laughs) He
said, ‘No, really, nobody can play this.’ So, I ended up renting a guitar for
about the first year – five bucks a month, a Gibson Acoustic. I tried as
hard as I could and I could not make it sound like the Beatles…”
After two days, Morse was
playing a song, but when it got to the point that the instructor was only
transposing songs off the radio, he says he knew it was time to expand his
knowledge in other ways.
“I just
played in a band and transcribed my own stuff. I played in my brother’s band,
and at some point as a teenager I got real serious, more into the soloing, and
realized I was going to do it for the rest of my life. My parents were good
enough to put me in a University that would allow guitar to be part of your
education. There were very few of the at that time, the only one on the East
Coast, in the South East at all that I knew of was the University of Miami.”
Having jammed on tunes from
Yes, Hendrix, Deep Purple, and other rock artists, Morse made it a priority to
learn to also play classical guitar after being blown away by the head of the
guitar department at the University of Miami, who had perform in his hometown
in Georgia.
After attending school,
Morse says that he’d performed in a few bands before founding the Dixie Dregs
with Andy West. After their band the Dixie Grits disbanded, he jokes, the
Dregs were all that was left, and they became the Dixie Dregs, and started the band
as a three-piece instrumental group.
Morse jokes, “We felt like
most of our problems up to that point had come from singers. So, we went
totally for the music, which suited me fine, because some people give that line
‘well we’re really in it for the parties and the girls and the money and
everything’. Well, if you follow my career, you can see that there was never a
career decision ever made in that direction. It was always kind of heading for
the most obscure place. We were just hoping to buy food at some point in our
lives.”
After working about eleven
years straight with never really more than a few days off between gigs and
writing and recording albums, Morse says that after about the sixth album,
personnel changes, drugs, and the full-time commitment the band demanded tore him away
from his music.
“I just got a little bit
sick of the whole arrangement…I had enough. So, this was in the early eighties,
and I quit. In fact, I didn’t just quit the band, I quit playing, and I learned
how to make a living. I had a farm, and I had a bulldozer. I tried to dig
ponds for people and clear trees and bail hay for people…I was just doing
anything I could to just not make my living as a musician. I didn’t want to
quit playing, but I did want to quit the music business, and that got old pretty
quick. Sometimes, it’s good, you don’t know how good you got it until you try
something else, and I think trying to maintain farm equipment and working out in
the sun all day and fixing stuff all night is a great way to appreciate the gig
you had before, which I eventually did.”
While Morse was eventually
ready to return to his music, he was not prepared to resurrect the Dregs quite
yet, because he needed to keep control over what was happening in whatever band
he would work with and also because the others had already moved on at that
time. Instead, he started his own project after asking a booking agent if he
could get him some gigs on his own.
“With the Dregs I had a lot
of musical control, but the organization was out of control. No matter what we
did or how many records we had out or whatever happened we always just had a
high overhead and we were on a subsistence type salary, nothing more.” he
explained.
The Steve Morse Band was
formed in 1983 by Morse along with two musicians from North Carolina, who had
opened for the Dregs once. Their first album, 'Introduction' (1984) was released on Elektra Records,
but soon after the release of their second album there was yet another bump in
Morse’s career.
“I always thought these guys
were good enough to do it, and sure enough, no problem. They learned some Dregs
tunes…and I wrote some new things that would suit this trio…so we had a record
deal somehow, and it worked great. People liked it. I liked it, and as we got
enough gigs, I said we really gotta go for the big one. So, I bought a truck and
took out a big loan and got an airplane for us to travel in, and my plan was
that over the course of ten years, that I could pay off the airplane just not
using the airlines, which is what we did, and I still have that plane and still
use it for some shows.”
A few years
later, after the release of their second album, however, Morse says when they
had gotten the slot opening for Rush it was another pivotal time in his career.
“It was kind
of a weird time, because the record company had put out my second album, and
there was a change from albums to CD. And, they never released it as a CD,
because they just suddenly saw they weren’t going to sell a million units and
were like ‘Well, its on to the next thing.’ So, they never released it, and
they cut off the tour support right in the middle of the Rush tour. So, I was
faced with a huge loss keeping my word to everybody, and making their salaries,
and finishing the tour or just canceling. So, I finished the tour and was
deeply in debt for that and really, really, really, really bitter.”
With drummer Rod Morgenstein
living in New York and getting pulled into other projects, including Winger,
Morse says, it was getting difficult to hold on to him.
Rod Morgenstein 2002
Photo by Kara Uhrlen
It just so happened around
that same time Kansas was putting the band together and Morse was asked to
record with them on their album called ‘Power ’in 1986, and they did a tour, and over
the course of five years, they did an album called In the ‘In the Spirit of Things’,
but with increased record company and management involvement the band had been
pulled into a musical direction that Morse wasn’t comfortable with, and again,
he quit the business.
”I jumped off the ship at
the end of tour, and said ‘I’m not going to do this anymore.’ And, for the
second time quit the music business. I had this idea that with all the flying
I’d done over the years, I had a college degree and good eye sight, and there
was no reason why I couldn’t get a job as an airline pilot. It was very
difficult to get a job at that time, and I did. I went through the training and
I didn’t get washed out, which was a series of challenges and that was part of
the appeal to me. Once I got there and got the job, I really enjoyed it, just
being a regular ‘Joe’ in a uniform for some reason, I really liked that…but at
some point, the tedium of it did strike me.”
He waded in the waters of
the music industry once again by joining Lynyrd Skynyrd for a live performance on
their first big reunion tour in 1987, which was recorded for a live album called
Southern by the Grace of God. Morse said,
“I was so blown away, they were so nice to me, and they seemed like they had a
really good group vibe.”
He continued, “It seemed
fun. I just thought, ‘you know what this could be great’ if music was like that
easy to do, and I realized, no matter what you do, there’s going to be a certain
amount of stuff you don’t like about it. Things that have to be done on
schedule or things that have to be done whether you like it or not. And these
are obvious to anyone, and they were obvious to me, but it really sunk in at
that point. I finally realized that if I put as much effort into music as I did
getting that job flying that I could deal with it, I could deal with this
business. So, at that point I jumped back in.”
Ian Gillan 2003
Photo by Kara Uhrlen
That decision lead to more
touring, the eventual resurrection of the Steve Morse Band trio, and a few
more albums from the band. Morse says, things were going great and around
about 1993, he got a call from his manager about possibly hooking up with
Deep Purple for a tentative jam or something, which intrigued him.
While he says it must have
been 1994 by the time the meeting actually took place, he admits that he was
surprised that they were really good, and after hearing them live, he was
convinced that they were actually a lot better than he’d imagined. And aside
from being impressed with the band, he was impressed with the fact that Ian
Paice wanted him to not only be in the band, but to also be a part of the band.
“I was interested, because
of the fact that they would have wanted somebody like me. You know how some
people say, ‘well, I wouldn’t want to belong to the club that would have me as a
member’. I thought it was interesting that a rock band would want somebody,
who’s obviously from left field, just different from the guy that they’re
replacing, Richie Blackmore.”
Paice is the only original
member dating back to the band’s very first album, but from the heavy version of
the band that brought fans “Smoke on the Water,” today’s version of the band
also includes bassist Roger Glover and vocalist Ian Gillan, who are joined by
keyboardist Don Airey from Jethro Tull, Rainbow, and Ozzy Osbourne fame and of course, guitarist
Steve Morse. Airey is filling in for another original member, Jon Lord, who up
until recently had still been a full-time member of the band. In fact,
Morse says Lord is
currently only in partial retirement and may join the band for some European
dates later this year. Morse also says he isn’t the first American to join the band.
He says they had an America guitarist earlier named Tommy Bolin, who
had died on the road from drugs and at that time Richie Blackmore went back in
the band to fill in.
While its been a few years
since there last album, Morse says that there are definitely plans for Deep
Purple to work on a new studio album. But, with Jon Lord’s plans being up in
the air, the band has been moving really slowly through the process.
“We put together about eight
tracks already in demo stage, and now we’re having to rethink it, because we
have a different keyboard player and we’re not sure how much Jon’s going to want
to do. And, we have a really good producer, Michael Bradford, who likes us, and
he’s coming from left field too, because he’s like Kid Rock’s producer and bass
player.
He likes the band and I
definitely like him. So, everyone in the band was impressed with him. So, it
could be the first time we actually work with a producer for real, Rodger did a
lot of the production work, but I didn’t think he always had the full
involvement of the band helping him. So, this would be a new direction, but
schedule-wise, it’s like trying to schedule a conference call between 2,000
different people, it could be done but its going to take a lot of juggling.”
Ian Paice 2002
Photo by Kara Uhrlen
Aside from touring with
Purple, Morse has found a new home for his own solo work and Steve Morse Band
albums, the progressive label Magna Carta.
“I like it because they’re
like into the music. That’s a big priority. In fact, they came up with one of
the best concepts I’ve ever worked with doing the Major Impacts. The second
one’s a lot more difficult, because I’ve done the easy obvious ones already.
Like right now I’m working on a Genesis track and trying to do Genesis
instrumentally. Doing anything instrumentally is tough. So, it’s a challenge.”
When asked about a release
date, he joked that the second
Major Impacts release was probably due out last year… “It doesn’t matter when
it’s due out whenever they tell me it’s going to be released, it’ll be a
different date when it comes out. If they give me a deadline, I’ll meet the
deadline but until they give me a deadline, I’m going to work at my own pace,
which I prefer.”
Don Airey 2002
Photo by Kara Uhrlen
To date, Morse hasn’t done any
extensive touring lately in support of his work with Magna Carta, including the
latest Steve Morse Band/Steve More Solo album, Split Decision. But, he explained
that he had done two short runs of shows, one in the east and one in the west,
because he had expected the Split Decision album to be released then. And
actually those shows turned out to be Dregs gigs, “It was supposed to be the
Steve Morse Band, but then our drummer got this really great gig with Enrique
Iglesias, so he was gone, so we did it as Dregs.”
The Dregs had also performed
during 2000 in support of a live release entitled 'California Screamin' (Zebra) and
Morse explained that as long as the Dregs didn’t once again become a full-time
way of life, there had always been the possibility of them playing again. “I
enjoyed playing with the guys and by the time we got back together, a lot had
been learned by everybody. And so, it was more enjoyable.”
The idea behind Morse’s
latest release, Split Decision, is that it offers two sides of his music.
Split Decision is unique in that it includes the solo side, which allows him to
indulge in that classical guitar approach that he strived to learn back when he
first saw the head of the guitar program at the University of Miami perform.
Morse says that side of his music encompases the last five or six soulful tracks of the
album, and the Steve Morse Band trio’s music can be found throughout the first
seven. That of course explains the indecisive title.
“Between all these things
going on, I really enjoy the variety that doing solo projects gives me, and the
Split Decision album, I think its got the most breadth of different material
that I’ve done in a really long time, and I think listening-wise its easy to
grasp for an instrumental thing. It’s one of those albums, that the more you
listen to the more details and things you can find, because there was a lot of
work that went into it, opposed to lets just go into the studio, and record, and
be done by Friday.”
While Morse can’t imagine
what it would be like to hear his own work as a finished product for the first
time, with such diversity in his music, he advises that it may take a second
listen to receive the true impact of the album.
“It’s like whoa, there’s a
whole bunch of different stuff, and if you give it a second time though you’ll
see some of the traction. It’s been that way with all my favorite albums.” In
example, he recalls that after greatly anticipating the release of Led Zeppelin
III it took that second listen for the album to blow him away because he knew
what to expect.
For more information on
Steve Morse and his many projects visit
www.stevemorse.com and for details about his latest musical offering, Split
Decision, visit the record label site at
www.magnacarta.net.
Also be sure to check out our
upcoming interview with fellow Dreg, Rod Morgenstein, who filled TPRS.com in on the
Winger reunion tour and his
new album with Ty Tybor (Kings X) and John Myung (Dream Theater), The Jelly Jam (Inside Out Music America).
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