Southern rock band Gov't Mule have been rocking since the mid '90s, blending blues and psychedelic rock influences and creating a sound all their own. The band is fronted by Warren Hayes, who, among other things, was Duane Allman's second replacement in The Allman Brothers Band. Warren was kind enough stop by, play some licks with the Napster cat (see photo), and chat about Mule's new album, By a Thread—available exclusively now on Napster a week before official release, with exclusive bonus track "Railroad Boy."
Can you tell us a little about the new album?
It’s our first album with our new bass player, Jorgen Carlsson. I think it was really important to go into the studio and galvanize the chemistry that we’ve discovered with him and start building on that immediately. One of things that I really love about By a Thread is that it sounds like stuff we’ve never done before, but it also has similarities to our first two albums. The last three songs we recorded were written in the studio—we’ve never done that to that extent before, and they turned out to be three of the best tracks on the album that capture the spirit of the band.
Any new artists you’ve discovered recently that you can recommend?
There are a couple of bands out in New York I like called Earl Greyhound and The London Souls. They’re both rock bands, which I think is refreshing since there’s such a shortage of new rock bands. Up until the last couple of years, young musicians were scared to play rock music because things had gotten so compartmentalized. There’s “triple A” music, which is the lighter side of rock, and there’s “active rock,” which is the heavier side of rock, but there’s nothing in between, so bands that fall into that middle ground like Gov’t Mule and The Black Crowes find themselves spreading their audience out over a lot of different directions.
There’s also a good band opening up for us right now called Carney. The singer Reeve’s voice reminds me somewhat of Jeff Buckley. And all of the influences they choose are cool and timeless—they’re not just taking trendy influences and capitalizing on them, which I think is really important, because we need bands that are going to stand the test of time.
Who’s the most interesting musician you’ve ever shared the stage with?
If I had to choose some of the ones I’m most proud, there's Bob Dylan, John Lee Hooker, and Willie Dixon—who is not a household name to some (maybe with the Cadillac Records soundtrack people are starting to realize who he was), but he wrote songs that were covered by Cream, Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Grateful Dead, and The Allman Brothers. Every great rock band from that era covered a Willie Dixon song; he was kind of like the Chuck Berry of blues. So I was fortunate to play with Hooker and Dixon before they passed away. And playing with Dylan was as interesting as it gets.
What do you look forward to most these days?
I probably look forward to the next project. I’m always wanting to do something different, and it seems like there’s never enough time to do all the projects I want to do. And also since I’ve been on tour so much, I look forward to spending some time of the road writing because it’s hard to write on the road—I do it, but it’s not as natural as writing when the tour is over.
What does 2010 look like for Gov’t Mule, and any plans for another solo album?
In 2010, Gov't Mule's going to be spending a lot of time in Europe promoting By a Thread. I’ve actually completed a solo record—it’s a soul album with all original material and one cover. It’s an album I’ve waited a long time to do. All the songs hearken back to my earliest influences, which were soul singers like Sam & Dave, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Otis Redding, and Wilson Pickett. So if you combine my blues influences of B.B. King, Albert King, Freddie King with that, it makes for a really interesting mix. It’s got Ivan Neville playing organ and clavinet, Ian McLagan from Faces playing piano, George Porter, Jr. from The Meters playing bass, and Raymond Webber from Neville’s band Dumpstaphunk playing drums. It’s very fresh, but sounds like a record you might have missed from the ‘70s. Look for that next year, too.
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