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Rating: Dixie Dregs is a quintet of instrumental virtuosos dedicated to the fusion genre in their own unique way, characterized by the fact that the leader and almost exclusive composer of the group, guitarist Steve Morse, loves to vary his inspiration a great deal, working with equal competence and skill in at least four or five different musical genres: rock, country, funk, jazz, classical. The virtues and flaws one can focus on when listening to their intricate sonic evolutions are those you might expect from virtuoso instrumental music: commendable, sparkling skill and cohesion on one hand; an undeniable, tedious sense of coldness and didacticism on the other.
The band debuted in the seventies by releasing a string of albums and then dissolved in the mid-eighties. From that point on, there have mostly been reunions for concert tours, except for a last album of original music dating back to the now distant 1994. This live work is, specifically, the testimony of one of those reunion tours: we are at the beginning of the nineties, Morse until recently had been playing with Kansas, creating a couple of albums with them (one very AOR and the other very progressive, just to confirm his eclecticism), and a few years later he would join Deep Purple permanently; during that period, he also found a way to release several albums on his own (or rather under the name Steve Morse Band, in a trio with a bassist and drummer) always within the instrumental and fusion genre.
The blond, toned, always smiling and available Steve Morse is nothing less than a prodigious instrumentalist but, to be brief, he lacks the gift of musical genius. Besides a stunning technical prowess and a personal and well-recognizable phrasing on the lead guitar, he does possess compositional skills but not the talent to structure them on a conceptual level in a monumental way, in short, to easily create songs that remain, melodies and instrumental passages of universal effectiveness and accessibility. In other words, he is a master that transmits only skill, or almost (well, there is also charm, modesty, wisdom, and love for music…the man is talented and with his heart in the right place). Listening to him is a pleasure, but his performances can spark genuine enthusiasm only in those who also play guitar or at least some other instrument, and are at the same time very interested in discovering the extreme, technical and expressive limits of execution.
In some way, Steve has always been aware of this, willingly subjecting himself, indeed with joy, to involvement with much more "warm" musical realities like Kansas and Deep Purple, precisely to come to terms with the parched pragmatism of his music when he alone is holding the reins. This worked better with Kansas, a bit less with Purple because the direct comparison with Ritchie Blackmore (who is indeed a genius musician and a point of reference in rock guitarism) inevitably places him out of the competition.
No wonder the page I find most successful and engaging in these fifty-plus minutes of Dixie Dregs performance is perhaps the execution of “Take It Off The Top” (from the third studio album “What If” dating back to 1978) as it's filled with a true mixed blend of nods to famous rock themes, in order of appearance “My Sharona” by The Knack, “Gimme Some Lovin’” by the Spencer Davis Group, “Mississippi Queen” by Mountain, “Summertime Blues” made famous by The Who, and finally “Freebird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Less effective, however, is the instrumental rendition of the monumental “Kashmir” by Zeppelin, as the original remains unattainable with Robert Plant on vocals and John Bonham drumming away.
Again from “What If,” which I believe is my favorite Dixie Dregs album, the splendid mini-suite “Odyssey” is taken up again, where I greatly admire the mythical central arpeggio of the brave Morse, laid out like a red carpet to accompany a panoramic, enthralling violin solo by Allen Sloan, all preceded and followed by whirlwind instrumental chases somewhat in the style of Gentle Giant, on odd time first in thirteen eighths and then fifteen. In the original studio version, this marvelous piece was performed on a twelve-string guitar, here Morse renders it on the electric guitar, with a sound and effect setting that is simply sublime.
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