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Warren Haynes: Working-Class Hero
Jason Shadrick
Warren Haynes takes us inside "Man in Motion", his first solo album in 15 years. Plus, co-producer Gordie Johnson and bassist George Porter Jr. discuss working with one of rock’s busiest guitar slingers.
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Solid As a Rock
Legendary bassist George Porter Jr. talks
about holding down the low end on Man in Motion.
Armed with his vintage Fender P bass, George Porter Jr.
established the sound and feel of modern New Orleans
music with the seminal R&B band, the Meters. Even
though Man in Motion was the first full studio record Porter
has recorded with Haynes, it wasn’t the first time they had
worked together.
“A year or so after the Mule’s original bass player passed
away, Warren was doing a record and Art Neville and myself
got a call to come up and play on the record,” remembers
Porter. “Pretty much from there, the handwriting was on the
wall. When they decided to go out on the road to support that
album, Greg Rzab and I got the call to do the tour.”
Although the band Haynes assembled for the new album
had never played together before, the rhythm section had
some history together. “I had played with both Ivan Neville
and Raymond Weber before,” says Porter. “They grew up in
and around the scene in New Orleans, musically and otherwise,
their whole lives. The three of us had a connection
that was pretty developed. When Warren showed us the
songs, we could tell it was right in the vein of the music
we grew up with.”
When it comes to the tools of his trade, Porter is
rarely found without his iconic Fender P bass. “The
neck on the P bass is a ’63 and the body had a
fretless neck on it when I bought it in 1970.
The Meters didn’t like the fretless concept,
and I was ordered to get rid of it or ‘they
would break it,’ in the words of Art Neville.”
Even though the band didn’t like the fretless
sound, Porter didn’t abandon the axe
completely. “Basically, I really liked the tone
of that particular bass and the CBS pickups
more than I liked the sound of the original
P basses. The CBS basses seemed to have
a lot more punch to them. So instead of
looking for another bass, I went looking
for a neck to put on that bass.”
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