Sneak preview from Steve's new album: A three-minute sprint with Jeff Watson.

Hey, wasn't this guy on the cover just last October? Yes, but Steve's been working overtime lately. The Steve Morse Band (Morse, bassist Dave LaRue, and drummer Van Romaine) has worked up reams of new material, and the group has already completed the follow-up to Steve's solo opus, High Tension Wires, the hands-down winner of the Best Guitar Album award in our 1989 Readers Poll. In fact, the new album would have been out by now were it not for a shake-up at MCA, Morse's label. But bitch not-here's an advance taste to hold you over until the record hits the stores.

The as-yet-unnamed LP (Southern Steel and About Face are two possible titles) finds Steve returning to a spontaneous, band-oriented approach. Many of the tunes sound markedly more aggressive than the delicate, carefully constructed soundscapes of Wires. "I wasn't trying to make the record more 'rock,'" claims Morse. "It was just the natural result of the conditions we set up. We worked things out on the spot, and that kind of instantaneous editing was a drastic departure from the solo album, which had been entirely realized in my mind. So just by virtue of being around the band, writing for the band, and throwing out things that the guys didn't like, it naturally came out a more rock album."

Jeff Watson's appearance on one tune is merely a continuation of Morse's long-time practice of recruiting cameo pickers for his projects. "I try to have a guest guitar player whenever possible," he explains, "people like Eric Johnson, Peter Frampton, and Albert Lee. Jeff and I met when Kansas and Night Ranger were touring together. Both bands kind of vaporized after that tour, but he became one of my dear friends. He's an extremely high-energy guy, and he's one of my latter-day influences, more philosophically than anything else. He has a totally opposite attitude from me; he tends to be more gung-ho, to go for it regardless of the consequences. I'm more cautious-maybe it's from being a pilot.

"When we were recording 'Cut To The Chase,' we really noticed how different our articulations sounded. For me, it's easier to switch from style to style-or play pretty much any melodic shape-if I pick all the notes. It's almost like I have to deliberately work out slurred things. Jeff slurs a lot more. And that lick he plays near the end of the solo section! He uses both hands, playing like a two-octave run. And he's got real good picking technique."

Morse's production emphasizes the contrast between the guitarists' approaches. "Jeff and I were able to get totally different sounds," he notes. "He uses a metal pick and real high-end pickups. I use a heavy plastic pick, a regular Fender-type, and my pickups have more midrange since I prefer a fatter sound that doesn't have as much high end. I used my Music Man guitar for the whole thing, and Jeff played a Hamer. It must be custom-made-it says 'Jeff Watson' on it." [Ed. note: The guitar - Hamer's Jeff Watson model, a 27-fret double cutaway solidbody archtop, equipped with P.J. Marx pickups.]

Amp-wise, Steve relied on a Marshall jubilee and a pair of Peaveys-a Triumph and a VTM. Watson later played through the same Marshall. "For the solo," Morse explains "we wanted a drastically different sound, so I used an Ampeg V4, which gets a real fat sound. I used JBL speakers with the Ampeg and Black Widows with the Peaveys.

"I have two cabinets set up with lines going into the control room, and I always have seven mikes plugged in in front of the cabinets, plus two Audio-Technica 31-R condensers as room mikes. Each mike is in front of a speaker, and I just choose. I try to get little subtle variations to give each guitar sound a slightly different voice. I used Audio-Technica 63s on Jeff because we wanted to get a lot of high end-that mike is a lot brighter than a Shure SM-57. I also used a little bit of a Audio-Technica because the sound was just a little too thin. I used a Shure SM-57 for my solos, and I used the 63 for a lot of my other parts."

In keeping with the album's live feel, the track features few overdubs and lots of improvisation. "We recorded the solos at the same time," reports Steve. "The last half of the solo section was done in one take, and then we went back and redid the first part. For the main riff, I had recorded my part, and I had Jeff answer my phrases. I wanted to make it sound like we had been in the same room together. In fact, that main riff, the one over the D-F change, is about the only part that's composed. It's the sort of voicing that someone like Eric Johnson might use, with one note as a drone. But it's not on an open string-it's a D at the 12th fret of the D string. When it goes to the F change, I just change the bottom note to a C and keep the other notes."

The tune continually alternates between one-chord pentatonic riffing and denser, more hyperactive ensemble passages. Morse says he concocted the long unison passage because "playing on one note for a long time makes me anxious. I needed something that would get away from that note but wouldn't destroy the feel, a flowing melody to take your mind off the fact that the rest of the tune grinds away on one chord. I also like to use frequent key changes to keep it from being monotonous."

Another diversion is the two-handed tapping passage. Here, the arrangement becomes progressively more complex with each repetition. "Originally, we just played the whole thing four times," recalls Steve, "but the two-handed thing is such a cliche. It's a nice intro, but the episode had to develop into something else." Another player might have made the tapped lick the focal point of the passage, but for Morse it's merely the bedrock for an ever-developing texture. "I guess that's pretty much my style," he laughs, "to take something that should be in the foreground, and stick it in the background.

"First Dave LaRue enters," Steve explains, "then I come in doing a harmony in opposing motion. We worked up a line for Jeff to play the second time through. It sounds an awful lot like a guitar that was recorded at half-speed and then sped up to double-speed, it's so high and clear-sounding.

"The third time, we brought in a tiny orchestra of guitars, a fake string section. It was four tracks, which we bounced down to two. I was mimicking backwards guitars with the volume knob, and some of it was actually backwards samples from an Eventide HD-3000 Harmonizer, which does a real-time backwards effect. But it can only reverse a certain byte of whatever you play, so you end up with something kind of nonsensical. It only works if it's a real simple melody. I experimented with different delays to get something very indefinite that you couldn't quite put your finger on. I also used an octave shift on the Lexicon LXP-5 [multi-effector], and then I processed that through some more junk, so the high octave is never heard straight-it just adds another partial, brightness without treble. That's the way Allan Holdsworth used to do some of his orchestral sounds, using one of those real expensive English pitch shifters. He'd put it up an octave, and then process it so you couldn't hear the glitches. He's a master at that."

Morse looks forward to future collaborations with Watson. "I'm in the process of moving out to California, not too far from where Jeff lives," he reports. Look for a Steve Morse Band tour after the Morses have finished folding up the Georgia farm-a complex process involving numerous cars, trucks, airplanes, and animals-and expect the album sometime this summer.

Transcribed by John D. Smith