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| There
are dedicated fans, and then there are Steve Morse fans.
During the Steve Morse Band/Dixie Dregs show at Atlanta's
Variety Playhouse last spring, Morse's solos are
punctuated by the audience's cries of, "Steve!
Steve!" After the show fans line up with guitars
they brought with them to have Morse autograph them. One
fan says he's flown all the way from Phoenix, Arizona to
have Morse sign an official Steve Morse Music Man model
guitar. At another point bassist Dave LaRue, of Bass Player magazine fame, looks around for a place to rest his Dixie cup while signing an autograph. Three hands instantly shoot up in the air, the fans shouting, "Dave! Dave! Over here!" They're eager to touch the guy's styrofoam cup, fer crying out loud! We might expect this from a young male audience at a Metallica concert, but these fans are not teenagers. These are men in their 30's, 40's, even 50's, and time has not diminished their ferverent appreciation of Steve Morse's fretboard dexterity. Many of them have followed his career from the time he was a 14 year old guitar prodigy in Augusta, Georgia in the `60's. |
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Morse's original band, The Dixie
Dregs, along with the equally-overlooked Mahavishnu
Orchestra, were among the first bands to merge hard rock,
classical, and jazz into one virtuoso showcase. Morse's
musical direction was inspired when Mahavishnu performed
at the University of Miami. The budding six-string icon
was majoring in electric guitar and electrical
engineering at the school, along with future jazz legends
Pat Metheny and Jaco Pastorius, and Will Lee and Hiram
Bullock, who would play in the Late Night with David
Letterman band a decade later. Morse reformed his high school band, The Dixie Dregs, and incorporated elements of Mahavishnu's style. The Dregs toured the nation for over 10 years, gaining a huge following and changing record companies like socks. The members won reader's polls in every major musician's magazine until they were eventually retired to their respective instruments' Hall of Fame. After breaking up the Dregs in the early `80's Morse was an airline pilot for awhile before returning to music. He authored several how-to home videos and formed the Steve Morse Band, and still occassionally reforms The Dixie Dregs to tour. He has also served as guitarist with Kansas and, most recently, Deep Purple. |
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| The phone rings in my
sleepy little apartment one mid-morning, and when I
answer, "Hey, Art, Steve Morse here," comes
back over the line. Morse has just returned from a
European tour with Deep Purple where his luggage got lost
twice. Additionally, he has broken his wrist while
skateboarding with his sons. There is no rest in the life
of a guitar god, though, and Morse and his broken wrist
have already played the Montreaux Jazz Festival with Deep
Purple. He's now pacing in his own airplane hangar
waiting to begin rehearsals for the Steve Morse
Band/Dixie Dregs tour. While waiting for the other band
members to arrive he's killing time with interviews for
his new CD, Major Impacts. Despite his recent stress fest Morse comes across as a very nice, humble, regular fella, very much like anyone you knew who was majoring in music in college. Please keep in mind this interview was done in the summer of 2000. Morse is again touring with the Dregs, and this time his arm is fine! |
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| VOYAGER:
You've done Montreaux with the broken arm. How is it
working out? STEVE MORSE: My first cast, it was impossible. Then I went in to a different doctor, a surgeon, and got a fiberglass cast. I tried it on the guitar and it couldn't do what I needed it to. They cut that one off and the third cast that I've got now, that's going to do it. I sat there with the guitar in my hand, with my fingers on the neck while they put the cast on, so that I could at least do one hand position. You only get to pick one hand position for two months, so I tried to pick a compromise hand position where I could hit most everything. I've had to change a few chord voicings because I normally use my thumb for a lot of chords and I do a lot of stretches, so I had to change those two things and bring down the octave of a few things. VOYAGER: Wasn't it Les Paul who was in a wreck and had his hand re-set so that's it always in playing position? STEVE MORSE: Yeah, I remember that. That's kind of what I did. My wrist is angled. Actually it was swollen up so much that I couldn't help but have it that way, so its probably going to heal that way. |
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