Drummer Billy Conway, whose work with revered Nineties group Morphine blended jazz, blues, and rock into a critically-acclaimed amalgam, died yesterday at the age of 65
Morphine’s unique setup eschewed guitars in favor of drums, Dana Colley’s saxophone and vocalist Mark Sandman’s bass. The group released their first three, critically beloved, albums independently before signing with DreamWorks for 1997’s, touching the floor of mainstream success but never breaking through in the way many of their fans expected.“DreamWorks was a blessing and a curse. It allowed us some financial freedoms, but it also put a lot of stress on our process,” Colley.
Prior to Morphine, Conway and Sandman performed together in Boston rock group Treat Her Right, whose “less is more” philosophy informed their future band. “We adopted the less is more theory and focused on simplifying everything we were doing,” Conway said in 2006. “If there were too many chords in the song we just removed them or skipped that part of the song.
Conway was diagnosed with bowel cancer and underwent emergency surgery in October 2018, followed by six months of chemotherapy and radiation.
Foucault went on to note Conway’s “generous spirit, deep knowledge, and fierce willingness to give the best parts of himself to music; his mastery of his instrument, and the simple dignity that he brings to the act of play.”On opening track “Get Well,” he sang, “Let’s hope we can all get well. Got to keep the music playing. Gotta dance, gotta dance ’til you die.”
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