Music for the soul

Gov’t Mule is a live force to be reckoned with. Two-and-a-half-hour sets. Different song lists every night. Jams reminiscent of the Dead.

“We cover a lot of ground, stylistically speaking; a lot of different genres are explored,” said Gov’t Mule’s singer and prolific guitarist Warren Haynes.

Haynes speaks with a Southern accent that makes him instantly likeable. The musician from North Carolina (he now lives in New York) joined the Allman Brothers Band in the late ‘80s and has shared the stage and studio with countless respected musicians (Eric Clapton, Dave Matthews and Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead to name a few).

Gov’t Mule originally formed in 1994 as an Allman Brothers side project—Haynes and bassist Allen Woody, along with drummer Matt Abts, put out their first album in 1995. When Woody died in 2000, the band almost died with him. But Haynes and Abts kept the music going and eventually signed on a new bassist, Andy Hess, and keyboardist Danny Louis.

Earlier this week, Haynes, named No. 23 on Rolling Stone’s list of the best guitar players ever, took time from his virtually nonstop touring schedule to talk with CN&R.

I’ve heard a couple of different explanations as to the origin of your band’s name. Maybe you can enlighten me as to which one is true?

I’m not sure it will be very enlightening! What’s the most controversial one?

It had something to do with a woman’s … rear end.

That’s the more true one [laughs]. It’s a colloquialism in the state of Mississippi, which is where the person who gave us our name is from.

Listening to your latest album, High and Mighty, I noticed some songs, like “Unring the Bell,” are pretty political. What do you think your role as a musician should play in politics?

I think it’s the same as any citizen. You should just raise your awareness as much as possible and speak your mind. Musicians have a voice sometimes in a way the average citizen doesn’t have. We’re in a very trying time, and people more than ever need to speak their mind.

What effect do you hope to have?

A positive one. People ask—can we make a difference? Not if we don’t try. The key is just to get people talking and get people listening. Get people involved and realizing that this is our country, this is our government and it’s up to us to make the changes.

On your Web site, you talk about the band’s chemistry—do you have to work to create that chemistry, or does it just sort of evolve?

Chemistry is something that when you stumble upon it, it just sort of happens. And then it develops and expands. Initial chemistry is very important, but it’s really what you do with it that matters. Staying together is key. No matter how great it is when it starts out, a year later it’s better and after another year it’s even better. You can get a group of excellent musicians in a room together and they may or may not have chemistry.

You’ve worked with a number of very talented musicians. Were there any who you had particularly good chemistry with?

I have amazing chemistry with all the guys in Gov’t Mule. That’s something we want to keep going. The chemistry with all the guys in the Allman Brothers is great. … Blues singer Little Milton—he and I had a great chemistry as well. We miss him very much.

It seems like a lot of musicians these days focus more on spectacle than on the actual music. How does Gov’t Mule keep itself grounded?

It’s somewhat natural for us because we’re doing what we love, what comes natural to us. The music that we create is based on all the music we grew up loving. And we have an amazing audience that not only tolerates us doing what we love to do, but encourages us. The audience goes with us down a road every night, and we don’t know where it’s going. We actually pay more attention to each other than to the audience—in a good way. And the audience provides us with an energy we couldn’t get anywhere else.

How is it possible to play a different show each night?

We keep a log of every set list we’ve ever played. So when we return to a city, we look at that log and make sure we play an entirely different set list than ones we’ve played there before. When we play two or three nights in one area, we won’t replay any song. It’s fun for us, and it’s fun for the people who keep coming back.

A lot of bands have experienced the death of a member. Some split up and others move on. How do you get past such a huge loss and keep on playing?

Our first inclination was to split up. We got a lot of encouragement from people in the industry and friends. In all cases people were encouraging us to keep the music alive. We came up with this idea of bringing all of Allen Woody’s favorite bass players into the studio to each play one song. We had a long list of bass players and in the beginning we only hoped for 10—but we got 25. It was amazing. We were mourning the loss of our dear friend, but each day we were walking into the studio with all these amazing bass players. It’s back to being a real band again and it’s amazing. The confidence level is higher than it’s been in a long, long time.