Dixie Dregs bassist talks reuniting original lineup after 40 years, life in Phoenix

It's been 40 years since the five musicians who played on the Dixie Dregs' first proper studio release last toured together.

And bassist Andy West says he didn't know what to expect.

"When we got back together to jam it out and see if this would even work," he says, "like many people, when you have old friends and see them after a long time, it’s either like slipping back into an old shoe or it’s like, 'Wow, what did we ever have in common?'"

As luck would have it, West reports, "it all felt really natural and it’s been great."

How Dixie Dregs came to be: A blast from the past

West and guitarist Steve Morse, the Dregs' primary songwriter and a member of Deep Purple since the '90s, met as high school students in Augusta, Ga., forming Dixie Grit and subsequently Dixie Dregs while studying music at the University of Miami.

That's where violinist Allen Sloan and drummer Rod Morgenstein entered the picture with keyboardist Steve Davidowski completing the lineup when they moved back to Augusta after Morse, Sloan and Morgenstein graduated.

Based on a demo recorded at school and the recommendation of former Allman Brothers keyboard player Chuck Leavell, they signed to Capricorn Records and released their first official album, 1977's "Free Fall."

Everything good must end: The band breaks up

Six years and five albums later, having established themselves as a bit of a cult act thanks to their unclassifiable fusion of everything from jazz to prog to Southern Rock and classical, the Dregs broke up.

And by the time they reunited, West had moved on with his life, having launched a career in the software industry.

We caught up with West, who started a new life in Phoenix in the '90s, to talk about Dawn of the Dregs, the tour that brings West and his bandmates to Scottsdale Sunday, April 22.

This is what he had to say.

The Dixie Dregs reunion

Question: When you first got together in the same room, was the chemistry still there like you remembered or did it take a while to get it back?

Answer: Chemistry is an interesting word because I would say that the playing was fine but what was really interesting was that the personalities were more or less intact.

People can change in dramatic ways over the years. Everyone has life experience that affects them. But for the most part, we all fell into the same type of roles and comedy routines and all that kind of stuff.

Q: So what inspired you to reunite?

A: I think just the passage of time and the fact that we all had very positive memories of each other.

We did six albums together and then broke up and the band got back together without me in the early ‘90s. So there’s been a kind of continuous thread of the Dregs. But it hasn’t been this original grouping.

We’ve had three keyboard players in the time that there has been a band called the Dregs, at least the recorded history. There are a couple of guys who played with us before we got records. And two of them are gone now.

So there’s this weird sense of "Well, OK, there’s five of us that make up the only combination of band members who are still around." And isn’t that interesting in a way? That sort of pushed us together.

And we’ve all been in contact with each other and been friends for many years -- not super active but we certainly knew each other and could get in touch. Except for the keyboard player, Steve Davidowski. He just kind of fell off the map.

He really didn’t have any kind of internet presence. So tracking him down was an interesting exercise and it was great to reconnect with him.

'Free Fall'

Q: The five of you only have the one album together.

A: That’s correct but there’s a kind of pre-history to that. After Steve and Allen and Rod graduated from college, I didn’t actually graduate. I was in music school but I stopped to keep playing in the band.

After they graduated and we all moved to Augusta, that’s where we picked up Steve Davidowski and we played around for two and a half years, playing bars all over the South until we got a record deal. So he was part of that whole experience.

University of Miami Rock Ensemble

Q: What about the album that came out before "Free Fall?"

A: “The Great Spectacular” came out of a senior class project that Steve did when he was at University of Miami.

Q: But that’s with a different keyboard player, right?

A: That’s right. There was a guy from college who played on that. Steve Morse and I met in high school in Augusta. I was in 11th grade. He was in 10th. And we started some bands together.

When we graduated from high school, Steve went to University of Miami and that’s where he met Rod and Allen, the drummer and the violinist. And there were keyboard players there that would play in the band, one of which was Frank Josephs.

It was called the University of Miami Rock Ensemble. So this is not a professional group, although there were some performances around the college campus and there was a group in Miami that did shows in local parks and they let us play a couple times.

So when Steve and Rod and Allen graduated college, we all talked about trying to give this a shot. I don’t remember if we asked the keyboard player to join us.

But we moved back to Augusta and basically it was me calling local clubs, saying, “Hey can we play there? We have this band called the Dixie Dregs and we do Mahavishnu Orchestra cover tunes." (Laughs) We would just go play anywhere.

But when you’re in college and you’re a music student, you have to do a performance recital as a senior. So Steve and Rod and Allen all did performance recitals at University of Miami and we all played in all their performance recitals.

And that’s where “The Great Spectacular” was recorded. We just used it like a demo, even though we had Steve Davidowski playing with us in the bars around the South.

Q: It sounds like you consider "Free Fall" to be the real first album then.

A: Well, yeah, because by that point none of us were being supported by our parents. We all were trying to eke out a living playing bars around the South.

Dawn of the Dregs Tour

Q: Is the set list on this tour focused on the "Free Fall" album?

A: We started picking tunes from there because Steve Davidowski had played on all those songs. But it turns out that many of the songs we did back in that day made it onto later albums, so then we started to lean towards things that we had played together.

Because the thing with Steve Morse’s music is its actually deceptively complicated.

There’s many, many parts and a lot of the keyboard parts are so integral that we didn’t want to force Steve Davidowski into an insane amount of learning, although at the end of the day we actually did. (laughs).

For six albums, we’re talking about over 60 songs worth of material, every one of which is a Steve Morse song, which means its has a gazillion notes and parts in it. Those first six albums are kind of a concise era of the Dixie Dregs that we focused on.

Q: You’re calling this Dawn of the Dregs.

A: We always had kind of a weird sense of humor about things. We did an album called “Night of the Living Dregs,” which was a play on “Night of the Living Dead,” a George Romero movie. And he also did “Dawn of the Dead,” so it just seemed like a good pun.

But it’s not like we’re saying we’re starting over or anything. It’s really more just a pun that leaves it open to the possibility.

Is this really the dawn of a new Dregs?

Q: Do you feel like there is that possibility of proceeding from here?

A: Well, it’s fairly fascinating. Obviously you can add up the numbers and see how old we are. We’re all in our mid-60s.

This has been an incredible experience. We’re playing to more people than we had in the past and we’ve had a good degree of success and fun in doing this particular tour. It still is completely modest compared to what a lot of bands do but it’s enough for us.

This is a long way of saying it’s a tremendous amount of work, a tremendous amount of energy and a great fun thing, but we’re all kind of at the point of going “We don’t know what we really want to do and how long we would want to do this.”

It’s cool just to be doing it. And that’s really as far as we’re taking it.

I’ll give you an example. We got our old crew back together. And the sound man and I share a birthday. The same exact day and year. And we were both excited about the tour. Two weeks before the tour, he has a heart attack and dies.

And that’s kind of the reality of things at this point in life.

When you’re young, you have this kind of fearless attitude of “We’re going for it.” It’s not like that now. It’s like OK, we’re in it and we’re experiencing it and it’s incredible, but we’re not thinking beyond that.

The roots of their fusion

Q: When you and Steve first got the group together, were there discussions about what kind of band this would be?

A: It was actually really simple. Steve had started writing music and he was such a good writer and so prolific and had a natural leadership role, it was really like "Wow, let’s do this, let’s go, what do you want to do, Steve?"

He would bring us songs and we would do them. I don’t think there was any kind of grand plan. This is what came out.

And we were playing live a lot so we really learned what worked and what didn’t with audiences. Some of the songs we did that were kind of more experimental or longer form, they might not work as well.

So I think intuitively Steve sort of tuned the songs he was writing to the performances we would give and what worked well.

We never force-fed our audiences in terms of “OK, now it’s time for you to learn how to listen to this kind of thing and appreciate it."

Q: I see words like fusion thrown around but do you think people sometimes have a hard time classifying what you do?

A: I think they did. I think now they don’t care. When we were trying to make a living at this with the music business, it was just completely baffling. What are they?

Dixie Grit

Q: What was the appeal of doing instrumental music or was it just circumstance?

A: I think it was circumstantial but it became the thing. In high school we had a band that had a singer. It was called Dixie Grit and the singer was great. We wrote songs together that he wrote lyrics to. But that band broke up for whatever reason.

And then it was just me and Steve and when he met the other guys, I think it just kind of circumstantially occurred.

There are examples of it, the Allman Brothers doing instrumentals, Mahavishnu Orchestra coming on the scene, all those kind of things there were transpiring. It felt like an open door and it just worked for us.

West's new life

Q: Why did you leave the group when you did?

A: Our last album on Arista came out in 1982. It was called “Industry Standard.”

And there’s a variety of recollections about this but what happened was we had a six-record deal with Arista and every two albums they were gonna increase the budget.

Back then, what they would do is they would give you a chunk of money and you’d figure out how to spend it. We’d try to spend as little as possible and still make a great record.

Well, after we did “Industry Standard,” they came back and said, “You know that deal we had? We’re gonna give you less than we said and if you don’t like it, you can sue us. Or you can just go away.” (laughs)

So we all kind of split up but we stayed in touch.

We did a thing for a company called Ensoniq. They wanted to promote their new synthesizer in ’85 or ’86. And then the guys did a live album called Bring ‘Em Back Alive, which was not me in the band.

I was at that point doing software, trying to make a living. I couldn’t just quit my job to go play music. So that’s how that whole thing sort of happened.

Q: And you have been working in software since then?

A: After the band broke up, I discovered that I wasn’t a good journeyman musician. I wasn’t just about to go play anything. I had an attitude. I like certain kinds of music and I don’t like certain kinds of music.

It wasn’t like “OK, I’m a musician. Now I’ve gotta make a living. What have you got for me? Jingles? Pop-rock? Who cares? I’ve gotta play”. Not me. It takes a certain kind of skill set to do that.

But I had learned technology and I had some of the first computers. I had friends who were into computers and it was just an opportune time to get into it. And I fell into doing software. That was a blessing for me because I was able to make a living doing it.

The move to Arizona

Q: How did you end up in Arizona?

A: After the band broke up, I moved to California and I lived in California for 10 years or so. I met my current wife out there more than 30 years ago. L.A. is oppressive. Even 30 years ago, it was starting to get crazy.

I moved for work to Chicago for a couple years but I didn’t really like the flatlands. So we just got on a plane and went to Phoenix, checked it out and said, “Yeah, let’s go there.” And we’ve been there since 1994.

I remember my first experience in Phoenix. We were on our first tour out West and Danny (Zelisko) had booked us to play (I think at Dooley's?). We arrived in the middle of the night, I crawled into my motel room which I think was some single-floor mom-and-pop motel, and didn't come out until around noon.

When I stepped outside, the heat just engulfed me like walking into an oven. I retreated back into my room thinking 'How on earth could anyone even live here?' Ha ha.... Well it's been around 24 years since I moved to Phoenix now.

Q: Have you done any playing here?

A: Not locally, because having a band is a lot of work. It requires a lot of commitment and I just never really explored it that much. I know there’s some great musicians around but it didn’t really seem like something I wanted to do.

But I have a lot of one-off things I’ve done with people that are really cool, that wouldn’t turn into an performing organization.

On the road again

Q: So how does it feel to return to the road?

A: There’s an old trope that when you’re a touring musician, you’re not getting paid to play, you’re getting paid to travel. And the weird thing about it is it’s entirely true.

"Performing is the least of it. It’s the most exciting and the most fun but everything around it is a hassle. It’s a job."

It’s not like wow, you’re going to all these exotic places. Even if we were going to exotic places, it would be OK, you’re in a hotel, now you’re in a venue, now you’re back in the hotel, now you’re on a bus or plane. That’s all it is. So that’s the downside.

But I will say that we’re all having a great time out here and we’re really enjoying it. So to answer your question succinctly, it’s great, it’s fantastic. Do I want to become a full-time touring musician again? No. But it is really cool.

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Twitter.com/EdMasley.

Dixie Dregs concert

When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday, April 22.

Where: Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, 7380 E. Second St.

Admission: $45-$85.

Details: 480-499-8587, scottsdaleperformingarts.org.

READ MORE:

A guide to all spring festivals in Phoenix from April through May

Eat Here First in April: 3 new restaurants to try before everybody else does

32 things to do this week around Arizona