www.VanRomaine.com

Steve Morse
Major Impacts
Magna Carta, 2000

Ok, now we’re dealing with a Steve Morse solo CD and a total departure from anything I’ve heard anyone do in the past.  This is Steve writing and recording in the influence of other artists that have had “Major Impacts” on him musically. Steve had most of the tracks finished except for “Derailleur Gears” and “TruthOla” which were songs originally for a SMB CD.  I came in to over dub on these existing tracks. What made this so interesting for me is that all the artists covered were all pretty influential on me as well.

We had received a lot of mics from Shure and proceeded to experiment with sounds to match each track. We were also recording digitally for the first time, which helped in changing some of the arrangements. “Led On” was a lot of fun. The intro is a bunch of drum over dubs stacked on top of each other. The low tabla sound is me hitting my 16” floor tom with a mallet and bending the pitch up with my elbow. When the full kit comes in we used the ambient mics set up in Steve’s hangar, which is adjacent to the live room. The Stones song and the Mountain song were special for me because the first drumbeat I learned was Honky Tonk Woman and the second was Mississippi Queen (the third was Johnny Winter’s “Good Morning Little School Girl “ hmmmm three songs about girls). The Stones song didn’t feel right until Steve suggested that I lift my right stick up while I hit the back beat ala Charlie Watts. That simple thing put it all together, some quick hand claps, tambourine and on to the next tune. “Prognosis”, the Kansas/Yes song would have been impossible for me to record 10 years ago, but do to the good fortune of having toured with Kansas for a year in 1993 I felt like I could relate to this song. I love the half time outro that fades into the vocals. After hearing this CD two months after I did the drum tracks I was so impressed how Dave and Steve played these different styles so naturally.