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Photos by Arnie Goodman

Like buying a Payday candy bar and receiving instead a winning Megamillions ticket—a payday by anyone’s standards—anyone attending a concert by the Dixie Dregs expecting to hear Southern rock will be treated to something ’way different and (with all respect) ’way better. Formed in Georgia and re-formed at the University of Miami’s School of Music, this deceptively-named band are neither Dixie nor dregs, but the name “Multi-Influenced Supergroup” isn’t nearly as catchy.

Guitarist Steve Morse, drummer Rod Morgenstein, Allen Sloan (violin), Steve Davidowski (keyboards) and bassist Andy West perform instrumental works based on a variety of rock, jazz, metal and classical music but manage to sounding like nothing we’ve heard before. I would swear “Holiday” was Irish prog rock with shades ZZ Top. Consummate violinist Sloan plays his electric violin like an axe, and it occasionally sounds remarkably like a guitar, as on the duet with Morse on “Assembly Line,” reminiscent of the multi-instrumental harmonies on the Allman’s classic “Jessica” (itself a tribute to Django Reinhardt).

From intimations of “Turkey In the Straw” on one tune to “Northern Lights” (which Morse accurately described as “electric chamber music,”) to a blindingly fast “The Bash” (which any Appalachian fiddler would give his G-string to play; it left even Allen Sloan out of breath), Dixie Dregs’ jazzy, rock-ish music is unparalleled, and even their instruments show how uniquely they approach music, whether it be Sloan’s violin, West’s six-string bass, or Morgenstein’s elaborate drum kit.

West joked that he thought there might be a musician or two in the audience. Elmore photographer Arnie Goodman, who owned a chain of record stores, told me that every musician who walked in his store bought Dixie Dregs albums. I know why. This group is the real deal: Musicians, with a capital “M.”

—Suzanne Cadgène