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![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/morse3.jpg)
The Dude Ranch
Steve Morse has recorded an instructional video of him performing a bespoke piece The Dude Ranch written by Jason Sidwell. The full video, audio, backing track, tab/notation transcription, and chord chart will feature in Guitar Techniques magazine issue GT341, available from 19th October 2022.
Thanks to stevemorse.com for the info.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Don’t get me wrong I think Simon’s great but I miss Steve. For me, I get so used to something and when it changes it bums me out. It’s just the way I am.
September 26th, 2022 at 21:13Nice Steve! Maybe it’s time for a new Steve Morse Band album? It’s been a long time. I see on his web page that he’s keeping active.
September 26th, 2022 at 22:26Very nicely done indeed!
September 27th, 2022 at 01:28Ah yes…Super tasty playing, & made to appear super easy to do too…Awesome work Mr.Morse, you’ll be missed by everyone for sure, & I hope that home life is the very best it can be !
Peace !
September 27th, 2022 at 07:27Nice! Love it! This could go on for a half hour and it wouldn’t get boring! Love it!!
September 27th, 2022 at 07:47Mr Blackmore praised Steve Morse in one of his interviews.
September 27th, 2022 at 09:04He said he is technically very good but don’t play searching from the heart. The same comments were directed to Joe Satriani as well.
I hope he will reconsider his words one day and apologizes to him.
Peace ✌️
Great! Mr Morse belongs to Deep Purple!
September 27th, 2022 at 10:00Wonderful piece!! I miss that sound already, especially with Don on the keys going back and forth. Steve is very prominent in the DP family tree 🙂
September 27th, 2022 at 11:07It’s almost a clichee of questionable substance to say that anyone who is technially very good, lacks emotion or depth in his playing. It’s the most convenient and readily available argument.
But I don’t hear that. Steve doesn’t play without emotion, he plays with a lot of joy and a “gung-ho top-athlete on the field” attitude. Unsurprisngly, he plays like the Southerner he is (albeit a naturalized one, he was born in Ohio, but moved together with his parents as a teenager to Georgia after stints in Tennessee and Michigan). He didn’t call his band The Dixie Dregs for nothing. That is miles away from Blackmore’s minorish vampire movie brooding and sense of drama or his introspective side (which makes up a lot of his charm as a player if you take away smashed Strats and brain-drilling killer riffs). Himmel, Steve was doing this here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtGxEmjRze0
while Ritchie was penning stuff like this here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0m8OeXrmySY
You cannot reasonably expect that he plays from Ritchie’s heart, he plays from his own with his own emotions. Ritchie is dusk, Steve is the dawn
If Ritchie is Clint Eastwood, then Steve is Tom Hanks. Saying that one of them is a better actor than the other, misses the point.
September 27th, 2022 at 11:15@ 9
Still trying to defend the impossible chickennoodling , huh?
I want my chicken grilled/roasted by the man in black, please.
A Rum/Cola to juice it away…..
A coffee to wind it down so that everything nicely leaves my building the morning after.
CHEERS.
September 27th, 2022 at 18:04RV, you boze tong! : – )
September 27th, 2022 at 18:51Wonderful as per usual. And all great comments so far! :>
Herrin Hornung,
Eloquent as is always expected and appreciated. And your statement regarding Ritchie/Clint & Steve/Tom nails it down! Kudos….
Peace,
September 27th, 2022 at 18:58Ted
Love this!
Glad to see Steve is keeping himself busy. Can only hope that we get a whole album of new material from him.
Best wishes to him and all the family.
September 27th, 2022 at 19:13@ 6 -I am not sure about the alleged Steve Morse comment from the Man in Black, although I wouldn’t have noticed every comment over the years. I remember Blackmore saying Morse was brilliant, a superb guitarist etc. The ‘not from the heart’ comment I recall was, as you say to do with Satriani, or it was words to that effect. Also something about Satch not taking any risks etc, too technically precise, from my memory of that comment. Any way it doesn’t matter what someone else thinks does it? As long as we enjoy what we enjoy. For what it is worth I am more of a Steve Morse ‘outside of Purple’ aficionado. I am not a Satriani follower at all, although he is a very very good guitar player. Cheers.
September 27th, 2022 at 20:51All very well … and well penned too.
Steve Morse seems to be as nice a person as can be. Plays flawless, supports others, does encores and signs autographs. And it is true, RB isn’t much of a composer. But his playing, especially live, moves me to this day. Steve’s playing never did. So I guess it depends on what kind of heart you have and what kind of heart is played from … 😉
September 28th, 2022 at 08:09I could use another Flying Colors album anytime – I really love their stuff, especially when they go all Beach Boys here (yup, another uncool band I really dig):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzKzFjYDTW4
No, this isn’t Deep Purple, there is nothing dangerous or edgy to it, but it is extremely well-played and uplifting. And don’t tell me that Steve’s solo is emotionless, it’s joyously fitting the song perfectly.
Not that other Purple members were above sounding like the Beach Boys too at times!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKIilkrZqu0
Remember when Jon Lord and Nick Simper had to make ends meet with The Flower Pot Men (they are not on the recording, but they were part of the touring band)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0kg9vOQQ3g
September 28th, 2022 at 13:24@9 Uwe, thank you so much for the Dregs link. I really enjoyed it. I saw The Dregs on their Bring ‘Em Back Alive tour at Club Bene in New Jersey in 1992. It ranks up there as one of the best shows I’d seen. The live CD from the tour was a bonus for me and is worth checking out for anyone wanting to learn more about The Dregs. I’ve been fortunate enough to see Steve with The Dregs, The Steve Morse Band, and DP. The only problem I had with the SMB was that he was opening for Joe Satriani at the time and his setlist (understandably) was too short for me….Joe was great BTW….
September 28th, 2022 at 15:53It’s funny – I remember a million years back in the 1980s, when I had two Deep Purple books. One was by Chris Welch, I think (The Deep Purple Heavy Metal Book, lol), and the other by Chris Charlesworth – I think “Deep Purple: A Biography.” Maybe “an illustrated biography.” Anyway, obviously both gents were devoted enough to their subjects to write the books, but I think it was Chris Welch who wrote that Blackmore had great technique but little emotion.
September 29th, 2022 at 01:53This goes to show that emotion is in the ear of the beholder.
To me, Ritchie is neither emotion-drenched nor emotionless in his playing, when soloing he doesn’t wear his heart on the sleeve like Rory Gallagher and Johnny Winter did (he rates both highly as blues guitarists), but he never relied just on technique either (though we would liberally make use of it when desired).
Don Airey once said that Ritchie – unlike Randy Rhoads, Gary Moore or Michael Schenker – overthinks his parts and I can understand that: there is something decidedly cerebral in Ritchie’s playing just like it is/was in Jeff Beck’s and Miles Davis’ playing. To me he is more like an abstract painter, an auteur, he is sophisticated and refined in his choice of notes. But an abstract painting can still transport or trigger emotion.
As a guitarist, Blackmore is a (great) stylist – just like Jeff Beck and Brian May are. That is hardly bad company, is it? My son – who is a guitarist and diehard blues aficionado – says that Blackmore’s playing is incredibly smart and effective, sometimes even daring, but devoid of any real ‘mojo’. He is too controlled and refined to be raw. Rather, Blackmore ‘dances on the music’ to his own tune.
September 29th, 2022 at 13:06I’m listening in this moment to the new Jeff Beck/Johnny Depp collaboration. Yes, I know that it was critically panned and that it can be viewed as a self-serving commercial exercise of the worst kind, “guitar god with zero female fans teams up with male actor heartthrob for the opposite sex who can’t really sing and isn’t good enough to be Beck’s guitar tech”, but I can’t help thinking: Why can’t Ritchie branch out a bit more like that? Is it really written in stone that he now does lightweight mock-medieval folk-pop for the rest of his life and/or geriatric Rainbow reunions? Beck’s guitar playing is simply beautiful on this album and Herr Depp doesn’t bother me one bit, in fact he complements nicely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrBMMUn6S4I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLxzlQBgGXY
Ritchie would have so much to offer to other forms of music. Someone please drag him into a recording studio (together with people that for once are not paid by him and at his whim) real quick. He has become a musical hermit.
September 29th, 2022 at 14:29@ 20 – Blackmore keeps a low profile, he always has. That is his personality, shy & introverted etc. We as musical aficionados are frustrated to a degree. He has delivered in spades though for us ‘rock’ music followers, I am contented however I do know what you mean. His little outing on William Shatner’s album or song is grand & what was that Hank Marvin one, Apache wasn’t it? There might be a few more I don’t know, sometimes just a little is enough’. Regarding the Jeff Beck & Depp collaboration, am I game, can I resist as I have up until this moment. Time will tell as there is a lot of Jeff Beck that I haven’t ever heard. He was great in concert back in 2009, superb! Cheers.
September 29th, 2022 at 21:29@20…LOL !!! Candice will surely tell you that RB does exactly what he wants, with or without anyone else’s approval !
RB has stated quite a few times that Rock died 30-years ago, & is quite happy to pass his rock sensibilities into that grave too. It’s also a reason why imo he gave-up on Rainbow, & starting off the younger generations careers with him through Rainbow, as he thought the scene dead.
RB should remember that “Heavy Metal” music accounts for over 50% of all album sales around the world to this day…( At least that’s what I read somewhere ).
Anyhow, regardless of all that, & 3-piece power-trio as originally planned in 1973/74 would still be a door for him to open, but I’d say retirement & family suit his time better now-days, though this doesn’t mean he couldn’t pull-off a delicate solo acoustic album with 10 or so personal favorite tunes on it…I’d suggest that that’s what you’re hinting at, & what a lot of folks would like to hear. I’d buy it for sure !
Peace !
September 29th, 2022 at 23:38Not to be misunderstood, I don’t want Ritchie going back to being a hard rock guitar hero or rewrite a Machine Head or Burn – that era is over and he has served on that field with distinction.
I would like to hear him play music that is a little more “grown-up” and challenging than BN.
Miles Davis was unafraid to tackle a Cyndi Lauper song and turn into something special.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpZHjvFXprk
September 30th, 2022 at 12:16@23: That has been an old wish of mine for a long time. That some pop artist would just hire him to do a solo somewhere. Just walk in and do some classic RB on some R&B song by Mariah Carey or whatever the artists are called these days. But as Frank Zappa once said, there is probably “no commercial potential” in that. Those kind of artists don’t need us smelly rockers in their fanbase. The only way I could see that happen is if that artist was a fan of RB, which usually seems highly unlikely.
September 30th, 2022 at 12:33@24…RB isn’t one to change his mind once it’s been made-up, (one is led to think), & perhaps a glimpse of what he wants to do in the future will be revealed within his own web-page…
As for the flash-in-the-pan solo appearance, that credit is possible for sure, but unlikely imo, as that’s where RB came from before DP, so why go back there if you don’t have to ?. There’s a massive amount of superb players that built careers from performing extraordinary performances on Steely Dan recordings, but these chances seem less & less these days imo, but anything’s possible. ( eg Elliot Randall, Jay Graydon, Jeff Baxter, Larry Carlton, Drew Zing, Denny Dias to name a few from Steely Dan )…
Someone like Steve Morse “is” of the moment, & in great form now-days, & would be a more likely candidate in asking for a one-off solo performance on-a-tune than RB would be imo.
Peace !
September 30th, 2022 at 12:57@25 Yeah, it wouldn’t happen these days. And I wouldn’t be interested in hearing that. But in the 70’s and 80’s would have been cool.
As for those studio cats, yeah sure but that is so predictable. RB would be a more adventurous option, which of course goes against the entire concept of “pop”.
September 30th, 2022 at 16:54You think Metallica wouldn’t have Ritchie guest on one of their tracks? Kirk Hammett would light a candle – let’s not even mention Lars, he’d offer his butt to hold it.
Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins was/is a great Blackmore fan too.
The Opeth guys are as well.
The list is endless. It’s just that Ritchie has cordoned himself off from this world and cannot really be reached by other people who have to go over his wife or mother-in-law to then only hear a no if at all.
And pop artist appreciating hard rocking acts is nothing new. They tend to recruit hard rock to heavy metal guitarists for their own backing bands all the time because – let’s face it – the genre offers a high quality of six string instrumentalists. Lady Gaga adores Judas Priest and Taylor Swift is a Def Leppard fan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SGGgdXxA40
Miley Cyrus of course a Zeppelinista …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHuWcJUrP6Y
If Ritchie wasn’t such a curmudgeon, he couldn’t save himself from invitations to guest on albums.
OBJECTION YOUR HONOR: It’s a convenient myth of hard rock and metal fans that they are somehow an ignored subculture minority when hard and heavy muisc has been permeating pop music and culture for decades. Reality show star Ozzy O. wasn’t a folk singer in his day job last I heard. And heavy music is a reliable and important genre market where acts can be developed with a certain longevity – Wacken as an institution wouldn’t exist if it were different. We’re a serious market, so there!
I had an enlightening experience more than a decade ago. I was at a Robin Gibb gig (you read right: the now late Bee Gees brother, a very charming man). And his backing band consisted of four guys who looked like they were from a Metal Hammer centerfold. Black clothes, muscle shirts, chains, long hair, even their guitars and basses looked metal. I was expecting them to break into a few metal tracks at any time. But they played both Robin’s 60ies pop ballads and the 70ies disco hits faultlessly and with a pleasantly gung-ho attitude, you could tell that they had been raised playing hard rock and gave the music that extra push. When they played Staying Alive towards the end, they were already verging on hard rock territory and really let rip!
Robin graciously introduced his band and it turned out that they were Brazen Abbott i.e. Nikolo Kotzev’s Finnish melodic heavy rock outfit which some of you should know for their frequent collaborations with Glenn Hughes and Joe Lynn Turner! It had been nagging on me during the whole gig that I somehow knew the guitarist, but could not place him – who goes to Robin Gibb gigs expecting a heavy metal lead guitarist?!
I saw a later line-up (and sans orchestra), but you can see Nikolo Kotzev here on the left with the acoustic guitar – in the years before Robin’s death he had become his musical director.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw-pF_9jL2Y
September 30th, 2022 at 19:44A solo album from Blackmore would suffice, as long as it isn’t anything like what is going on today & since 1998. That possible collaboration with Jon Lord would have been nice me thinks, fate had it’s other ideas unfortunately. I was very disappointed when Tony Iommi opted out of doing the solo record that he mentioned around that era. He was talking about getting involved with non ‘rock’ performers, for want of a better description. He mentioned Phil Collins vocally & the like, something totally different. Alas he went for the chugg chugg predictable metal riff thing that he has turned into since the turn of the century. That very ordinary ‘solo’ album with guest vocalists that he fell for. Horrible & predictable. I guess they are ‘content’ with doing what they do, what they feel comfortable with. Not to worry. Cheers.
September 30th, 2022 at 21:09Personally I cringe at old school rock guitarist ‘guesting’ on stage with newer artists. It is a bit of a wank. We know who they are. The ‘and now folks here comes the rock star’, guitarists just like lead vocalists are guilty of that far too much. It is all part of the ‘showbizz’ side of so called ‘entertainment” & we have seen (well I will never watch it) that happen recently in the USA & not only with guitarists & vocalists. However they are the ‘spotlight kids’ are they not Appearing on a recording is ok if it works, melody wise. Cheers.
October 1st, 2022 at 01:17Yo, we must not forget that there are a number of players performing & making records in a similar vein & approach to DP / Rainbow, whether deliberate or not. One such player that springs to mind is Yngwie J Malmsteen, & he’s been going strong since the early 1980’s…And whilst imo he’s not a copy-cat per-se, he revels in that front-pick-up Stratocaster sound during solo’s, has solid rocking tunes to deliver, & has an “air-kick” that I’ve never seen anyone deliver better LOL !!!…Anyhow, the point is, that there’s many fine players out there, all we have to do is find them, & appreciate what they do, & learn where perhaps their “roots” come from.
*And another advantage the “old school” players had whilst growing-up, is the awesome musicians & composers that they would have heard & seen on the TV &/or cinema / movie-theater of the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes Cartoons…These are truly masterpieces of combined talents, & can teach us all about what music can do & its possibilities. I listened to the “Concerto for group & orchestra” on it’s anniversary the other night, & there’s no doubt in my mind that Jon Lord “animated” his melodies along the “Looney-Tunes” way of composing…Awesome stuff, & perhaps the only time I’ve ever heard DP Mk-II play in the 5/4 time signature…
Peace !
October 1st, 2022 at 02:54It’s about time Blackers and Steve recorded together. The project’s name is too good to be wasted. Who wouldn’t like to listen to some sick acoustic jams by BlackMorse?
October 1st, 2022 at 18:02Uwe @20,
When a friend and I got tickets for Jeff Beck at The Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey for a few weeks from now, it was billed as just Jeff. Due to his immense popularity here in The US since the British Invasion, he has sold out countless gigs. When the second gig was added, Depp was added to bill advert. A number of mates o’mine stated he was added to attract our opposite sex. My opinion is hogwash. And it has already brought me at least a notch down now and seeing the gig.
Oh well….
Peace,
October 1st, 2022 at 19:37Ted
Uwe, thx for the Robin Gib link.
I love Nikolo and his work, unfortunately he did not only fell out with JLT but also did not release the promised Draconia album.
YT clips are confusing. 2017 ?
I thought the last shows were from around 2004?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXYjp36FkaY&ab_channel=WisePP
October 1st, 2022 at 19:52https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7xaQ6E96Nw&ab_channel=SuperMusicEnthusiast
Andy @17,
I too was at that Club Bene gig. Before they hit the road, I was speaking with Dave LaRue at The Cove in Roselle Park regarding the tour. He said he was putting the set list together. I told him I’d love to see Road Expense played. Lo and behold, they opened up with it…. :>
Peace,
October 3rd, 2022 at 22:55Ted
I should have done some more homework.
Appearantly Nikolo started up other projects but they somehow slid through the cracks of time.
https://kikimora.nostramusic.com/
October 3rd, 2022 at 23:20Ted@34. Hey, that’s pretty cool! They had some great shows at Club Bene. I can’t believe how long ago that was. Thanks for sharing.
October 7th, 2022 at 18:56