Keyboard, December 1986

Life After Dregs
The Solo Routine Fits Lavitz To A T
By Bob Doerschuk

Whenever Lavitz runs into some of his fans, invariably he finds himself answering the question: "Whatever happened to the Dregs?" Known originally as the Dixie Dregs, this five-piece unit burst out of Florida's bar circuit in 1977 with their debut album, Free Fall. In 1978 the band plucked Lavitz from the halls of academe at the University of Miami and installed him at the keyboards, replacing Mark Parrish. With the Dregs, T recorded three albums on Arista: Dregs Of The Earth [9528], Unsung Heroes [9548], and Industry Standard [9588].

We covered all this in our Dec. '80 interview with T. But a few years later, the ride was over. Early in '83, the Dregs broke up. Or did they?

"We never broke up," T recalls. "We just . . . stopped. It was really weird. When the Dregs were alive, I thought they'd never die. But, looking back, I can say now that [Dregs guitarist and leader] Steve Morse was so good that he shouldn't have to be just some guy in a band. He should do Steve Morse albums. I remember suggesting that to him, and he said, 'Man, do you know how hard it is to write eight good songs? If I try to write 16 in one year for a Dregs album and a solo album, I'll be too diluted.' Well, maybe he wanted to do more guitar-oriented music and not worry about other people feeling like, 'Why didn't you give me a solo in this tune?' Another reason why we stopped working together was that maybe some of us weren't trying hard enough. We'd go down the road in our van, and Steve would be picking away with his headphones on, practicing scales. Rod [Morgenstein, drummer] would be banging on the seats with his sticks. And I'd be talking. It's hard for me to admit, but maybe I was one of the guilty parties."

With the dissolution of the Dregs, Lavitz tried going back to work in pick-up groups, but his first experiences were disillusioning. "After working with the Dregs, I assumed that every member of every band warmed up before the show and practiced on vacations," he says. "But the people I found myself playing with just didn't compare to what I had gotten used to. I began thinking that I had developed a bad attitude. Then my fiancée convinced me to move with her to L.A., and things started to change. When you're playing a pickup jazz gig in Atlanta, you just have a good time and go home. In L.A., you never can tell what it might lead to. [Bassist] Bunny Brunel called me up for a gig at a jazz club with Frank Gambale on guitar and Gary Husband on drums. It was mind-blowing! The people onstage are hip, the people in the audience are hip, and it can plug you into bigger and better things."

Still, it wasn't easy to adjust to this new situation. "I began to understand that I wasn't one fifth of the Dregs," Lavitz says. "I was less; I was just somebody. I had figured that I'd write a couple of good tunes and get a record deal, but it didn't pan out exactly that way. Pretty soon I realized that being good or being a nice guy wasn't enough. I had to get a product."

He did so by "badgering a lot of labels" with a four-song demo, featuring instrumental performances, as one might expect for a Dregs alumnus. Most of the labels were only interested in vocal material, however. "They were afraid to take a chance," T says. "Back in the '40s or '50s, someone took a chance on Miles Davis. Now, I'm not saying I'm Miles, but he wasn't a money-maker at the start. Now he's selling gold records. Someone along the line had the ears to realize that this guy with a horn could get it across to people. Sure, times are tough now, but I believe you have to speculate to accumulate."

The most positive response came from Passport, who released Storytime. Passport's support and willingness to give Lavitz creative leeway won him over; they even lifted two cuts, "Between Coming And Going" and "Crystal," directly from the demo for the LP.

In many ways, Storytime is not a trendy package. The piano is by far the most prominent keyboard on the record. MIDI is used judiciously: Feeling that laying the solo down in one pass with a homogenized MIDI sound might not convey the looseness and emotion he wanted, Lavitz actually memorized his own synth solo on "I'm Callin' You" and overdubbed it twice. And there is no sequencing on the disc either. "I shield away from sequencers in part to be different from everybody else," he explains. "On my next album I think I'm going to lay down some kind of timing on SMPTE on most of the tunes, and throw in some sequences or triggered sounds after the fact where I want them. I'' like to have the same kind of looseness in the rhythm tracks, but with more opportunity to build onto it with other devices."

The most prominent keyboard on Storytime is the acoustic grand, but among synthesizers Lavitz' Oberheim OB-Xa plays the largest role; he plans to have it MIDIed soon. Recently he has expanded his rig to include an Oberheim XK keyboard controller, with which he plays his rack-mounted Ensoniq Multi-Sampler and Yamaha TX816. Other gear in T's collection includes a PPG 2.2, a Yamaha electric grand, 360 Systems MIDIBass, some Casio keyboards, an Oberheim DMX with Simmons drum sounds, and "whatever road keyboards I can get into my house." For piano sounds on the road, he plays the Ensoniq digital piano, enhancing the sound with some Lexicon reverb. He stores his music on disk, using system-exclusive Steinberg Research Pro-16 software running on his Commodore 64. For recording to tape, Lavitz will be using his new TEAC 244 four-track cassette machine.

In addition to putting a solo project together, T was interested in getting back into a band situation. Hence, the Bluesbusters, a funky five-piece featuring Paul Barrere of Little Feat. The group fell together through loose jamming, one official rehearsal, and a string of dates around L.A. From these haphazard beginnings the Bluesbusters emerged as a powerhouse club unit, with bookings throughout the country and an album to boot [Accept No Substitute, Landslide (450 14th St., Suite 201, N.W. Atlanta, GA 30318), LD-10109]. "We're touring like a serious band," Lavitz points out with wonder. "I guess that's why it works."

T feels that his approach is basically the same in solo and group contexts. In general, likes to record his synth parts dry, with EQ and effects possibly added to the mix later. "When you record with effects, you don't know how loud the effect is going to be. And another thing, for all of us cheaters, if you've got some delay on your part, but you want to fix something in it, you might clip the delay when you punch your correction in. In the final mix, I don't think I've ever left anything dry. Let's face it, reverb is incredible, and delay is the greatest invention for keyboard players who want to cover up glitches in their technique. It just sweeps up behind your pitch-bends and makes them sound really fat."

Still, there are some occasional differences. "A lot of the synthesizer stuff on the Bluesbusters album was a synth MIDIed to a TX816 rack," he says. "We hired saxophone player [David Woodford] to do all the hits, which I would augment on the TXs. We came out sounding like a horn section; with that real sax in there, I don't think it sounds like synth horns at all. I would do that kind of thing on my own album."

Other recent projects for T have included the latest Nils Lofgren solo album, Flip [Columbia, BFC-39982], on which he shared keyboard credits with Tommy Mandel, and a session on Passport Jazz, Players, with guitarist Scott Henderson, bassist Jeff Berlin, and drummer Steve Smith, formerly of Journey and now with Steps Ahead and Vital Information; they were putting the finishing touches on the album as we went to press, so the release date hasn't yet been set. Future plans include a possible session with Santana's singer Alex Ligertwood.

With credits like these, we suggested to Lavitz that he may wind up making a career for himself playing in all-star ensembles. "God, I hope so," he laughed, but then added, "Because so many of the people I play with are 'formerly with Journey,' or Little Feat, or Bonnie Raitt, or the Dregs, or whoever, what I really want is for people to know us not for who we were, but for who we are now. I mean, I don't want people to say, 'Oh, yeah, T Lavitz. I remember him from the Dregs.' The Dregs were incredible, but what makes Joe Zawinul so incredible? He played a Wurlitzer electric piano years ago on 'Mercy, Mercy, Mercy' with [saxophonist] Cannonball Adderly, and he went on to do Heavy Weather. I can't even tell it's the same guy! If I can have the outlet of releasing eight of my songs a year, and also being a sideman or partner on other ventures that might be a little more rock-oriented, I'll be a happy cowboy."