Gary James' Interview With Warren Haynes Of
Gov't Mule



During a break from The Allman Brothers Band in 1984, guitarist and front man Warren Haynes, along with Allen Woody and Matt Abts formed Gov't Mule, and they've never looked back. Gov't Mule has received 197 million plus Pandora plays, over 60 million Spotify streams, 3 million downloads from their official website, and sold millions of albums. And now they've released their first ever Blues album, "Heavy Load Blues" (Fantasy Records). The album debuted at number one on the Billboard Blues Albums chart and landed on six additional charts, including the Billboard 200, reached number one on Amazon's Best Sellers In Blues, number one on Music Connects's Blues Albums chart, number two on Apple Music's Blues Albums, and amassed over 1.5 million global streams. The sky is the limit for Gov't Mule. Warren Haynes spoke with us about his life, Gov't Mule and their new album.

Q - Warren, "Heavy Load Blues" is the first Blues album the band has done, but isn't it true that you can find elements of Blues in most all of Rock 'n' Roll songs?

A - Absolutely, yeah. I mean, Rock 'n' Roll was born out of the Blues. So in general I would say that the Blues plays a part in most any band's Rock music, but Gov't Mule maybe even more so because from the very beginning we were highly influenced by Blues, starting from the first record.

Q - Why did you decide to go with an all Blues record at this point in Gov't Mule's career? Did you feel the timing was right in the music world for such an album?

A - Yeah, I mean this is our eleventh studio album an I don't know if that gives us some sort of permission to think differently, but it's been on my radar for quite awhile now, to do a Blues record, and I think the whole lockdown, COVID thing kind of brought it to the forefront. It seemed like the right time. The whole world has the Blues right now.

Q - You're right about that. Let's hope it doesn't last much longer and things improve. You even pressed vinyl for "Heavy Load Blues". Is that because vinyl is now outselling CDs?

A - We've always really loved vinyl anyway. All of our records have been available on vinyl to some extent or another, but the last few years this resurgence is really kicking in. People are lovin' the vinyl, which I'm really happy about. It's funny to see it come back with such a bang that it is. I grew up with vinyl and missed those days for a lot of reasons; one being the artwork, being able to visualize everything as part of a package.

Q - But you have to admit the sound on CDs is pretty good.

A - Yeah. If you have a good turntable and a good system and a new vinyl record, vinyl sounds fantastic, but CDs definitely served their purpose at the time. There's no right or wrong. It's more about what you prefer. From a recording stand point we prefer recording analog to digital, but that doesn't mean someone else feels that way. That's just our preference.

Q - Mick Jagger once said it's hard to write a good Blues song. Did you find that to be true?

A - I've always found that to be true. I've written hundreds and hundreds of songs and I would say less than ten of them are Blues songs in my entire live. Coincidentally, I wrote six or seven over the past couple of years which was part of the reason that we were kind of motivated to make this record, because I'd actually written some Blues songs. But I don't consider even the songs that I write that are Blues influenced, I've never thought of them as Blues songs. The ones on this record, I do.

Q - What really surprised me is your record is on Fantasy Records. For whatever reason I thought that Fantasy Records was out of business.

A - Well, a lot of those labels have been revived and rejuvenated. My "Man In Motion" record came out on Stax. So, the imprints of a lot of these labels have been brought back from companies that have several different labels. The group that we work with a lot is called Concord Music. They own Stax and Fantasy and several others as well. So it's cool to see those labels coming back as well.

Q - You took guitar lessons when you were growing up. For how long?

A - Just a few weeks really, or maybe it was two or three months. I don't remember, but I took them from this guy, Andy Hunter, who was a really good Blues player in my hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. He encouraged me to just teach myself because that's what he did. He could see that I was very passionate about it, but he was also the person who told me if you just study the three kings, you could never go wrong. And he meant B.B., Freddy and Albert.

Q - That's fine, but should he have also encouraged you to study Jazz guitar an be more of an all around guitarist? Or did he see your strength was as a Blues guitarist?

A - No. He knew my taste was all over the place. I loved Jazz. I loved Folk music. I loved Rock 'n' Roll. I grew up on Soul music. So, I was listening to a little bit of everything, but Andy was more strictly Blues than even myself. But it doesn't mean that he didn't encourage me to listen to Wes Montgomery and Django Reinhardt.

Q - In the last year and a half you really must have missed performing live, didn't you?

A - Yeah. It was tough. That was the longest time that I've been off stage since I was fifteen years old.

Q - That's when you probably decided to sit down and do some writing and recording.

A - Yeah. That seemed to be the obvious solution. I found myself writing more music than I have in decades and we had all this time on our hands so we decided to go into the studio and make two records at the same time. So, we were in the studio longer than we ever have been before. We were making "Heavy Load Blues" in one room in the studio and making what's going to be our next Gov't Mule record in another room in the studio. Since we couldn't travel and play in front of an audience it just made sense to get as much recording done as possible.

Q - For a serious musician like yourself, who studied music history, would you ever listen to a Pop singer's album?

A - Yeah, of course. I grew up listening to the radio. I don't tend to love a ton of Pop music, but certain things that are really good, I enjoy quite a bit. I'm not close-minded about the genres of music that I listen to. I can be a little picky about the actual music. I try to just discover the best in each genre and I think that's a good way as student to approach things. I think everybody has their own tastes. I probably like stuff that would surprise you.

Official Website: http://Mule.net

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

The views and opinions expressed by individuals interviewed for this web site are the sole responsibility of the individual making the comment and / or appearing in interviews and do not necessarily represent the opinions of anyone associated with the website ClassicBands.com.