Steve Morse Band
Steve Morse
Dave LaRue
Van Romaine
July 10 1992, Cathedral Square, Milwaukee, WI, USA
User Friendly
Vista Grande
Twiggs Approved
Highland Wedding
Collateral Damage
Runaway Train
Night Meets Light
Sleaze Factor
Tumeni Notes
Little Kids
Flat Baroque
Ice Cakes
Cruise Missile
Morning Rush Hour
Cruise Control
August 18 1992 Back Room, Austin, TX, USA
On the town
Touring guitar great Steve Morse, enjoying a fresh surge of popularity with the comeback of
the Dixie Dregs, performs at the Back Room.
- The Austin American-Statesman, 08-18-1992
August 22 1992, The Boulder Theater, Boulder, CO, USA
User Friendly
Vista Grande
Twiggs Approved
Highland Wedding
Collateral Damage
Night Meets Light
Sleaze Factor
Tumeni Notes
Steve/Dave Duets
Ice Cakes
Runaway Train
Cruise Control
Encore:
Morning Rush Hour
SMB Medley
August 29 1992, The Strand, Redondo Beach, CA, USA
User Friendly
Vista Grande
Twiggs Approved
Highland Wedding
Collateral Damage
Night Meets Light
Sleaze Factor
Tumeni Notes
Little Kids
Flat Baroque
Ice Cakes
Runaway Train
Cruise Missile
August 30 1992, Coach House, San Juan Capistrano, CA, USA
Steve Morse Soars in 2 Different Crafts Music: Guitarist, who was once a commercial pilot,
says flying helps his work, allowing him to see the big picture.
Picture this: You're seated comfortably in an airliner that's cruising along at 30,000 feet.
The reassuring voice of the captain comes over the intercom, saying, "The weather looks great
in Dallas, and we should be arriving on time."
Then, almost as an afterthought, he adds, "And as soon as I can put this thing on autopilot,
I'll be back to play a few licks on my guitar."
Excuse me? A guitar-playing airline pilot? Absolutely. His name is Steve Morse, and he's
appearing Sunday night at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano.
Morse's career as a commercial pilot-which lasted only six months in 1987-never actually
included the scenario above. But until the lure of music returned him to guitar playing, he
gave serious consideration to flying as a full-time job. Morse maintains his license and
usually pilots his own plane while he is touring. And, he says, there are occasions when-if
the weather is good and he's flying by himself-he might pull out his guitar for some high-
altitude strumming.
"But I won't be going back to working as a commercial pilot," he explained. "I pretty much
burned that bridge when I retired-after six months. Resigning from a job is not a particularly
good thing to put on your resume. But I found that as much as I enjoyed the flying, the rest
of it-wearing a uniform, keeping up the paperwork-was just a job. I missed the
unpredictability of a music career."
The 37-year-old guitarist's continuing love of the air, however, was reflected in his
acquisition, last year, of a home in Ocala, Fla. "It's great," he said. "The house is right
there-there's not even a taxiway. I'm even setting up my hangar with a remote-control door so
I can land, taxi off the strip and take the plane right into the hangar-just like a car."
To the thousands of young fans who know him as one of the founding members of the energetic
Dixie Dregs (which evolved into the Dregs), as well as the leader of his own trio, Morse is
one of the guitar heroes of the last two decades. Nominated five times for Grammy awards,
named Best Overall Guitarist five times by Guitar Player magazine readers' polls, and inducted
into the periodical's "Gallery of Greats" in 1986, Morse clearly had ample reasons for keeping
his flying activities a high-tech hobby rather than a profession.
Morse, praised for his work with the Dregs, was never completely satisfied with the musical
possibilities the group provided. In 1984, he recorded his first solo album, "Introduction."
"I wanted to do guitar playing that was beyond just rhythm playing," he said. "I wanted to do
more interesting things, like playing contrapuntal lines with the bass. One of the things I
missed in the Dregs was the opportunity to have more instrumental responsibility. In fact, it
seemed for a while that I was writing tunes in which the violin and the keyboards always took
the main part of the melody, while I was just a doubling or harmonizing voice.
"With this trio-with Dave LaRue on bass and Van Romaine on drums, I've got more control. Sure,
I'd like to have 80 people available on stage for different pieces. But we've got lots of
stuff we do to open up the sound. On some tunes, Van plays chords on these electronic drum
pads he has; on others, Dave foot-pedals with his bass to add extra counter-melodies. And I
use the guitar synth to supplement things here and there, sometimes to string sounds and
orchestral timbres to accent and expand the music."
Morse's program at the Coach House comes near the end of an excursion that began in June.
"It's been absolutely spliced in with the Dregs' reunion tour too," he said. "After we play
San Diego, I'll be going home, and the guys will be coming to my place for a few days to
rehearse-and that's my time off."
With revived Dregs concert bookings and recordings in the offing, further traveling with his
own trio, and special appearances as a soloist, Morse's daybook is filled. Fortunately, he has
the right vehicle to maintain a punctual schedule. Neither Morse's voice nor his guitar will
be heard on the intercom of an airliner anytime soon, but he'll continue to make the passages
between gigs a little more pleasant behind the controls of his own plane.
"Flying is the thing that fills out my life. Being up there really gives you a sense of the
bigger view," Morse said. "And, maybe best of all, there's something about it-maybe it's that
bigger view-that helps put the heart in my music."
Steve Morse and T Lavitz play Sunday at 8 p.m. at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano,
San Juan Capistrano. $19.50. (714) 496-8930.
- The Los Angeles Times, Aug 29, 1992
August 31 1992, Sound FX, San Diego, CA, USA
He of Few Words, 'Tumeni Notes' Wows Faithful
Minutes before facing a crowd of 300 guitar-mongers Monday night, Steve Morse stood backstage
at Sound FX, fixedly practicing on a custom-made, nylon-string guitar. Dave Larue and Van
Romaine-bassist and drummer, respectively, in the Steve Morse Band-idled about, conserving
energy. At the suggestion that the band's instrumental "Sleaze Factor" should be dedicated to
the Bush reelection campaign, Morse suddenly brightened.
"I saw (Bill) Clinton on C-Span the other day, and he was giving a speech at the Grand Ole
Opry," Morse said. "He talked for a long time about a lot of things and made some really good
points-with no note cards or anything! It was pretty impressive."
It seemed fitting that Morse should be taken with off-the-cuff virtuosity. The product of the
University of Miami's famed music department is a member in good standing of the guitar-god
pantheon-a loosely defined clique of electric string-benders whose sacraments are protean
technique, impossible speed and idiomatic versatility.
Morse, erstwhile leader of the 1970s-'80s progressive-rock band the Dregs (ne Dixie Dregs),
might lack the flash of a Joe Satriani or the disciplined, pristine tunefulness of an Eric
Johnson. Nevertheless, his gritty mix of '70s-style fusion, speed-metal, neoclassical and
Southern rock deservedly has earned Morse an avid following.
The covenant between guitar heroes and their fans is a simple one and rules the concert
format: The performer gives a comprehensive exhibition of his wares, and the audience gets a
fix of virtuosic string play. No dancers, no elaborate light shows, no flash pots or fog
machines. Nothing to distract from that esoteric exchange.
Guitarists with a low hunk quotient, like Morse, generally attract the serious musicos-guys
who subscribe to Guitar Player magazine and can tell you the type of strings a player uses.
Consequently, it was a mostly male audience that sat in wait for Morse on Monday night. Or, as
one wag associated with the club put it, it was "male-bonding night" at Sound FX. In his
nearly two-hour set, Morse gave the bonders much to cheer.
*
The Morse trio set a no-nonsense pace for the show by opening with "User Friendly" from its
current album, "Coast to Coast." It's the kind of hyperkinetic tune you want handy when you're
alone on the interstate and feel like hitting the pedal and the volume knob. Morse was already
in mid-concert form, and the crowd gave its boisterous blessing.
On the stately "Vista Grande," from last year's "Southern Steel" album, Morse deftly
alternated between lightly picked, chiming harmonics in the tune's quiet passages and siren-
like melodies in the hotter spots. Tasteful execution made the otherwise dramatic dynamic
shifts seem natural and not contrived. "Twiggs Approved," from the Dregs' 1980 opus, "Dregs of
the Earth," had Morse fitting visceral riffs and fisted chordings around a stomping, mid-tempo
rhythm.
In just three selections, Morse had demonstrated a clear grasp of pacing and context. Even
digital wizardry can lose its zip if it isn't grounded in varying textures and contrasting
tempos. Already, Morse had proven himself equal to the challenge of adapting his technical
prowess to different modes of expression, and the crowd responded accordingly. It was time for
Morse to speak, and he gently poked fun at the music-nerd hipness of his natural constituency.
"We couldn't get our vocal harmonies right during the mix, so the rest of the show will be all-
instrumental," he joked, eliciting laughs with a reference to a repertoire that is nothing but
instrumental. "This is the last gig of our tour," he continued, "so if you find yourself
wondering at some point, 'Why did he play a G-sharp over G-natural?' it's 'cause it's our last
concert for a while."
Morse added that this would be his only official oral interaction with the crowd, then
proceeded to show why words were superfluous with an engrossing read of "Highland Wedding,"
from his 1989 album, "High Tension Wires." The piece began slow, the plaintiveness of its
Celtic-flavored melody subtly augmented by sampled orchestration, courtesy of Morse's MIDI-
equipped guitar. Morse then lifted the quasi-Scottish tune into an exhilarating mountain storm
of bagpipe-ish lines and reel-ish rhythms.
The set continued to build in stylistic breadth and intensity. In the middle of the new
album's frenetic "Collateral Damage"-sort of the fusion equivalent of speed-metal-Morse's solo
took off as though launched from a careening vehicle.
*
On the ballad "Night Meets Light," he began with dulcet picking against pastoral harmonies,
and later employed a combination of keen touch and a volume pedal to approximate a pedal-steel
guitar. He lived up to the tongue-in-cheek title of "Tumeni Notes" by unleashing a prolonged,
Uzi-like spray of 32nd-notes.
At a juncture where the electric onslaught might have caused ear weariness in even the
staunchest fan, Morse wisely changed course. Playing the nylon-string guitar, he performed two
neoclassical duets with bassist Larue. "Little Kids" and the new release's "Flat Baroque"
showcased Morse's ability to breathe modern life into 18th-Century guitar styles while
retaining their elegant complexity.
Resuming speed on electric ax, Morse spit out tough lines between the fitful starts and stops
of "Ice Cakes," raised the roof with tour de force country picking with the Albert Lee-ish
"Runaway Train," and finished with a rush on "Cruise Missile" from his 1984 solo album, "The
Introduction."
The Morse band encored with the new album's "Morning Rush Hour" and a rapid-fire medley of
musical quotes from other artists' tunes (including "Mississippi Queen," "Gimme Some Lovin',"
"Summertime Blues," "My Sharona" and "Free Bird"). It seemed an appropriately playful way to
let off any leftover steam, while taking the starch out of what otherwise was a clinic in
serious guitar methodology.
But Morse drew the biggest roar of the night with his final announcement: He and the Dregs-
including keyboardist T Lavitz, who opened the show-are reuniting for a tour this fall and
expect to pass through San Diego sometime in November.
- The Los Angeles Times, Sep 2, 1992