Steevo Morrison

Credit: Brian Diaz

Drum Tech

Tommy Lee

CHANGEOVER: Share a bit about who you are and how you got your start in the music industry.

Steve Morrison: My name's Steve Morrison, but most people know me by Steevo. I got started back in 2001. I started working for the Sabian Cymbal Company and then progressed from the manufacturing side of the industry to touring. I did that for the last 19 years and then COVID hit. I’ve been building drums and that's where I'm at now.

Early in your career you worked for Marilyn Manson and Jane's Addiction. How did you land that gig?

I got the Manson gig and the Jane's gig from touring with Mötley Crüe for a couple of years back in ‘05 through ‘07. That was the first time I was working with Tommy Lee. He introduced me to Stephen Perkins [drummer, Jane’s Addiction] and that's how I got the Jane’s Addiction gig years later. With Manson, I think there was a couple of crew members on Mötley that asked me to come over when the tour was finished. That's how I got both of those.

You also worked for The Voice. What was it like going from working on live music to working in the television industry?

Again, that was Tommy. Tommy introduced me to Nate Morton, the drummer for The Voice. Tommy is pretty much single-handedly responsible for my career. My mentor, Big Vig, who’s one of the most well known programmers and drum techs out there, plucked me into the Tommy gig back in 2004, and Tommy pretty much hooked me up with everything else. A few years later, Nate got a call for The Voice after he and the band finished doing Cher in Las Vegas for a few years. He called me up and said, “do you want to come over and do this?” I said, “sure, let's check it out.” I ended up sticking around for 14 seasons.

Credit: Steevo Morrison

The biggest difference was I had more than one drum kit. On tour, it’s always just one kit. On The Voice, we had up to 10 kits in one week on the show. It was kind of like running the Grammys once a week. It was pretty crazy. For our drummer, Nate, he had to play on all these different kits, and we came up with all these interesting configurations. We had drums in scaffolding. We had drums on twenty-five foot risers. We made buckets and water jugs into drums, you name it. We had a suitcase for a kick drum. We had a lot of fun. That was the biggest difference with TV as we had more stuff and way more creativity because it was like a whole performance every three minutes.

Nate is just a phenomenal drummer. He's just out of control and has been doing TV stuff for years. He was the house drummer for the Bonnie Hunt Show. He did Mark Burnett’s Rock Star: INXS and Rock Star: Supernova series. He's been around. He's done the Latin GRAMMYs house band and the Emmys house band. He's monstrous.

What are some memorable moments from working on The Voice?

It was always just fun. The nights with seven or eight kits where Nate and I would be running back and forth from the bandstand to another drum kit, and then another drum kit would roll out and I would have to bring in an assistant to tear them down and prep them. Those days were really fun. Also, knowing that it was not just for the 900 people in the audience but for, at the height of it, 12 or 13 million people at a time. That was extra special.

What was your transition like after leaving The Voice and working with Tommy Lee?

My wife and I just wanted to get out of L.A. We were done. I was commuting three to four hours a day from Orange County up to Studio City. That wore me down after about seven years. We noticed our townhouse was worth a little bit and my wife’s mother lives out here in Phoenix so we checked it out and realized we could make the move.

As for Tommy, I had already been with him for a couple of years but we had only done like one show a year from 2016 to 2018. About a month after I moved out here, we did the Dirt soundtrack back at his place. That was awesome. I was hanging out with Bob Rock, Tommy and Nikki Sixx for an entire week. It was kind of a dream. My 15 year old self was bugging out about it.

How did it feel getting back into the live music arena and getting out of television?

It was fine. There is such an electricity to a live show. It is the same music every night, for the most part. Most bands play the same set. The audiences make it so electric and it's not so sterile. Television is a very sterile environment. It feels weird. At The Voice, the band wasn’t the most important thing. It was the contestants and the judges and stuff, whereas on the road, the band is the number one most important thing because that's what we are all out there for. That was an interesting dynamic to notice.

Credit: Jason Gray

Let’s fast forward to today and talk about COVID-19. How did that affect your job and touring? What have you been doing in the meantime?

The Mötley Crüe tour was supposed to start up I think in May or June, but we had rehearsals starting at the end of April. That was going to be a stadium tour and then COVID hit and we couldn’t have thousands of people together. It went from that one tour being 80% of my income for the year to having nothing. That was gone. I did two shows in February with Bush and that was it. COVID really hit around the end of February, early March so I was pretty much like every other roadie and just sat around for a few months trying to figure out what the heck was going on. I got a job at a woodworking shop here in town selling exotic hardwoods. I got into making cutting boards and pens and I started up another company just for that because it's kind of taken off. It's pretty exciting. It’s called Morrison Wood. I wanted to keep it simple and fun at the same time.

What do you think may be the future of the live music industry?

It's anybody's guess with the vaccines coming up. I actually know a couple of people that are vaccinated and that's kind of an exciting thing. However, I think the rollouts are not going to be quick enough for anything to happen again this summer. I just don't see enough people in the world, or even in the country, getting vaccinated quick enough for a summer run where people can show up. I don't even know how that would work. Do you show your COVID test on the way into the venue? It's just such uncharted territory that I really am baffled. It's anybody's guess what's going to happen.

To wrap this up, what sound do you miss the most from being on the road, such as the chirp of the radio or the bus door closing?

Both! You nailed them both right on the head. I love the rumble of the engine so I usually take a back bottom bunk and I miss that. I don't miss the sound of the drums because I have an electronic drum kit I play every day. My ears get blasted every day since I work in a mill with huge saws. The volume I don't miss. I miss the sounds of my friend's voices. As silly as it sounds, I miss the quiet snores of the guys across from me in the other bunks. I never thought I'd say that.