Warren Haynes sounds tired, but it is the satisfying happy-tired that comes after completing a hard day’s work. “Sometimes at the end of the night,” he said, “I feel like I’ve pitched a double header, but also a no-hitter.” While an applicable simile, it may also be an understatement for one of the hardest working musicians in the world today.
Warren Haynes is something of a V.I.P. — a deity, even — in the world of jam rock, and perhaps in the entire spectrum of music. He knows everybody, and if everybody doesn’t know him, they at least know his work. His work is tireless, his guitar playing other-worldly, his vocal prowess pretty much unmatched in weight and expression.
He is a member of not one, not two, but THREE bands. Some of the time, he is one half of the double lead guitar attack of the Allman Brothers (alongside fellow guitar virtuoso Derek Trucks), carrying the torch for a band with a long history of incredible guitar players. Some of the time, he and guitarist Jimmy Herring step in front of Phil Lesh’s thumping baseline, reinventing the music of the Grateful Dead as a member of Phil Lesh ‘ Friends. But it is in Haynes’ third unit — his “baby” as he calls it — where he really gets a chance to shine and focus on his inexhaustible creative energies.
Gov’t Mule, which kicks off its fall tour Oct. 9 at the Orpheum Theater, is one of the most talented, most creative and most exciting rock bands today. With a hard-rocking style that begs to be called southern jam and blues rock, the actual product is so broad and deeply-influenced that it will not fit neatly into any such category. A Mule concert is a mind-expanding groove, an all out exercise in rhythm and musicality and a big fat shotgun blast.
This is a band that has been in constant upswing since its inception in 1995. It began as an Allman Brothers side project, as an experimental trio of Haynes, drummer Matt Abts and bassist Allen Woody but has since begun a non-stop evolution since Woody’s tragic death in August 2000. To honor Woody, Haynes and Abts decided to cut a two-disc tribute album full of Woody’s favorite bass players each lending their talents to individual tracks. That idea gave birth to a brand new live experience, as Mule has decided to tour with a select rotation of those bass players rather than settle on a permanent replacement.
“Different bass players take different pieces of the puzzle, and for that reason can help us carry on Mule’s tradition of covering such a vast expanse of musical ground,” said Haynes in a recent phone interview.
“The momentum that Matt and I established with Woody has kept us going,” he said. “We realized that we owed to Allen and to ourselves to keep going. Keeping the music alive is the most important thing of all.”
Haynes and Abts have kept the music alive and well, and, Haynes said, “we have reached a level above and beyond what we had originally created when we started Gov’t Mule in ’95.” They have since added a keyboard (“It adds a whole new dimension to work with”) but have not settled on a permanent keyboardist.
Haynes himself is an immensely talented songwriter, a skill he attributes to “always having my brain on input, so that when it’s so saturated with ideas, images and possibilities, I sit down with a guitar and a pen and it becomes output.”
“I don’t think there’s any surefire method to writing music,” he said, claiming that he does his best work “late at night, like real late, when everyone else has gone to bed, like four in the morning. That feeling of being not awake but not asleep … I like to harness that.”
In addition to an extensive catalogue of originals, the Mule also boasts an impressive covers repertoire, which includes everything from the Beatles and Zeppelin to the great blues greats and Radiohead.
“When you cover a song, the first thing you want to avoid, obviously, is karaoke. When we choose one that we’d like to do, we first decide whether we would like to pay homage to the original artist by maintaining their style, or taking it, reinterpreting it and making it our own,” Haynes explained. “But either way, the most important thing is to maintain the song’s integrity–to do its original justice.”
Although a unit far above the sum of its parts, Gov’t Mule is still rooted in the fundamentals of all great bands: talent and hard work.
“Music is a feast or famine business,” Haynes said. “You never really know what’s going to happen, or if it’s going to work or not. But that’s just it, you have to keep working. Complacency is the biggest fear of any devoted musician. Keeping your mind open to everything and anything is one of the best things you can do for yourself.”
Amen to that.