How did you approach recording the
horn section?
That’s an Austin-based horn section that we
added after the fact. All the tenor sax solos,
including the sax through the wah on “Sick
of My Shadow” and the harmony saxes on
the end of “Real Lonely Night” were played
by Ron Holloway. He has been a good
friend for many years and will be in the
band I tour with.
With all the horns and keyboards, it’s easy
for some instruments to get lost in the
shuffle. How did you avoid having a cluttered
mix?
We went for a pretty old-school approach.
The organ, piano, and Wurlitzer were all
recorded mono. That means whenever there
are two or more keyboards playing at the
same time there is no stereo panning of the
keyboards. We didn’t go for the stereo Leslie
sound or the stereo piano sound. The goal
was for everything to sound natural, so Ivan
Neville’s organ and Clavinet is on the left
side, and Ian’s piano and organ comes from
the right. We wanted to leave space for the
guitar and vocals in the center. It was a
pretty natural, old-school way of doing it,
as far as making room for the sax and the
horns. We had a vision way in advance for
what we wanted this record to sound like.
For Gov't Mule gigs, Haynes plugs his Gibson Les Paul Inspired by Warren Haynes into a
Diaz CD-
100 amp driving an Engl cab. Photo by Brian Shupe
Did you have specific albums in mind?
We didn’t physically go and A/B the sound.
We just wanted to go from what it sounded
like in our memory. A lot of that started
with using vintage equipment, vintage mics,
and recording to analog tape. Also, recording
at 15 ips, which is very, very old-school. The
intent was to make the record sound like it
belonged with the music that influenced it.
Do you think any of the songs from this
album will creep into a Mule or Allman
Brothers set list?
We’re actually starting to play “River’s Gonna
Rise” with the Allman Brothers now. I can
imagine some of the songs would get played
with Gov’t Mule, even though I chose to
record them for this other project. When the
time comes, we’ll look at some of them and
reinterpret them as Gov’t Mule songs.
Looking past this album, what projects are
on the horizon?
I think the music business is reinventing
itself to such an extent that it’s probable
we’ll come out with a lot of projects—even
if they’re released through our own label.
I don’t want to wait nearly this long to do
another solo record. I have several projects in
mind, but I’m guessing the next thing I’ll do
is a new Gov’t Mule record, and I’m excited
about that. But I want to start working on
another solo record very soon as well. And it
won’t be like this one—it will be completely
different. It will probably have more acoustic
instruments and come from a singer-songwriter
direction.
Warren Haynes' Gearbox
Guitars
Gibson Les Paul Inspired
by Warren Haynes,
D’Angelico New Yorker NY-4,
1969 Gibson ES-335,
1967 Gibson ES-355,
1959 Gibson Les Paul,
1959 Gibson ES-345,
Gibson Custom Shop,
Firebird V
Amps
Trainwreck,
Gibson Voyager,
PRS Dallas 50-watt,
PRS Club 30,
Fender Super Reverb,
Fender Pro Junior,
Fender Vibrolux
Effects
Hughes & Kettner,
Rotosphere,
Dunlop Cry Baby wah
Strings
GHS .011–.050