As the lead guitarist for the Allman Brothers Band, Phil Lesh & Friends, and Gov’t Mule, Warren Haynes just might be the hardest working musician on the scene today. In addition to the constant touring, there are new studio releases by Phil Lesh & Friends called “There And Back Again,” by the Allman Brothers Band called “Hittin’ The Note,” and Warren’s own live acoustic recording called “The Lone EP.” Also, just hitting the stores now is the release of a brand new Gov’t Mule – Live in Concert – called “The Deepest End.”
The new Gov’t Mule is a double live CD with a three and a half hour long DVD included. The total package time is an amazing six hours and four minutes. “The Deepest End,” recorded at the Saenger Theatre in New Orleans on May 3rd 2003, is the culmination of Gov’t Mules most recent recordings called “The Deep End Vol. 1 & Vol. 2.” Nearly thirty different guest bass players were used for these discs. The entire project has been a continuing tribute to Warren’s long time bassist and close personal friend Allen Woody, who recently passed away. Warren was on the road, as usual, down in Florida when we caught up with him.
BH – Hey Warren, recently Rolling Stone Magazine published a list of who they thought were the 100 greatest guitar players of all time. What was your reaction to it and seeing your own name at number 23?
WH – “Well I was flattered to be part of it at all, especially to be that high up on the list. There were a lot of people that I was above that I didn’t feel like I should have been you know, that I look up to as my heroes. But those lists, they are what they are. They are somebody’s opinion. I didn’t necessarily agree with it, I felt like there were some people missing that should have been on there. Some people should have been higher up, that sort of thing. But I was honored and flattered.”
BH – With Duane Allman, yourself, Dickey Betts, and Derek Trucks all on the list, they certainly made the statement that the Allman Brothers Band is the best guitar band ever.
WH – “That’s pretty cool and I loved the fact that Duane was number two. You know I felt like Dickey should have been higher up, but Duane being number two was great.”
BH – Warren how to you balance your work with the Allman Brothers, Phil and Friends and Gov’t Mule?
WH – “Well the Allman Brothers do fifty shows a year and that leaves a lot of time for all of us to do any other stuff that we want. Phil Lesh and Friends this year was not supposed to work at all, which would have made this year a little easier than the last two or three years for me. But at the last minute we all decided to do a three week tour which we’re all psyched that it’s going to happen. Gov’t Mule is what takes most of my time and juggling between the three really just takes cooperation between the different camps and a lot of coordination and stuff. But it’s something that can be done and works out pretty well.”
BH – You’ve been a prolific songwriter over the years. When you write a new song how do you determine which band gets the song?
WH – “Some of them actually I guess could go to any of the three directions. Some of them don’t necessarily belong to any of those three bands so to speak, or don’t make sense for any of those because I write a lot of songs that don’t wind up on any of these records. But more often than not the song kind of dictates which way it wants to go. I just write for the song, see what happens, and then after the fact if it seems like it fits a certain outlet then I’ll pursue that. Some of them crossover and could be interpreted by two or all three of the different bands.”
BH – And of course you have your solo work too.
WH – “Yeah, so there are definitely different outlets which is great for me. You know when Gregg and I were writing most of the material for the new Allman Brothers record we were writing specifically for that record. So we had the sound of the band in mind. And a lot of times with Gov’t Mule I’ll write that way as well. The stuff that I wrote for the Phil Lesh & Friends record, for the most part, was stuff that I had already written that I felt would fit into that scene so to speak. And those songs wouldn’t necessarily make sense for Gov’t Mule or the Allman Brothers but did for Phil. You kind of got to mess with them and see how it works.”
BH – I imagine ‘Patchwork Quilt,’ your Jerry Garcia tribute song, is a perfect example of a song that was right for Phil as opposed to the Mule or the Allmans.
WH – “Actually when I wrote that song it was just something that I wrote. I never really thought of recording it or performing it. It was just something I wrote for myself that I never even showed to anyone. And then when Phil called me about four years ago and said he wanted to do some work together one of the things he mentioned in the conversation was ‘hey if you have any songs that maybe haven’t surfaced yet that would make sense for this band that have never been done, think about bringing them into this project.’ And for some reason it just rang a bell in my head about ‘Patchwork Quilt.’ And so I showed him the tune and I told him ‘hey if it’s too sensitive of a subject matter by all means let me know.’ He said ‘no I think it’s great.’ So we wound up doing it live and then recording it for the ‘There And Back Again’ record. But had he not called me about doing some work together that song may have never seen the light of day because I always looked at it like a personal thing and I wasn’t sure that I would ever even show anyone.”
BH – So when did you get the idea for this new live disc and DVD?
WH – “We knew that we wanted to do one final blowout as part of the ‘Deep End’ concept. You know, the whole project that was basically ‘Deep End Vol. 1,’ Deep End Vol. 2,’ the two studio records we did with all the bass players and I guess ‘Rising Low’ would be part of that as well, the documentary that Mike Gordon (Phish) filmed. And we just thought we needed something to be the final celebration, the culmination of this whole thing. So once we came up with the idea of doing it in New Orleans, it all started falling together because a lot of people that we love would be in New Orleans during jazz fest and we could utilize that. So we said ‘let’s film it, let’s record it, let’s bring in a mobile truck and a film crew and everything and see what happens.’ I think what we envisioned was we would probably play four hours maybe four and a half, longer than normal, but we didn’t expect to play six hours. And I think we, in the back of our minds, felt like well you know, we’ll pare it down and use the best stuff and whatever is not good enough won’t make the cut. But when we started looking at everything and listening to it, we felt like the fans would probably like to have it all so why don’t we just put it all out. And I’m glad that we didn’t think of it that way prior to the show because we were probably under less pressure because going up there and expecting to use every single thing is kind of scary. But it was just one of those nights, it was almost like the music was playing itself. I felt like we were being pushed along by this massive wave of energy and it was almost like we could do no wrong.”
BH – Do you look at this as a continuing tribute to Allen Woody?
WH – “Yes although I don’t know if we necessarily looked at it that way but it is meant to celebrate him and his contribution to music. It’s kind of a unique project because when you think of tribute records you usually think of people getting together with a very limited schedule and doing songs that have already been done, whereas ‘The Deep End Vol. 1 & 2’ was all fresh, new, original material. So in thatway it really wasn’t like a tribute record. And the most important aspect of that whole thing to me was to make sure that each bass player was provided with a song that would enabled them to showcase his or her personality. Where we spent most of the time and energy was marrying the right song to the right bass player.”
BH – That’s right. And most of these bass players like Jack Casady, Rob Wasserman, Mike Gordon, and Victor Wooten are equally brilliant but also very different from each other.
WH – “Yeah these are people that A – brought bass to the forefront of their music and B – play with such a strong personality that their actual personality is reflected by their musical personality. And that is such an important aspect of music and especially considering the fact that most people don’t really spotlight the bass player.”
BH- You had other guests as well that I’d like to touch on, like Bela Fleck for example.
WH – “It was such an honor working with him. That was the first time that he had worked with Gov’t Mule. He had sat in with the Allman Brothers at the Beacon in March earlier this year and that’s where I ran into Victor Wooten as well and was able to talk to those guys about being part of ‘The Deepest End.’ And it was such an honor working with both of them, they’re both brilliant musicians.”
BH – I also enjoyed Karl Denson’s work on the sax and flute.
WH – “Karl is amazing, I really have a tremendous amount of respect for that guy. We worked a lot together in the last couple of years and I’m so honored to work with him. Every time we play together breathes new life into what we’re doing.”
BH – Warren I had heard that you were an eyewitness to the September 11th terrorist attacks on New York City. Would you like to talk about that?
WH – “My wife and I live in New York and the view from our apartment is the Trade Center. There’s a huge panoramic view right outside our window. We had been up all night the night before, we went to Wetlands for the closing. It was the final week of Wetlands and they were having a lot of our friends and cohorts play during that whole time period to celebrate the closing. Wetlands was a place that I really loved. So September 10th we went down and jammed until the wee hours of the morning. The show was DJ Logic and we all would up onstage. It was myself, Mike Gordon, Stanley Jordon, DJ Logic and a lot of other musicians just jamming until like four or four thirty in the morning. We went home and stayed up in a celebratory way, I was up until six or so and finally fell asleep around eight. Then our neighbor called and said ‘look out your window’ and at that point the first plane had already hit and we watched from our apartment. We watched the towers crumble. It was the most surreal thing I’ve ever seen and hope to ever see. I don’t even know how to describe the feeling that I had at that moment.”
BH – You must have been scared?
WH – “Yeah totally. I mean you’re thinking at this point now what’s happening? Are we going to full scale war? What’s happening here? That visual will be in my head for the rest of my life.”
BH – Finally Warren, I understand that the Mule has settled on Andy Hess as it’s new permanent bass player. Can you tell me a little about him?
WH – “Well Andy has spent the last year and a half or so playing with John Scofield. Prior to that he was the bass player in the Black Crowes and that’s where we met him. Andy was really close with Audley Freed, the guitar player with the Crowes who was an old, old friend of mine. And when we were working with all these different bass players Audley mentioned to me the Crowes were going on a hiatus and that I might want to give Andy a shot. And I trust Audley, musically speaking we have a lot of mutual respect for each other. So there was a time period where we took multiple bass players out on the road. At one point Andy and Jason Newsted, sometimes George Porter, Dave Schools, Oteil Burbridge, sometimes two or three in tandem of all these guys. And Audley came out with us and rode on the bus and would be like a special guest with us and we had a great time playing with Andy but when we first started playing with him we were still in the formative stages of doing all the ‘Deep End’ stuff. We were trying not to make an early commitment. We wanted to take our time and play with a lot of people before we made a decision. But early on we really enjoyed playing with him. Then when he took the gig with Scofield, he was out of commission for a while as far as we were concerned. He was traveling all the time with John. But it seemed like the last few weeks that we played when Andy was available, the band just felt really, really good. So we owed it to ourselves to play with him some more. And it seemed like what he brought to the picture was that thing that’s hard to put into words, the reason bands are established upon in the first place. You know, that thing that happens automatically that you don’t have to talk about between the bass player and the drummer, all the call and response and where he fills the groove and all the stuff that was just right for the Gov’t Mule. He’s a great guy as well and one of the most important aspects being that he’s studied and played all different types of music, which is what we need. So he just turned out to be the right guy. That’s a pretty tall statement having played with thirty something bass players over the past three years, we’re really psyched to have Andy be part of the situation.”
I write these words just hours after seeing Phil Lesh & Friends at the Oakdale with Warren’s blistering guitar solo during “All Along The Watchtower” still ringing in my ears. Warren’s tour with Gov’t Mule, called the “Rebirth Of The Mule” tour, will resume again shortly with shows at the Beacon Theatre in Manhattan to close out the year. After that he will be back with the Allman Brothers Band in the spring. The road goes on for the incredible Warren Haynes.