(Warren Haynes’ new album is titled “Million Voices Whisper.” Photo by Shervin Lainez)
By Jim Morrison
“You know,” Warren Haynes says from his home in upstate New York, “Gregg Allman used to say there’s as many ways to write a song as there are songs.”
Haynes turned a one-year reunion stint with The Allman Brothers Band into 25 years so the two of them had plenty of time to talk songwriting.
For Haynes, though, the best place and the best time are at home about 3 a.m. when everybody else is asleep. “I feel like getting in that space where your brain is tired and almost ready to go to sleep a lot of times, the creative energy will flow in those moments,” he says. “I think it just kind of shuts off the filters that we all are inherently stuck with, you know, where there’s always something in your brain throughout the day.”
“I have a lot of luck writing it during those hours,” he adds noting that if he doesn’t finish a song during the night he may not be in that mindset again for a week or a month. “It takes getting back to a similar headspace to be able to finish it.”
For his first solo album in more than a decade he was in a soulful headspace. “Million Voices Whisper” slides easily between old soul, blues, funk, and rock.
“The last solo record that I made was “Ashes and Dust” (2015), which was more coming from an acoustic folkie kind of singer-songwriter sort of direction,” he says. “This record is more similar to “Man in Motion,” although it’s quite a bit different. It’s similar in the way that they’re both coming from more of a soul music kind of direction. I felt like I had written a bunch of new material that needed this sort of treatment.”
He put together a band of old and new mates. Among them are John Medeski on keyboards, longtime drummer Terence Higgins (of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band), and Kevin Scott, the new bassist for Gov’t Mule’s, the Haynes project now in its fourth decade. There are guest appearances from his Allman Brothers Band compatriot Derek Trucks, and from his Last Waltz Tour co-stars Lukas Nelson and Jamey Johnson.
The band stops by The NorVa on Friday, Sept. 27
He and Trucks worked together for the first time since their tenure in ABB writing and recording for three days at Trucks’s farm in Georgia. “Some of that was inspired by the fact that I had finished writing this song that Greg Allman had started, “Real Love.” I really wanted Derek to be part of that, and once we started having the conversation, we just thought it would be really cool to spend a few days together, write some music,” Haynes says. “And he was able to come into the studio and work with us for a few days on the three songs that we recorded together. ”
Johnson and Nelson joined Haynes and a host of others on The Last Waltz tour nodding to The Band in recent years. “I just love the way that our three voices blend together,” Haynes says. “I had written a couple of tunes with Jamey recently and Lukas and I wrote “Day of Reckoning” together, and I thought getting the three of us in the studio singing together for that song would be great. And Lukas also played some fantastic guitar on that.”
Haynes, a Grammy winner, enjoys letting the studio and the band take his songs to new places. “You never know until you get in the studio how a song is going to wind up,” he adds. “One of the beautiful things about recording with great musicians, which I’m fortunate enough to be surrounded by, is that everybody brings their own personality to the music. So the song itself is the starting point, but then the interpretation of the musicians is what takes it somewhere else.”
He toured with the band playing with symphonies over the summer. That meant a limited setlist because they needed scores for the symphony. This tour will focus on his solo work, but include some Allman Brothers tunes, some Grateful Dead tunes, some Gov’t Mule tunes, and a few choice covers.
“We try to change the setlist up at least by a few songs every night, but not to the extent that we do with Gov’t Mule,” he says.
That legendary band began 30 years ago. “Gov’t Mule was just a labor of love,” he says. “We never really had any expectations. We were just doing it for the fun of it, our concept at that point was to bring back the whole idea of the improvisational rock trio. It was just based on the chemistry that myself and Allen Woody and Matt Abts had as a trio, and in the beginning, we were only going to do one record and one tour and then go back to our day jobs, but it kind of turned into more than that. It happened organically in a way that none of us really expected. And I guess in some ways, that’s the best way, you know, because we were flying by the seat of our pants. We didn’t know what the next move was until we made it, you know. And it was really fun. We were kind of wrapped up in this whole creative energy that was going on at that time.”
For Haynes and Woody, it was an opportunity to play. They were in The Allman Brothers Band, but not touring much (Haynes had joined in 1989 at the invitation of DIckey Betts). “The Allman Brothers Band wasn’t getting along. The original members weren’t getting along together and there was no songwriting and there was no rehearsing, and there was no recording, and meanwhile, in the Gov’t Mule camp, all that stuff was happening, and it was very exciting,” he said. “So it’s easy to see how we kind of just made that turn.”
His long tours with both Mule and ABB were not part of any grand plan.
“When I joined the Allman Brothers, I thought it was for one year to do a reunion tour,” he notes. “And the music was great, and everybody was getting along great, and it was very successful. So the consensus was, well, let’s do it again next year, and then let’s do it again next year. But the Allman Brothers had a history of not being able to stay together more than three years at the time. So none of us expected it to keep going like it did. I’m very happy that it did. One year turned into 25 years for me.”
WANT TO GO?
Warren Haynes
September 27
The NorVa
