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Steve Morse
The Beginning, The End...
and Two Resurrections
by Kara Uhrlen |
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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 and 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.
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.”
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.”
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.”
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. |
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