Photo by Allison Murphy
It will be a busy summer for Warren Haynes. Last night in Portland, ME Gov’t Mule kicked off their latest tour, which will include stops at Mountain Jam and Bonnaroo. In mid-June he will spend a few days away from the Mule as he begins his eight-city Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration tour. Then it’s off to Europe for more Mule shows. August will see him return to the road with the Allman Brothers Band. Then in early fall, Gov’t Mule will release its latest studio album, which Haynes describes as “a very special record.” All of these topics are covered in the following Jambands.com reader interview.
Let’s start off with your songwriting. A number of people mentioned “Dusk Till Dawn” which you debuted with the Allman Brothers at the Beacon in March and wanted to know when in the process of writing a given tune you determine whether it will best suit the ABB, Gov’t Mule or the Warren Haynes Band?
It varies from song to song and project to project. Some of them could go either way and some of them obviously lean more one way than another. I think “Dust Til Dawn” could probably be a Mule song or an Allman Brothers song, but we chose to make it an Allman Brothers song. Sometimes I don’t decide until after the song’s already written. But if there’s a project on the horizon that I’m writing for, then I’m thinking about the sound of the band and the strengths and the fortes of the band as I’m writing and as I’m choosing which songs are going to go into which camp, which makes it a little bit easier. But a lot of times as a songwriter, you’re just writing with no project in mind and however the song turns out is how it turns out and then you decide later which way to interpret it.
In terms of writing music for the forthcoming Gov’t Mule album, did you think going in that you want to move the sound in a slightly different direction or did you just take it as it comes and just sort of think broadly of what Gov’t Mule represents to you?
Well, I think it’s nice if there’s a broad similarity to what I think of when I think of Gov’t Mule in the way that if there’s a song that can feature our collective personalities and individual personalities. But I think for us it’s more important that we don’t repeat ourselves from record to record, that the songs we write and choose to include for each record stand on their own and don’t resemble in any significant way any song that we’ve included on previous records. That’s the biggest challenge I think any artist or any band faces when you’ve been at it for a while, is how to continue growing in new directions that still sound familiar to your audience and still feels familiar to yourself but without feeling like you’re touching too closely to something you’ve already done.
Here’s a fitting follow-up: “When you came back with the Mule after taking some time off how did this impact on the evolution of the band’s sound, if at all?” Ken G.
Well, I think for one we all gained a new perspective on what it was that we were trying to achieve for the future of Gov’t Mule. With the hiatus, I think it kind of allowed us to step back a little bit and look at things differently. And also the fact that everybody’s doing a lot of different projects during that time off, and each project kind of influences you in a subtle, unspoken sort of way. In some ways, the chemistry of a band comes right back and starts where you left it. But at the same time, we’re not looking to revisit the past, we’re looking to break new ground. Now having said that, Gov’t Mule’s been through so many changes personnel-wise and stylistically that from time to time we will go back and kind of listen to some of the really old stuff and draw some sort of influence from it. But for the most part, I think it’s healthy just to feel where everybody is at the moment and usually we’re kind of on the same page and I’m always trying to steer it in a way that hopefully the music winds up being fresh and new, not just to the audience but to us as well. And you can only steer it so much, a lot of it just happens organically.
“I read an interview last year where you named three artists that inspired three of the songs on the forthcoming album, Sly & The Family Stone, Free and Levon Helm. Is there any other artist you can think of who may have had a hand directly or indirectly in serving as a source of inspiration for the music on the forthcoming release?” Dave Y.
Those are the three examples we cited as being situations where we were obviously paying tribute or some sort of homage or at least honoring a certain band or artist or even particular album— in the case of the song “Stoop So Low,” we wrote and recorded it during the 40th anniversary of Sly & The Family Stone Fresh album which is one of our favorites. The song “Bring on the Music” was written and recorded during the 40th anniversary of the breakup of the band Free, which was a big influence on all of us, especially on the original power trio of Gov’t Mule. And the obvious nod to Levon Helm who passed away and someone we all admired before any of us any knew him, and we were lucky to consider him a close friend. I played with Levon a lot of times and was lucky enough to have had that opportunity and when I wrote the song “Forsaken Savior,” I felt like it was not so much about him but inspired by The Band’s music and Levon’s musical persona, and we just wanted to kind of give a nod to that.
“When can we expect the new Mule record and what can we expect from it, whether it would be if there’s something thematically or if anything jumps out that can you can share relative to that?” Dawn H.
We’re hoping to have it out by mid-late September, it could even be early October. But it’s going to be a very unique record, a very special record for us. I have a feeling that people are hopefully going to embrace it in the way it’s meant. I’d like to say a lot more about it but I have to wait…
You debuted a couple of songs with the Mule, are those from the album? If so, how many from the album have been in rotation at this point?
I think we’ve played three songs from the new record so far. And we’re going to start working up all the new material in a way that we’ll be able to play everything live, in addition to some other new material and some other covers and a lot of fresh windows of improvisation. I imagine by the time the record comes out, we’ll have played most or all of it. But as I’ve talked about in the past, I don’t want to give it all away before the record comes out because these days everybody has access to everything you do. So I think it would be wise for us to at least wait ‘til towards the release date to have played all the songs, but one by one we’ll start unveiling them.
“What’s it like as an artist when you step out on stage these days and face a bunch of people holding up phones? That’s quite different than a discreet mic stands in the back. Does it get distracting? Would you prefer that people just to sit back and enjoy the show or does it not bother you?” Steve B .
Well, I think we were ahead of the curve a little bit along with many other bands mostly in the jamband scene, because we allowed people to record the shows anyway. And we play a different show every night and most of the people that follow our music know that and understand that. It’s a little disconcerting for there to be constant representations of the show available on the internet with very questionable quality. But that’s one of the things that we were trying to avoid in the first place when we allowed people to record the shows and especially when we enacted Mule Tracks, where we offer a high quality audio version of every show we’ve done since 2004. It is a little bizarre now that it’s become so easy for anyone to hold up their cell phone and video or audio record an experience but often times when you play it back, it’s not very representative of the actual experience. So it probably is less of a concern to us than it is to bands who don’t allow people to tape because we’ve been dealing with that on some level since ’94. And we’re a little bit used to the fact that every note we play is going to wind up somewhere in different degrees of quality. And again I think it makes it even more important that we offer Mule Tracks as a high quality alternative to that. It means you have to live with the fact that if you have a bad night or a bad performance that it’s out there for the world to hear or see, but I think we’re much more comfortable with that than the average commercial pop band would be because we improvise for a living and when you do that, you take the bad with the good.
Do you find that audiences are becoming more disengaged up front? Particularly at g.a. shows where people want to get a good video and perhaps they’re not as responsive as those fans who would otherwise be there?
Well, I don’t think we experience that as much as some bands or artists may. My personal take on it is that it’s usually the more casual fans that are going to do that. It’s not the fans that see you five, ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred times, it’s the fans that see you once that tend to want to put in on their cell phone. And so I think a lot of times it’s the fans that don’t get out much and don’t get to very many shows that want to preserve the moment because it’s not the norm for them. And a lot of our fans, going to live music is the norm for them. [Laughs.]
”You’re coming out with the first stretch of dates with Nicki Bluhm & The Gramblers. How familiar are you with them and assuming there are guest appearances, how and when do those decisions come to be?” Chris W.
Usually when we pick an opener, one or more of the members of the band are familiar with their music to the extent that they think, along with people in our office and management and booking agency, that this would be a good fit. In the case with Nicki Bluhm, I had heard her music and their music but didn’t actually meet them face to face until the other night at The Hangout Festival. And I won’t actually be able to have seen them perform live until they’re on stage opening for us.
Sometimes that’s the case and sometimes it’s not. When Grace Potter first started opening for Gov’t Mule, we knew about Grace and the buzz and all the reaction people were having to the Nocturnals’ music, and we said, “Well, why don’t we add them for a couple of shows and see how it goes?” And I think we did two shows or three shows or something and I got to experience them live and we were like, “Oh, this is great. We should do more of this.” So sometimes that’s the way it happens.
Now as far as people sitting it, it’s a little more complex in that if there’s a band on tour with us, then the first few days we’re doing a lot of listening to see like what would be the right first song to play together, and how the chemistries are going to work together, and see how the bands are going to relate to each other and the different musicians are going to relate to each other on stage, because that’s another issue. And we’re not one of those bands that wants to just get up and play some simple song with people just to have them on stage, we want there to be some real collaboration and some real merit to the experience and so in order to do that, sometimes it takes a little more work and research. But it always pays off and it always adds another dimension to the show and leads usually to some great collaborations which will lead to future relationships and it’s a big positive experience.
Earlier you mentioned listening to older Mule. Someone wanted to know how often, if ever, you listen to past live shows?
I only listen to them if I’m looking for something for Classic Mule Tracks. If we talk about a certain tour or a certain era or a certain special guest that it would be nice to capture something from that time period for Classic Mule Tracks, then I’ll go back and specifically listen to a bunch of shows with that in mind. But otherwise, I don’t really listen to the old shows.
When you’ve listened back to the original trio, what if anything has struck you or surprised you?
As an example, when we put out the Georgia Bootleg Box Set recently, a friend of mine had forwarded me the original mixes Doug Oade did back in ’96 of those shows and reminded me that they were really good and that even though there was a lot of repeats because we didn’t have a very large repertoire at that point, that there was a lot of excitement and you can see the band in growth spurts. When I listened to it, it reminded me how fresh and exciting those songs were. And it brought back a lot of really fond memories and that’s why I chose to just put those original mixes out, make the price point as cheap as possible and just turn people on to that. If they hadn’t heard that version of Mule, it’s captured a nice little snapshot, and if they had, then they were probably longing for it anyway.
Photo by Ty Phillips
Quite a few people wanted to know if you still have plans to release the shows you performed with John Scofield.
Mixed, mastered, ready to go. We can only squeeze so much stuff into the pipeline, but it’s one of my personal favorites. We want to do something cool when the time comes, put it out and do a tour with John, something like that, and kind of recreate some of that vibe that we had going on at the time. I think the longer we wait to put it out, the more appropriate it is. I think if a lot of our fans at that time didn’t really get the connection between us and John’s music, all these years later it seems more and more and more obvious.
You mentioned your decision to perform “Dusk Til Dawn” with the Allman Brothers Band. On occasion Gregg has spoken about the possibility of a new studio recording with the Brothers. People wanted to know how likely, if at all, you think that might be?
It’s a possibility but I wouldn’t say it’s definitely going to happen. The excitement level about that seems to vary from member to member and if we could get everybody on the same page it would be fun to do, but at the moment I don’t really see it happening any time soon.
“You’re returning to Europe this summer as you did last summer. What particular memories, if any, sort of jump out from last summer’s Europe tour?” George T.
Well, the European audience is getting bigger and bigger all the time for us and we’re really glad that we made the decision to explore that and continue nurturing it. It’s very gratifying to be so far away from home and realize that you have seriously hardcore fans and a lot of them that you didn’t know really existed until you made that leap.
Here’s an interesting one: “You play in a lot of different contexts. To what extent does audience expectation influence your playing? What is the balance do you think an artist should strike between pure creative expression and audience expectation?” Len G.
Well, that’s for every artist, every musician to decide for themselves and even sometimes on a moment by moment basis. If you distill the concept of art down to the truest form, then you’re doing it strictly for yourself and the audience doesn’t enter the picture, which means a painter would do a painting and then burn it because they didn’t want or need anybody to see it. That’s not reality, that’s not what we do and if you’re playing for an audience that is supporting you emotionally and financially, then you kind of owe them the respect of giving them at least a certain amount of what they expect.
Now at the same time, we have made a career of pleasing ourselves first and building an audience that likes that. And I think that’s a little more true to form than the average commercial music formula but it’s not to mean that I’m going to go out on a particular night and just completely ignore what people expect of me and play in a way that is self-indulgent and challenging in some weird, dissonant, unpleasing way. But at the same time I feel like if I’m inspiring myself then that’s the best I can give someone. And so that’s what I’m trying to do first and foremost because if I’m not inspired, I don’t expect people to be inspired with what they’re hearing. But you can’t really think about that or second-guess it because one of the things that I’ve noticed is that if I think I had a great night, someone else might not think so, and if I think I had a terrible night, someone else might not think so. So everybody’s perspective is different. Again the best we can do is feel good about our own performance and then hopefully all is well in the universe.
That answer calls to mind the Grateful Dead. A number of folks had questions about your upcoming Jerry Garcia symphony shows. You’re going to be playing electric and not acoustic is that correct?
I may decide to play some acoustic guitar but it would be really hard to get an acoustic guitar over the sound level of a symphony. I mean, you have to understand how dynamic and loud a symphony really is.
“You’ve indicated that the Garcia estate asked you to participate. Had you ever contemplated performing with a symphony before this opportunity presented itself?” Tim J.
I’ve thought about it for decades. But this is a first for me, I’ve never done anything with a symphony on any level.
“Beyond yourself and the various symphonies will other musicians join you as well?” Jen W.
It’s myself, Jeff Sipe on drums, Lincoln Schleifer on bass and Alecia Chakour and Jasmine Mohammed as doing background vocals, in addition to the symphony.
“What sort of rehearsal will you have with the various symphonies on the tour?” Nick H.
The way it has transpired is several months ago I put together a list of songs that’s by far more than we could possibly play in any one show. And we picked three arrangers and divided those songs up among the three different arrangers. In Pittsburgh, we’ll rehearse for a couple of days with the Pittsburgh Symphony, where we’ll run through all the songs as many times as we have the opportunity to and fine tune, tweak, the final scores. Then after that the scores for each song will be exactly the same for each symphony in each city. It doesn’t mean the performances will be the same because some of the songs will have windows where the band improvises and the symphony lays out and then comes back in at a strategic moment on cue or whatever the case may be. But the symphonic part of the performances will be the same in each city other than the symphony’s own interpretation.
Someone asked, “I’m thinking about attending both shows in San Francisco. Will those setlists vary from night to night?” Ian L.
Yes, the intention is that the two San Francisco shows would have different setlists. I’ll definitely repeat some songs but some of the songs will change from night to night. And we’re not going to be able to vary the setlists as much as the Grateful Dead would, but it was important to me that it be at least somewhat different from night to night.
“Are there any songs that you really love but for whatever reason you didn’t think would work very well in this setting?” Ben G.
Oh absolutely. There were a lot of songs that some even my personal favorites that I felt like having the symphony wouldn’t add anything unique to the overall picture and that it just wasn’t the right fit. And there were some songs that I chose strictly for the reason that having the symphony interpret the songs is going to take it to another level.
In a chat you participated in the other night, you mentioned that your first Grateful Dead show was in Charlotte in ’79 [5/3/79 at the Charlotte Coliseum]. You said your second was in Foxboro ten years later, which was on July 2, 1989 during an off-day on the Allman Brothers Band tour. Looking back, what struck you from either of those nights?
At the Charlotte show, I went with a band that I was playing with at that time that was a regional band in the North Carolina area where I lived. We had a school bus that we traveled in and we took the school bus down from Asheville to Charlotte, the whole band went to see the show. None of us were big enough fans to know the individual songs.
Years later somebody asked me, “Do you remember anything about that show?” Because at one point, that show for some reason didn’t show up on DeadBase. And I was like, “I didn’t make this up. This is a show that I went to.” [Laughs.] And then a few years back, it somehow miraculously appeared in DeadBase. I had told people, “The only thing I really remember is that they played ‘Terrapin Station,’” and when the set list was published, “Terrapin Station” was in fact part of the set list and that made me feel good that I at least remembered that much.
The ’89 show, I don’t remember a lot about it. I went with Johnny Neel, the blind keyboard player from the Allman Brothers, and we didn’t realize that it was an early show, and we got there thinking we were there early enough to watch the whole show, and in fact we had missed the first set. So we only saw the second set and since Johnny’s blind and not so easily mobile, our plan was to leave before the encore or somewhere in the middle of the second set, and get out of there without dealing with the stadium mob. And since we were confused about having missed the first set, that didn’t happen and we got stranded in the midst of this mob and wound up just hanging out in the parking long for like two hours. [Laughs.] And that was the craziest part of that experience that I remember.
You also indicated that Bruce Hornsby invited you to watch a show from the stage. Did you ever have the opportunity to interact with Jerry Garcia, however briefly?
You know, that night which was at Madison Square Garden, Hornsby invited my wife and I to sit behind the piano which we did, and Stefani saw the Dead like 150 times or something, so it was an even bigger thrill for her, and we were virtually sitting on the stage. For whatever reason that night, we didn’t push the point of, “We want to meet everybody.” I was never one to be too pushy about those kind of things anyway. You never think, “This person may not be around so I better meet him now.” I just always assumed, “I’ll meet him next time. They’re busy, I don’t want to be in the way.” And it was that same sort of kind of shy attitude that kept me from meeting Stevie Ray Vaughan as well, because I saw Stevie play 3 or 4 or 5 times, and some of those times I even had backstage access and stuff, but I was like, “Nah, I’ll meet him next time. I don’t want to be in the way.” And it was that same sort of thing that night with Jerry and you don’t realize that it could be a situation where you don’t have that chance. So I guess my lesson learned is if there’s somebody you really want to meet, don’t be shy about it.
You certainly see the other side of that as a musician whose music has touched a lot of people. How do you typically approach that situation, for instance when you encounter someone at a meet and greet or an after-show, who might be too shy or intimidated to approach you?
Well, I guess we take for granted sometimes how much it might mean to someone else to have a few moments to share with someone that they look up to or admire their music or their art or whatever the situation may be. And so if you can take a minute to show that person the respect and turn it into a positive experience, it’s just as easy to do that as it is to say, “Hey, I’m too busy.” Sometimes you are too busy and you can’t do it and that’s unfortunate, but it makes me think about Allen Woody. One of the things that I loved about Woody, one of the many things, was that whoever he was talking to, he gave them his undivided attention and made them feel, at least for that moment, that they were the only ones in the room. And it was a genuine thing, it wasn’t an acting job, it was just a charm and talent that he possessed and I think he genuinely liked sharing those kind of moments with someone. I’ve met so many people that have come up to me through the years and said, “You know, I met Allen Woody one night and he was so generous with his time and we talked about this and we talked about that.” And they still remember the conversation. So we have to remember as people that do this all the time, we may not remember that moment because it all turns into a blur at some point, but the people on the other end of it will and that’s an important part of the overall experience.
Finally, we received two questions relative to your son. People were hoping you would identify Hudson’s favorite song and also wondered to what extent you feel that fatherhood has influenced your songwriting.
Hudson’s favorite song is the Howlin’ Wolf song “300 Pounds of Heavenly Joy.” He was 13 pounds when I started singing it to him and now he’s like 30 pounds. And every time he would gain a pound, we would change the number from “13 Pounds of Heavenly Joy” to “14 Pounds of Heavenly Joy,” you know. And there’s a little dance that goes along with the song and he just lights up every time we sing it. He also has many of the obvious favorites like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”
As for the second part, absolutely. I mean, it influences the way you look at the world. It influences everything which includes your playing, your singing, your songwriting, the way you interact with other people. I’m instantly drawn to other parents with children his age now. You want to have a conversation based on similarities and maybe even get advice. But as far as like songwriting, it’s hard to describe what that would be but I think every time a songwriter becomes a parent their work changes. And maybe becomes less brooding or less dark, who knows, I don’t know because writers, not just songwriters but writers of all kinds, tend to write the most when they’re not feeling their best. And so people say, “Oh, why don’t you write more happy songs?” Well, because when I’m happy I’m not writing songs. I don’t need to write songs when I’m happy, I’m enjoying myself. I don’t know anybody that says, “Oh I feel so good, I think I’ll go write a song!” And so in that way, maybe it even puts you in a writer’s slump because you spend so much time being thankful for what you have and just enjoying the moments of having your child that the whole process changes. So we’ll see, so far I’ve felt very good about the way things are going in that direction and it’s definitely worth whatever the trade-off is.
