Vapors of Morphine are an American low-rock trio formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2009 by Morphine saxophonist Dana Colley, original Morphine drummer Jerome Deupree and New Orleans singer and multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Lyons. The project began when Colley was invited to return to the Nel Nome Del Rock festival in Palestrina, Italy, ten years after Morphine frontman Mark Sandman died onstage at the same festival.
Initially billed as Members of Morphine and later as the Ever Expanding Elastic Waste Band, the musicians developed the project beyond a commemorative performance. Lyons learned Sandman’s highly unusual two-string slide-bass role while also bringing guitar, blues and New Orleans influences into the group. By 2014, the band had adopted the name Vapors of Morphine.
Vapors of Morphine should not be classified simply as a Morphine tribute act. The trio performs a substantial part of Morphine’s repertoire and preserves its defining low-frequency instrumentation, but it also creates original music, radically rearranges selected covers and explores material influenced by Delta blues, African music, psychedelia and improvisation. Colley’s electric baritone saxophone remains the clearest connection to Morphine, while Lyons’ two-string bass, guitar and vocals prevent the band from becoming a straightforward reconstruction of Mark Sandman’s original group.
Their first album, The Ever Expanding Elastic Waste Band, was released in 2010. A New Low followed in 2016, combining original material with interpretations connected to artists including Brian Eno, Latin Playboys and Dock Boggs. Their third album, Fear & Fantasy, arrived through Schnitzel Records in 2021. Featuring performances by both Deupree and his successor Tom Arey, the album broadened the group’s arrangements while retaining the baritone saxophone, restrained rhythm section and dark, hypnotic atmosphere associated with low rock.
Deupree stepped away from the touring band after its 2018 European dates, and Tom Arey officially joined in 2019. The current trio consists of Dana Colley, Jeremy Lyons and Arey. Vapors of Morphine have toured extensively across North and South America, Europe, Russia and Australia, performing both their own catalogue and the music of Morphine without treating the latter as a sealed museum piece. Their verified 2026 activity includes further touring in Spain, Greece and Bulgaria.
