Baba Yaga's Hut Presents:

Vapors of Morphine

+ special guest Get the Blessing

November 22nd - 100 Club

Vapors of Morphine are a power trio featuring electric baritone sax, drums, and 2 string slide bass (often guitar). Baritone saxophonist Dana Colley is the through-line between Vapors and “low rock” pioneers Morphine, who’s leader Mark Sandman left this earth while performing onstage in Italy in 1999.

VoM perform much of the Morphine repertoire, plus new material and original versions of selective covers. They expand on the ethereal, hypnotic sounds popularized by the group in the nineties, and dig into their influences, from African music to delta Blues.

Vapors was formed over a decade ago by Colley, singer and multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Lyons and Morphine’s original drummer Jerome Deupree. Drummer Tom Arey (J. Geils Band, Peter Wolfe’s Midnight Ramblers, Ghosts of Jupiter) replaced Deupree in 2019.

Their new album represents both a new era and a return to form for Vapors of Morphine. Fear & Fantasy, in its often lush arrangement, recalls Morphine’s final album, The Night, where Deupree teamed up with Billy Conway, the drummer who had replaced him; this time Arey plays on one side, Deupree on the other. It only seems fitting when both bands have been blessed with a revolving cast of top-notch percussionists.

Get the Blessing:

It was twenty years ago today (or thereabouts) that the key ingredients of what was to become the award-winning, internationally touring, musical potage Get The Blessing were first gathered together in a Bristolian deep-sided saucepan to begin the slow process of sweating…

Since then, the recipe has been periodically tweaked and adapted, with unexpected spicings and unlikely additions, but the basic sofrito has remained constant: the rhythm section of Jim Barr (bass) and Clive Deamer (drums), best-known for their work with the band Portishead, and the horns of Jake McMurchie (saxophones) and Pete Judge (trumpet), two of the most distinctive players to emerge from the Southwest’s vibrant jazz scene.

Another constant flavour has been the influence of Ornette Coleman’s great early quartet. The Blessing, as it was until an enforced name-change, took its name from one of Ornette’s tunes, and began as an acoustic homage to those ground-breaking free-spirited albums of the late 1950s and early 1960s, before plugging in and ploughing on in its own uncategorisable furrow.

From then on, GTB has rarely stopped touring, amassing a truly international fan-base, with tours and festival appearances in the UK, USA, Canada, Dubai, Ireland, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Turkey, and Ukraine.