The Sopranos when he heard Morphine’s song “Buena,” from the trio’s 1993 album
Cure for Pain.
Ortega, who was 28 years old at the time, had never heard the band before, but took a deep dive into Morphine’s music. He was particularly drawn to frontman Mark Sandman’s two-string slide bass, and became so obsessed that he had local luthier Scott Lofquist build him two basses, one of which is a left-hand replica of the instrument played by Sandman, who died from a heart attack during a concert in Italy in 1999.
When Ortega, who plays in a duo called the Two-String Project, heard about ArtHyve’s Record to Record, a series of online panel discussions via Zoom that combine the intellectual atmosphere of a book club with the world of music, he asked the group s founders, Jessie de la Cruz and Sigri Strand, who Ortega says are huge Morphine fans, about doing a discussion on the album as part of the series.