Billy Conway, former drummer for Morphine and Treat Her Right, died on Sunday after a long battle with cancer. He was 65.

Conway, born in Owatonna, Minn., in the mid 1950s, occasionally sat in with Vapors of Morphine, which was formed in 2009 by baritone saxophonist Dana Colley and guitarist-bassist-singer Jeremy Lyons out of the ashes of “low-rock” pioneers Morphine. The acclaimed original group split up after singer-slide bassist Mark Sandman suffered a fatal heart attack on stage in 1999 during a concert in Rome.

Conway’s career launched in 1985 when he joined bluesy alt-rock Boston band Treat Her Right, which was fronted by future Morphine leader Sandman. Conway, whose spare cocktail drum setup was one of the signature features of Morphine’s guitar-free, stripped-down noir jazz sound, appeared on the band’s first two albums — 1992’s Good and their 1993 breakthrough, Cure For Pain — often playing alongside fellow drummer Jerome Deupree.

The band’s third album, Like Swimming, was released by DreamWorks Records in 1997, followed by their posthumous final collection, 2000’s The Night. Colley and Conway paid homage to their late singer in 1999 with the all-star Orchestra Morphine band and later formed the group Twinemen with Conway’s longtime partner, musician Laurie Sargent.

Conway’s label, Crazy View Records, said that the drummer was diagnosed with bowel cancer for which he had emergency surgery in October 2018, followed by six months of chemotherapy and radiation.

During his recovery, Conway and Sargent (Face to Face) worked to finish songs he’d written over his many years on the road, releasing them on his debut solo album, 2020’s Outside Inside. The album came out the same year that doctors told Conway that his cancer spread to his liver.