Photo by Rich Cox
Warren Haynes has been a self-proclaimed “student of music” for over 40 years, and if he has his way, will continue to be a student for the next forty. This lead guitar/vocal powerhouse started humbly enough, singing in the school choir at age 7 in Asheville, NC, and picking up his older brother’s electric guitar at age eleven. Upon receiving an electric guitar of his own (“a $49 guitar from the hardware store” for his 12th birthday – April 6, 1972), it became clear to all who cared to listen that this was what he wanted to do with his life. Through stints filling the late Duane Allman’s shoes in the reunited Allman Brothers Band, to forming his own Cream/Hendrix-inspired power trio Gov’t Mule, to hooking up with various post-Grateful Dead incarnations, to sharing the stage with just about every living music icon he could imagine, Haynes has long since become an iconic figure in his own right.
It may seem odd that such a rock stalwart claims his young ears turned early toward soul music by the likes of The Four Tops, The Temptations, James Brown, Sam & Dave, and Wilson Pickett, but then again, The Allman Brothers started out as a blues band. Haynes credits his older brothers’ interest in rock music as the catalyst that made him reach for the guitar. When asked if he was self-taught or took lessons, he fondly recalls the tutelage of another self-taught player from North Carolina – Andy Hunter, whom Haynes “really loved and who taught me a lot, but…realized that I was pushing myself and learning a lot on my own and, since he was self-taught, he kind of pulled me aside one day and said, ‘Look, I think you’re doing fine without my help. I feel like I’m stealing your money,’ and it was a very honest thing to tell a student. But I think at that point I was far enough along where he felt like I could continue to progress on my own. I’ve always respected him for that, and he’s a great player.”
Haynes continues to push himself decades later, as he barely flinches when playing “13 shows in a row,” as Gov’t Mule did recently. Though, he admits, “15 years ago, I would have not been able to keep that pace up. But somehow it just turned into a strength-building process. There is something bizarre about the fact – and it is a fact – that the longer you stay on the road, the better your chops get, as a guitar player and as a singer, and when you take a break…if you don’t play for 2 or 3 months…in some ways, you’re not starting over, but you’re definitely starting back with a handicap from a physical standpoint. Mentally, it’s a blast to play when you’ve taken some time off, but physically it’s a whole different thing. Especially for us [because] we play 3-hour shows…the type of improvisation that we do is very taxing. Improvisation is momentary composition, so when you’re composing on the spot you’re under a lot of pressure. And it’s good pressure, it’s the kind of pressure we all love, but it’s pressure nonetheless.”
I pointed out that, despite the pressure of live improvisation, I personally witnessed the Allman Brothers Band open a Red Rocks show in 2004 with “Mountain Jam,” arguably THE improvisational cornerstone of their repertoire. Haynes chuckled and responded, “You know, that’s just jumping right into the fire, but it’s also a way of relaxing a little bit and saying, ‘Hey, we’re not in a hurry. We may play this song for 10 minutes, we may play it for 18 minutes – who knows? Let’s see.’” (They played it for 18.)
On the other side of the coin would be the studio album. Polar opposite to improvisation – and, granted, on its way out if iTunes has anything to say about it – the “live-sounding” studio album has plagued great live rock bands since the dawn of time. The Grateful Dead were able to capture their stadium sound somewhat on 1987’s In the Dark only by renting out an auditorium to record it in. Traditional wisdom for a band like The Dead or ABB would have been to road test all the songs for months, if not years, before committing them to record, but Haynes says the internet age has changed that scenario drastically. Specifically, with regard to Gov’t Mule’s 2009 release By a Thread, as opposed to the ABB’s Hittin’ the Note from 2003, Haynes said, “We’ve recently been making a point of not playing the songs until they’re recorded [in the studio] because…with the internet being what it is now, every major fan worldwide has access to all the live shows, so people were circulating live recordings of what they thought was gonna be the new Allman Brothers record, and there were thousands of them going around and so, by the time the record came out, there were no surprises. Everybody was like, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard all these songs before.’ They’d even gotten attached to their favorite live versions.” And, if you look, you’d be hard pressed to find live recordings of the songs from By a Thread that pre-date the release of the studio album. It’s a great rock album, though, with thick sounds saturated well beyond the point of heavy-osity. Throw on headphones – real headphones, not those crappy ear buds – and these tracks feel like a freight train running between your ears.
Gov’t Mule also has a new live release entitled Mulennium, with the group’s late founding bassist Allen Woody, which dates back to New Year’s Eve 1999 and features some great tracks guest-starring Little Milton (before he died in 2005). Haynes said they originally planned to release it on the heels of the previous year’s live recording, but thought better of “following a live record with a live record from the same venue” (1999’s Live…With a Little Help from Our Friends, also recorded at the Roxy in Atlanta, GA). I’d say they needn’t have worried. Both releases are outstanding. I did notice something different about the way Woody played “Blind Man in the Dark” back in 1999, having heard many different bassists play on it since. His style, his timing, I dunno, just seemed to fit the song better. I asked Haynes what it was like teaching other bass players to play Allen Woody’s parts in the ensuing years. Haynes was quick to shower praise on the myriad bassists who filled in (“helped Gov’t Mule get through our crisis” were his exact words) until the permanent addition of newcomer Jorgen Carlsson in 2008, but was also quick to point out that Carlsson “plays more like Allen Woody than anybody I’ve ever met. It’s uncanny. Now, I don’t know that I would’ve been ready for that 7 or 8 years ago, but now it’s really great because he’s not someone who studied Allen Woody, he just instinctually has a similar approach and style and sound. Now here’s the weird part: Allen Woody was born October 3rd, Jorgen was born October 2nd. That’s pretty bizarre.” I’m looking forward to comparing the two on that song particularly.
Part of the luxury of having your own record label (Evil Teen, launched by Haynes’ wife Stefani Scarmado, of Sirius/XM’s JamOn fame) is being able to put out what you want, when you want. The third Haynes-oriented release to come out in the last 12 months is one of the Christmas Jams for which Haynes gathers colleagues and friends to do a charity benefit every year in Asheville. On Warren Haynes Presents the Benefit Concert, Vol. 3, which dates from 2001 (yes, they seem to be releasing this series out of sequence), you’ll hear yet another side of Haynes as he rubs elbows with the likes of Alvin Youngblood Hart, Jimmy Herring, Dave Schools, Phil Lesh & Friends, Blues Traveler, and Robert Randolph. As with any live show, it’s not all earth-shatteringly fantastic, but it is interesting to hear Haynes bury himself into a deeper, varied mix of players, and tracks like Skip James’ “Devil Got My Woman,” Traveler’s “Mountains Win Again,” and CSNY’s “Almost Cut My Hair” absolutely shine. “Night of a Thousand Stars,” co-written by Robert Hunter and recorded here with Phil Lesh & Friends is another standout. It appeared later, in studio form, on the 2002 album “There and Back Again,” and despite its biblical, almost mournful lyrics, is certainly one of Haynes’ happiest-sounding musical compositions. Maybe it’s just played in a “happy” key. At any rate, Haynes said to expect more of these releases in the future: “Everything since ‘99 we’ve been recording and everything since 2002 we’ve been filming so eventually they’ll all come out on CD or DVD or both.” As for slowly commandeering Evil Teen for all their releases, Haynes said, “Eventually we just thought, ‘the way the music business is going we’re getting closer and closer to [turning] Evil Teen into our main label,’ and that’s pretty much what’s happening now.” Then, perhaps presaging the demise of the bloated record industry elite, or perhaps merely encouraging bands to do-it-themselves, he added, “It’s definitely proving to be the way of the future.”
Haynes’ creative, business, and personal lives have been seriously co-mingling for some time now. His wife, Stefani, happens to be his manager. “We were content for a long time to not work together [because] some couples have found that that’s not the greatest thing for your marriage.” In the late 90’s, apparently unhappy with their current management, band-mates Allen Woody and Matt Abts told him, “We want to make a change,” then asked, “What do you think about Stefani being our manager?” As he recalls, his reply was, “If you’re asking me if I think she would do a great job the answer is ‘yes,’ but it also puts me in the position of not being able to fire my manager.” But, luckily, they seem to work together well after all.
He’d been so forthcoming up to this point, I mustered the courage to ask if he was free to speak about the future of The Allman Brothers Band. With all the recent cancellations and reports of Gregg Allman’s waning health, I was almost afraid to hear his response, whether it was, “I can’t discuss that,” or, more horribly, “There will be no more Allman Brothers Band (complete with booming, Zeus-on-high echo effects and thunder)!” Thankfully, his response was much more positive. “Gregg just went in for his liver transplant, which was very successful and is very excited about getting back on the road, not only with The Allman Brothers Band, but with his band as well. The Allman Brothers had already decided to slow down the schedule before that whole situation existed. There’s going to be a handful of Allman Brothers shows coming up, but not a lot. I think everybody’s looking forward to doing the Beacon Theater run that we always do in New York City every March. The Beacon’s our home. We’ve been there since 1989. Gregg Allman always says the Beacon reminds him of the Fillmore East,” which Haynes admits he never saw, but he does have an actual brick from its demolition, signed by all the members of the band. It would surely fetch a princely sum on eBay were it ever to find its way there.
Since playing the Fillmore East isn’t possible (barring the invention of time travel), I asked if he had any favorite venues he salivates over at the mere thought of playing. “Well, the Beacon is the place I’ve played the most. I’ve played [there] almost 200 times. Red Rocks is the place that everybody always points to as being the place you could never have a bad show. Between the audience and the picturesque setting it’s pretty incredible. I think there’s a spiritual factor [at work there]. Now, there are other venues in that part of the country – and I’m really looking forward to the Taos gig – that are similarly beautiful. The Gorge in Washington state is like that as well. Having said that, any place with a great audience is a great place to play, and I think it really comes down to that. I don’t mean to sound weird when I say this, but even more so for bands that improvise because the audience is part of it. We’re not capable of playing at the same level without an audience as we are with an audience and that’s just a fact. It’s not some cliché.” I didn’t think he sounded weird saying this in the least, but then again, I do live in Santa Fe, NM, home to a vast population of crystal-licking hippies. Cartman would hate it here.
I asked if he’d ever experienced an overdose of this kind of audience-performer biofeedback, and he replied, “One year at the Beacon the Allman Brothers were so hyped up for opening night that we decided to bring in the recording trucks…because the fans were so amped up. It was when [producer] Tom Dowd was still alive. After the show everybody was like, ‘wow that was a great show,’ and Tom said, ‘Not on tape. You guys played everything too fast. It was full of energy, but you weren’t relaxed and you weren’t in the groove.’ So there’s that. If the audience is completely over the top then you’re carried away in that moment, but that’s part of it too. I don’t think experiencing live music is the same as listening back to it on tape. It may feel great at the moment being really fast, but…at 4am on a tape or CD it may feel too fast. I don’t think that you have to play the songs the same tempo every night. We definitely don’t. I think you can discover the songs in many different ways by experimenting with the tempos. I tend to like it when it’s a little more laid back, but sometimes, if you’re at a big festival and there’s 100,000 people, the tempos get really fast because there’s so much energy there.”
Warren Haynes, for all his well-earned stature in the live music community, came off as fairly humble. “Down to earth,” my grandmother would’ve said. Whether playing with 3 band members or a dozen, whether for a few hundred casual fans or a mud-caked throng of tens of thousands, it’s obvious he just loves to perform. “This is what I love to do. Music is something that I feel blessed to be able to do in the first place and people that do anything they love for a living are very grateful, I think. Or should be. I’m very fortunate to be surrounded by so many great musicians. That’s the way you keep growing. That’s the way musicians remain students – by expanding their horizons.”
As Haynes’ band-mate Gregg Allman once wrote, when Haynes was still a young boy and not yet a member of the revived Allman Brothers Band, “The Road Goes on Forever.” I get the feeling that, for a road warrior like Warren Haynes, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
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Chris Diestler has been “performing” his weekly, free-form, jam/roots/festival showcase Toast-n-Jam – with and without co-hosts – for nearly 5 years on KBAC-FM in Santa Fe, NM. He still enjoys discovering new songs, as well as revelatory versions of songs he’s already heard a hundred times.
