E-Mail This Article to a Friend Beyond Morphine (continued)

Sandman was notorious for using his living-room-turned-studio — what came to be known as Hi-N-Dry — as a laboratory, where he could and did record all kinds of songs with all kinds of players at all hours of the day and night. He left behind hours and hours of tape of jam sessions, ideas for songs, and completed material. As Colley, who now oversees Hi-N-Dry with the help of Conway, Andrew Mazzone, Billy Beard, and other assorted friends of Mark, puts it, "We knew there were a lot of recordings there, but I don’t think we realized just how much stuff there was. And there’s still tons more. Billy [Conway] sort of went underground for a few months and went through everything, cataloguing it all and finding songs that were suitable for release. I mean, Mark was always recording. He used to tell me that there was no point in turning off the machines because he was just going to turn them back on in a little while."

Unlike most bands, where each member has a defined role, Morphine existed within what Colley likens to "an open marriage. Morphine was a vehicle for a strategic strike. We were able to take Mark’s ideas out into the world and take a cab to gigs and put them across in a certain way. But what you’ll find on Sandbox is a broader idea that transcends Morphine. If that meant that Billy or I didn’t play on this or that track, that was fine. They were Mark’s songs, and he could interchange them with whatever bands he wanted to. And we helped him get those songs out there however we could."

Either/Orchestra leader Russ Gershon, a long-time friend of Sandman’s who put out the first Morphine album (Good) on his Accurate label when nobody else was interested, and who helped form the core of the Hypnosonics’ horn section, was in a good position to see how Sandman used his various projects to realize his musical ideas. "He would freely spread his ideas around different groups until it found its legs. Of course, once Morphine took off, 70 percent of his energy went into Morphine. So his main goal became getting a song into shape for Morphine. But he would use lots of laboratories in order to do that."

As part of one of those laboratories, Gershon experienced the process first hand. "Mark operated under the assumption that his way was the way. And fortunately, his way was always quite interesting. So to collaborate with him was to play by his rules. But within those rules, you had a lot of freedom. And there were different sets of rules for different groups — different rules for Morphine and different rules for Hypnosonics. As long as Mark was happy with the set of rules, then everything was okay. But I don’t think he was comfortable negotiating those kinds of things. Fortunately, with Hypnosonics we were happy playing off his riffs. And he was happy jamming with everyone in the band."

Of course, the lines between Sandman’s various bands were always blurred. And that could lead to a certain amount of tension. "People sometimes got upset because different bands would play the same songs," Jerome Deupree remembers. "Different people from different bands he played with would get upset about that. [Drummer] Dominique [Zar] from Candybar was upset one night that he played a song from Candybar with Morphine. And I remember Treat Her Right did a version of ‘Buena’ [a well-known Morphine song]. He was always trying different songs with different people. It was just the way he operated."

At the same time, Sandman didn’t always articulate what he was looking for from a musician. He had a sense that the best results came about intuitively, and that could lead to some amusing situations among the people he played with. Looking back on an early Morphine gig, Deupree recalls with a laugh, "I remember it being pretty specific that cymbals weren’t going to be welcome on the gig. I don’t remember anything ever being said on the phone about don’t bring them. But I just knew not to bring the cymbals."

One thing that was always clear was that Sandman’s mission went beyond simply honing his songs for Morphine. He was always interested both in challenging himself and in challenging the people around him. Gershon points out, "He liked promoting his friends and trying to figure out ways to get us in front of bigger audiences. And at the same time, he realized that by surrounding himself with different players, it shed new light on his work. His æsthetic was so specific that by itself it could be a little monotonous. But by surrounding himself with different players and a different dynamic, it freshened his æsthetic. Miles Davis did the same thing."