From "Dregs of the Earth" to "Unsung Heroes" to Name Dropping: Does a Band This Good Have An Inferiority Complex?

By Steve Hurlburt

No way.

But if anyone has the right to, it's The Dregs:

1977: After living at near starvation-level upon graduation from college, the Dixie Dregs sign with Capricorn Records and release one of the finest debut albums of the year. In the fall, the label switches distributors (from Warner Brothers to Polygram) and Freefall ends up in the cut-out bins. They also have personnel problems and replace keyboardist Steve Davidowski with Mark Parrish.

1978: The second album, What If, which led off with (arguably) the band's best single (prophetically titled, "Take It Off The Top"- see Lloyd Segal) and is (arguably) their best album, founders due to lack of label support. Still, a hard-core following develops and the group plays the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival. Things are looking up.

1979: Lightning strikes twice in the same place. Night of the Living Dregs is released (one studio side, one recorded live at Montreux). The critics like it, as do the growing number of "Dreg-Heads". Then, Capricorn folds, and What If and Living Dregs wind up in the cut-outs. Also, the band has problems in determining its musical direction which manifest themselves in: An unfavorable relationship with its personal manager in South Carolina, an agency which does not know how to book it and finally, another keyboard change, with T Lavitz replacing Parrish.

1980: A new record label (Arista). A new manager. A new booking agency. Lavitz becomes fully integrated with the group’s sound.  And by summer, a new album (Dregs of the Earth). Although the album breaks little new ground, it is a strong offering, receives a Grammy nomination, and sells over 100,000 copies. But bands with less collective expertise · than Dregs' guitarist Steve Morse has in his little finger go gold or platinum. As more time and effort are given by the Dregs to their music, the stakes become higher: What do they want ultimately to achieve? It's one thing to have a cult following and open for the Doobies or Marshall Tucker, it's quite another to have the mass popular acceptance represented by selling half a million records and having a gold album hanging on the wall.

By the end of the year, again things turn sour in the area of personal management. A sum of money in "the upper five figure range" to pay production costs of Dregs of the Earth was requested by the Dregs' (then) manager, Lloyd Segal, and delivered to his California office by Arista. One-third of the money was used to meet production costs, but the other two-thirds "mysteriously disappeared," according to a spokesman for the Dregs. Session checks to the Dregs from Segal's Regency Productions bounced, as did Regency checks to pay Axis Studio, where the album was recorded.

The Dregs began 1981 by keeping their Atlanta New Year's Eve concert tradition alive with an intimate gig for friends and co-workers at Axis. Last month they released their second Arista album, Unsung Heroes. They have hired Joel Cherry of the Atlanta-based Kat Family Productions as personal manager, and filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County (with Axis as co-plaintiffs) against their former manager. Their April 25 concert at the Fox will kick off a national tour, will be broadcast live on many radio stations in the states and taped for future airing by the BBC. Loose ends from the past are being tied up, and in all, things are once again looking brighter as The Dregs contemplate their future and their musical direction.

This time, however, there is more riding on the album than simply increasing sales by a few thousand copies. The Dregs, unashamedly, are shooting for nothing less than a gold record, and they are doing it on their own terms.

As always, they have a tough row to hoe: They are still vocal-less, their choice of album material is still as jazz-rock- country-classical-symphonically eclectic as ever, and their intense musical virtuosity has not been discarded for accessibility. And if the past is any indication, it is almost impossible to have a hit instrumental single unless you are Chuck Mangione or Herb Alpert, and your music is simple and very mellow. Also, with the trend now in radio programming drifting from AOR (album-oriented rock - the pits) to NC (adult/contemporary - worse than the pits), the chances for a Dregs' breakthrough seem thin.

Nevertheless, they have a Plan.

To begin with, they re-recorded their six-minute smoker from Freefall, "Cruise Control", for Heroes. The song has been shortened, the parts have been redone, the sound mix has been changed, it is the lead-off cut on the album and it has been meticulously tailored to grab airplay.

"We concentrated very heavily on making the single - "Cruise Control" - to where it gets a lot of focus on the band because it's such an important tune," said bassist Andy West.''lt’s one of our best songs live, it was on the first album which got cut out (so only a few people heard the recorded version) and it's probably the most playable song as far as the radio goes."

Next they became their own PR men.

"Over the past years and albums, " continued West, "we've learned what record companies do and what they don't do - mostly they don't do anything; they sit there and let things happen."

The Dregs however, refuse to go into this album sitting down.

"In the past what we've done is sort of waited, watched the album come out, seen it go up, then go down. But this time we're determined not to let it go down, “said West.

And so the band members are calling up radio stations personally, they're sending out promotional post cards and letters, and generally attempting to make things happen.

Said West: "We're extremely concerned with the initial surge of airplay and sales that we're going to get. It's kind of a 'catch-22' situation in that if the record starts to do good, they'll (Arista) put money into it.

"All this extracurricular stuff we're doing (the calls, mailings, etc.) is a lot of work- it's ridiculous- but it's got to be done. By doing this we feel the band will become more visible to the public and to the industry, and the most important thing for us at this point is the visibility - for people to know who we are."

Indeed, it is hard to sell a product if you can't connect at least one face or song with it. And the Dregs have certainly kept a low profile as far as album artwork goes: On the two album covers before Heroes, the only visages were those of the "dregs-creatures", and on the first two Capricorn albums, the faces of the band members were not prominent aspects of the covers.

One look at the Unsung Heroes cover is a good indication that those days are over. In a rather eye-catching spread, The Dregs are pictured front and center with each member's mouth air-brushed out. The eye is held and the mind is intrigued, and the marketing director at Arista has some prime material to work with. In addition, The Dregs will be making a good deal more television appearances than in the past, both locally (on "Tush", Sunday, April 19th, Channel 17) and nationally (on tentatively selected "late-night" shows).

Another aspect of the promotional campaign concerns the dropping of "Dixie" from the band's name. Though not a big issue with the band, it still felt that on a national scale, striking "Dixie" would cause there to be less chance of radio people automatically thinking they represented a certain type of music:

"In different parts of the country, if you have a strong southern accent, it's equated with ignorance. It's not necessarily true, “said West, "but it's a prejudice that exists. The same thing is true with the name "Dixie" in our band. People are going to equate us with the southern rock thing.

"But most people who know about us call us "The Dregs" anyway, and we just wanted to end any prejudice on the part of radio station programmers against the Dixie Dregs. It's as s1mple as that. Either way, it wouldn't matter that much to us."

Even so, with all the changes both of appearance and substance, can music this complex, this challenging, this intense, this good make it big?

West again: "I don't believe people are prejudiced against something simply because it's good, or intellectually well thought out.

"People who don't know anything about music can dig it. They can equate us with Molly Hatchet if they want to and though they don't understand the basic musical difference between us and them, they get off on us as much as they get off on them."

And what if Heroes doesn't make it?

"We're not counting on too much," said West, pausing, "but .secretly we really are. The fact that we're doing all this extra work, the fact that we've put most accessible - we feel the fact that we've gone to those lengths makes it seem real critical."

But for Morse, it not only seems so, it is.

"We really want to prove to ourselves that we can do it - put out a gold record. I've got a lot of my life in the music, and I'm betting the best years of that life that what we do has as much content and is just as viable as anything anybody else does."

And as for the inevitable suggestion that The Dregs are selling out in their grab for the gold, Morse discounts it completely: "We're just doing what comes naturally, and we won't let them (their fans) down by doing something shitty.

"To know that we have done something well is our main reward, after all, you've got to look at yourself in the mirror every day."