Morphine was a favorite with critics and their career was on the rise when Sandman tragically died onstage of a heart attack during a show in Palestrina, Italy in 1999. But his music lives on thanks to a band called Vapors of Morphine that will play at Hawks & Reed Performing Arts Center in Greenfield on Sunday, Nov. 14, at 7 p.m.
After the loss of Sandman, who was also the group’s songwriter, the band ended and the remaining members scattered off to other projects. (Drummer Billy Conway would eventually become the longtime accompaniment for Shelburne Falls singer-songwriter Jeffrey Foucault.) Then in 2009, a request came for the surviving members to put together a band to perform at a show in Italy that would commemorate the 10th anniversary of Sandman’sdeath. Colley and Deupree were agreeable, but they needed a frontman. That is where Jeremy Lyons, a blues musician from New Orleans who had relocated to Boston in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, came in. Lyons had become friendly with Deupree and Colley once he moved to Massachusetts, so when the Morphine bandmates were looking for someone to step into Sandman’s former role, they thought of him.
“I know that Dana had talked to Les Claypool (Primus) who couldn’t do it and they considered Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age), but I was lucky enough to be in the room,” Lyons recalled in a recent phone interview about being chosen for the job. “We started rehearsing in the spring, got a residency at a local tavern, and ended up playing in Palestrina, Italy 10 years and a day after Mark had passed.”
And such was the beginning of Vapors of Morphine, a band that honors the memory of Sandman and Morphine while also moving forward with its own sound and material. Looking back, Lyons said that there was quite a learning curve to master Morphine’s songs and to learn to sing similar to Sandman.
“I had never fronted a rock band before and had been mostly playing the blues,” Lyons said about taking over Sandman’s role. “It was difficult, especially the singing. Mark’s vocals are very distinctive and his range is naturally a lot lower than mine.” But Lyons has pulled it off, capturing the low registers of Sandman’s vocals.
“It also was a little daunting, because psychologically you are stepping into other people’s memories,” he added.
Lyons admits that before joining the band he wasn’t all that familiar with Morphine’s music.
“I’m now a big Morphine fan, but when I moved up here, I knew the name but not the music,” he said.
Morphine’s guitar-less sound with its emphasis on Cooley’s baritone sax and Sandman’s deep voice, which is practically in the same range of the saxophone, was like nothing else you heard in the ’90s — or from any other era for that matter. Lyons agrees and cites Cooley’s saxophone work as being essential to Morphine’s distinct sound.
“There’s a real appeal when people hear that sax,” Lyons said. “Dana’s sax is really more recognizable than Mark’s voice and slide bass, and back then he was playing acoustic sax and now he’s developed this style with electronic pedals.”
Vapors of Morphine has played throughout America and around the globe. Its members have performed at festivals and special events, including the screenings of two documentary films, “Cure for Pain: The Mark Sandman Story” and “Morphine — Journey of Dreams” (to which they contributed music).
The band released its first album in 2010 called “The Ever Expanding Elastic Waste Band,” which was the band’s name at that time. The Vapors of Morphine moniker came in 2014, around the same time they released a second album, “A New Low.” The name came about when someone asked Lyons if he didn’t “play with that band called the ‘Vapors of Morphine’?” And that was it — the perfect name.
The group’s audience consists of diehard Morphine fans as well as young people who never even heard of the original band. Lyons said it is fun to be able to introduce Morphine’s music to those listeners.
Vapors of Morphine’s most recent album, “Fear & Fantasy,” came out in September and it finds the band moving its original sound forward while not losing sight of its commitment to keeping the music of Morphine alive.
“We continue to honor the vision and pay homage to the roots of Morphine, but we also do have some original material on our new album,” Lyons said. “We also have obscure covers by people like Brian Eno and African musician Ali Farka Toure.”
Lyons wrote about half of the songs on the new album and some, like “Irene” and “No Sleep,” are two songs that reflect the dreamy theme that runs throughout the album and would fit right in with the Morphine catalog. Others, such as “Frankie & Johnny,” reflect Lyons’ blues background.
During the making of the album, the band faced the departure of drummer Jerome Deupree, who had to leave due to his ongoing battle with both tinnitus and tendonitis. He was replaced by Tom Arey, who worked in the Boston music scene with people like Peter Wolf (and who Lyons feels is one of the best drummers in the city.) Deupree plays on one side of the album and Arey on the other.
This will be the band’s second visit to Greenfield as it played at the Green River Festival this year. Expect a mix of Morphine tunes mixed in with members’ own material, including plenty off the new album.
“No one should come expecting to see a cover band, but a band that creatively does their own arrangements of other people’s tunes as well as our own,” Lyons said about the band’s live show. “The new album is also all over the place on streaming services and we have videos on YouTube — so check it out and come on out.”
The band’s website is
vaporsofmorphine.com.
It’s not too early to make plans for New Year’s Eve. The announcement just came in that Signature Sounds Presents and Hawks & Reed will welcome the always fun and funky Rubblebucket to Hawks & Reed for two shows on Dec. 30 and Dec. 31, both at 9 p.m. If you caught the band’s appearance at the WRSI anniversary party this summer, then you know that this is a show not to be missed. Home Body will open the show on Dec. 31. The opener for Dec. 30 has yet to be announced. Tickets are on sale starting Friday at 10 a.m. at signaturesoundspresents.com
Sheryl Hunter is a music writer who is a native of Greenfield and currently resides in Easthampton. She can be reached at soundslocal@yahoo.com.