It was not the allure of horse pastures and equestrian events that brought legendary guitarist Steve Morse to Ocala 34 years ago. It was the blue skies every pilot craves.
Not just a founding member of Dixie Dregs, nor the former lead guitarist for Kansas, and not simply the 28-year lead guitarist for Deep Purple, Morse is also a licensed pilot who made that aspect of his life a priority when relocating from California. What may seem odd for a seven-time Grammy nominee and musician named “Best Overall Guitarist” every year from 1982 to 1986 by Guitar Player Magazine, is actually quite reasonable given Morse’s nature.
Equally comfortable on stage blasting out riffs in front of thousands of fans as he is in the quietude of the blue yonder, Morse maintains a humility about him uncommon in his industry. Indifferent to the lifestyle glitz of the entertainment world, Morse enjoys time out of the limelight even if it means repairing a beat-up tractor or removing downed tree limbs on his property.
Regarded among his guitar peers as a virtuoso among virtuosos – legendary producer Ken Scott once said Morse “… is the best guitarist I’ve ever worked with” and that list includes Jeff Beck, George Harrison, and Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour – Morse’s reputation for crossing genres is unparalleled. He cannot be boxed into any category, and is known for a style that fuses classical, rock, blues, bluegrass, country, and jazz, and he used that versatility and composition mastery to elevate and broaden Deep Purple’s sound.
His instrumental work with Dixie Dregs early revealed the complexity of Morse’s playing and writing, and his reputation as a master of his craft blossomed. Following the Dregs’ disbanding in 1983, he would form the Steve Morse band with bassist Jerry Peek and drummer Doug Morgan.
In 1986, Morse took over as lead guitarist of the rock band Kansas and co-wrote that group’s last top-20 hit “All I Wanted.” From 1991 to 1994, he re-formed the Steve Morse Band then made the biggest move of his career, taking over for the departed Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple. That relationship lasted until 2022 when Morse left the band to tend to his wife Janine, who had been diagnosed with cancer and would pass away in 2024.
Morse sat down with The Ocalan recently to talk about his career and the journey of a life lived as one of the all-time greats.
The Ocalan
Before talking about your music career, why the move to Ocala?
Steve Morse
I picked Ocala because the air is blue. It has better visibility than in most of the southern states, and it’s because of the peninsular effect – the proximity being midway between the coasts and farther away from the corrosion. As an airplane owner, I see the coastal places as being salt air and corrosion. And, I thought it was a good move to get farther away from the coasts for hurricanes.
The Ocalan
So, just blue skies and protection from hurricanes and corrosion brought you here?
Steve Morse
Here’s the big kicker: When I found out that Florida’s constitution said there would be no additional income tax taken by the state than what the federal government was taking, I said that seals the deal. And, it had to be within two hours of a major international airport because I was in music and going all over the world.
The bottom line is, Ocala suits me.
The Ocalan
You were born in Ohio and your family was originally from Michigan, so how is it you break into the music business with a band called Dixie Dregs?
Steve Morse
In the ‘60s and ‘70s I lived in Georgia – my family moved there from Michigan. My dad was a minister and we moved around a lot and he was working on his PhD, as well as my mother who was working on her graduate studies and having three kids. They got an opportunity in Georgia to both work and use their degrees at the Medical College of Georgia (in Augusta).
It was a culture shock for me. Coming from a place where everybody I knew played music, everybody was kind of normal to me. When I moved to the South it was a different dialect and different customs and kind of an exclusionary vibe for somebody coming in that had a little bit longer hair and was from the North.
I got kicked out of high school a lot for having hair that touched my ears, and finally, as I reached 16 years of age, I decided enough is enough – I had good grades and decided to get into summer college and I transferred from there to the University of Miami, and that is where I got my music degree.
The Ocalan
Was UM where you started to branch out musically?
Steve Morse
I was exposed to a lot of great musicians there like Jaco Pastorius and Pat Metheny. It was a wonderful time to be doing music.
As teenagers, we had a band called Dixie Grit which was just a funny name. My brother played drums and we had Andy West, and a bunch of us were not from the South. We decided Dixie Grit because as teenagers you think of stupid things that are funny. We didn’t know how many people thought we were going to be a Dixieland band or some kind of Confederate thing. We just didn’t project that far when we were kids.
When the band broke up, Andy and I were all that was left; we were the dregs of the band, so we called ourself Dixie Dregs and later we dropped ‘Dixie.’
The Ocalan
When you were Dixie Grit, what was your sound?
Steve Morse
We were doing our own stuff with vocals that was like prog, then the Dregs was the first eclectic instrumental rock band. We did some bluegrass, some classical, some jazz, but mostly rock based stuff – short tunes, shorter solos so people could listen to it and we were able to expand our audience and do pretty well.
Back then, we were not ever maneuvering to be in the popular music scene. We knew enough that we were going to be on the fringe, in the undergound section. Being in the underground strata in the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s and even 2000s was a great place to be because you could make a living – not a great living – and have freedom of expression. There was no expectation that you were going to be writing hits or that you have to write hits.
The Ocalan
Then what happened after the University of Miami?
Steve Morse
After school, we went back to Augusta and the band branched out, then we moved to Atlanta. We went through our whole cycle, kind of beginning to end, in Georgia. At the end of that, I was looking for something so we tried to move to California and I bought property that had an airstrip as part of the land – it was in the foothills of the mountains and was absolutely gorgeous. But, I had one problem after another; the rules there are so different – the government really wanted me to not own that property and did everything they could to make it difficult. So, within months I put it up for sale and said, “I’m going back to the South where at least I know what the rules are, where I know what I’m dealing with.”
I picked Ocala and ’92 is when I moved in.
The Ocalan
Radio play is basically reserved for music accompanied by lyrics, but you were always instrumental with the Dregs. Why so?
Steve Morse
As a writer, I like writing instrumentally.
With a song, you’re commonly doing a repetition of verse A, verse B, everything’s repeated except for the lyrics. That’s a formula that works for the song format, but for me as a composer, every time you bring something back you need to change something, you need to develop it and maybe go somewhere different rather than having the bridge be the only thing unusual about the tune.
I wanted to write like a composer, not like a guy in a rock band.
The Ocalan
Did music executives ever try to persuade you and the Dregs to venture into songs with lyrics?
Steve Morse
Our manager in Atlanta once said, “in this next album, if you put at least two vocals on and the album doesn’t sell any more (than previous albums), then we’ll let you out of the contract. So, we ran out of the office looking for friends that sang and we did (the album) “Industry Standard.”
The Ocalan
“Industry Standard” is an interesting name for an album. Where did that come from?
Steve Morse
It was named that because it was standard in the industry to take big chunks of a band’s money before they even got it, like in commissions. The record royalties were “yeah, you’ll get the royalties after we pay for everything from yourselves and your tiny royalty” – basically saying you don’t get anything.
Anyway, the “Industry Standard” album had vocals on it and it sold fine, but not any better than the other ones, so we got out of the contract. That was back in the ‘80s.
I was rooting (for the songs on the album) to be good, and they were good, but they weren’t top 40. I was like, this is good and we accomplished what we set out to do and the rest of the album is really good instrumental music. That was fine with me, and I knew where I was going to be my whole life.
The Ocalan
Seems like generating pop hits and cashing in millions wasn’t a big motivator for you.
Steve Morse
Our goal was to make the music good. I put more into the songs than a normal songwriter would.
You had to have credibility back then; you had to have a credible persona of “this is what this band’s image is” and our image was all over the place because we liked variety. One of the festivals I went to in the ‘60s was Janis Joplin (rock blues), Jimi Hendrix (more electric psychedelic stuff), Grand Funk Railroad (straight up rock), Dave Brubeck (jazz), Goose Creek Symphony (country, hillbilly almost), and Ravi Shankar (traditional Indian ragas) – all in the same show the same day. That’s the world I wanted to exist in and I knew those people were still alive and I knew that the industry tries to package them and restrict them.
Now you go to a festival and every band’s the same. This is a “so-and-so” festival; this is a “that” festival, and it’s got to be bands that fit the image of the festival. So, we wanted to expand the variety more.
The Ocalan
Tell me about the differences in those bands you played in.
Steve Morse
Dregs was my comfort zone; same with Steve Morse Band. Me writing stuff and having a place to try it out with great musicians. I’m very grateful for those musicians and the opportunities and the people that supported us.
As for Kansas, I was always a fan. I would just bring in some ideas when they were re-forming with Steve Walsh. I thought we would write just a couple of tunes and that would be it, but we kept working well together and it grew in an organic way to me doing an album with them then going on tour and doing another album and going on tour. That was cool.
The Ocalan
Of course, your tenure in Deep Purple was longer than any other lead guitarist, including Blackmore.
Steve Morse
With Purple I got to contribute to the songwriting as well as play all the classic stuff, so it was a great gig and it lasted a lot longer than I could have ever imagined. The only reason it stopped was because my late wife got cancer and it turned out to be really aggressive and she really needed me and I needed to be there, so that was the end of that.
Musically, it was a good thing both in Kansas and in Purple.
The Ocalan
Deep Purple seems a bit of a departure from Dregs and Kansas, correct?
Steve Morse
I think some of the hardcore original Purple fans would have liked it better if I had been more straight up blues rock then what I was bringing. I was always trying to expand Purple a little bit, like when Led Zeppelin did instrumental things like “Black Mountain Side” or a totally different folk sounding piece like “Gallows Pole” on their albums. I wanted to have that kind of variety in the band and that sort of became my position in the band, to always look for a way to push outside as well as help with the songs that we’re doing straight up.
The Ocalan
Would you consider that expansion of Deep Purple a success?
Steve Morse
Yes, for better or worse. Worldwide, the audience expanded from the time I joined until the time I left. So, there’s good things that happened.
I think Ritchie (Blackmore) was a prolific writer and he had stuff he was envisioning with the solo project, which he did with Rainbow very effectively, and even after he quit Purple again (in 1993).
The Ocalan
You are known as a master of your craft, even among the most well-known and celebrated guitarists in the world. What was key to a Michigan kid growing up in Georgia advancing to the level you achieved?
Steve Morse
I practiced every day and I had technical practice to keep my ability to play the tempo parts up, and the practice involved discovery and finding new things: new ideas to write, new ways of playing something, new fingerings, new tones. So, there would be the discovery part, the third one was kind of having fun at the end of a practice session to look forward to.
My playing was heavy on technique to the point where I wore out my wrists from 60-something years of playing ten thousand notes a day and flexing my hand like this so I could mute the strings I wasn’t playing. And now, I’m playing stiff-wrist because it’s so painful to play the other way – I made a mute that would stop the open strings from ringing.
The Ocalan
You certainly speak with more humility than one would expect from a rock and roll lifer who is accustomed to being adored by fans. How do you stay so grounded?
Steve Morse
Anybody that’s not humble is missing out on the education that we should be having every day of our lives. Every day we should be learning new stuff, because I think my most important job is to pass on durable truths that I’ve noticed over the last half century of when I was able to do things. I need to pass it on and I need to help coach and mentor people. That’s my real existence at this point as well as being a good father to my kids.
That’s not a decision; it’s just a way of life.