wasn’t anything we all sat around and talked about,
it was his idea.
Colley: There was enough space and the sound
was full enough on its own with the three of us that
we didn’t necessarily need any other instruments.
And also it was a lot about the economy of three
which worked musically as well as financially.
Cider Mag: Other than playing every weekend at
the Atwoods Tavern in Cambridge, MA do you guys
have your own projects that you do individually? I
guess what I’m asking is: Do you have jobs?
(laughter ensues)
Colley: Yes. Many many jobs. Many many projects. Many many.
Deupree: I freelance with a few other people but
it’s um... pretty spare. But yeah, there are a bunch
of different singer songwriters and there's a New
Orleans brass band and there's a band called the
Funky White Honkies that is a huge conglomeration of crazy weird people. We play about once a
year at this point. So yeah, I freelance with a bunch
of different people at this point.
what happens you can deliver a show but we’re not
gonna operate like that.
Lyons: I do mostly, I primarily play music for a
played some of these songs. Hundreds, maybe thousands of times so each time ya know, you come to it,
you come to it new. So I don’t know if that’s just the
nature of playing music or if it’s how we approach
it. But I think it’s what makes it interesting for any
band I would think.
living, I play music for children a few times a week
and that's a lot of fun playing group music for kids.
I play in a jug band called The Busted Jug Band
which is a five piece all acoustic group that does early twentieth century music normally and I do some
solo gigs. I had a band in New Orleans at one time
that’s just a trio of guitar, bass and drums. Sometimes I do that up here but lately i’ve been trying to
experiment with using like a tuba instead of a bass,
guitar and drums then a third or fourth instrument.
Cider Mag: Morphine has proven that less is
Colley: I’ve been doing a lot of home recording for
Colley: I can’t even estimate how many times we
more. How did you guys decide that no guitar and
three people was the way to go? Did it just fall into
place like that?
Deupree: No that was Mark's idea.
Colley: Economics. Three people fit better in the
back of a cab pretty nicely. A fourth person means
we would have to get another cab or maybe upfront
with the luggage but…
Deupree: Yeah, I know the original line up was
simply Mark's idea. He put together the two string
slide bass and played with me a couple of times and
they liked the way it sounded and so he called me
up and said “You wanna try it?” And I said “Sure,”
and that was the birth of Morphine right there. It
50 • CIDER MAG • cidermag.com
various different other groups and bands. Some last
only so many years and the biggest of that was a
project I did at the Rooted Harvest in Berlin and we
formed a trio without having ever met each other
and put out a record it’s called the Deltahorse. The
singer is from Belfast and the bass player and engineer and mixing engineer is from Berlin and they
would send me bits of track and I put my horns on
there.
Cider Mag: Is this the band with a woman singer?
Colley: Ah, no. That might have been Twinemen
Laurie Sargent or Monique Ortiz of A.K.A.C.O.D.
but if you're going back in time there were certainly other projects that were affiliated with Morphine
like Twinemen and Orchestra Morphine.
Winter • 2015