Features

Warren Haynes: A Soul Man

In February 2009, shortly after completing work on Gov’t Mule’s By a Thread album, Warren Haynes recorded another album—a solo one. He continued to work in Austin, Texas’ Pedernales Studio with co-producer Gordie Johnson but swapped in new gear and a new collection of players. In assembling his group, Haynes began with a New Orleans based trio of George Porter Jr. on bass, Ivan Neville on keys and Neville’s Dumpstaphunk bandmate Raymond Weber on drums. This lineup soon expanded with the addition of second keyboard player Ian McLagan from The Faces, as well as vocalist Ruthie Foster and Ron Holloway on saxophone. The results gravitate away from the pulsing rock of Gov’t Mule and instead evoke the soul music that first captivated Haynes as a youngster. He explains, “This record, for the most part, tends to stay in that soul music bag. It does drift around a little, but it never strays too far from home.” The album is due out spring 2011.

Sweet Soul Music
It’s all original material with one exception, but it sounds like the soul music of the late ‘60s, early ‘70s blended with Albert King, B.B. King and Freddie King type blues from that same era. So there’s a lot of guitar playing but it’s more about the songs, my voice and just the vibe. It doesn’t sound like you just dusted a record off from that era that nobody had heard before, but in some ways it does. It definitely does not sound like a modern recording and that is exactly what we were trying to achieve.

Three Kings
Look at records like Albert King Born under a Bad Sign, which he recorded with Booker T & The MGs as his band. Freddie King’s The Burglar was a record that took Freddie into the rock world using people like Steve Ferrone who is a great funk drummer. And B.B. King, Indianola Mississippi Seeds. Those were records that showed these great blues artists making a right turn toward the soul music and rock music worlds. In some ways, those would be influences. I don’t necessarily think the [new] record sounds like them, but they are definitely records that I grew up loving.

Shades of The Band
The core band originally was going to be George, Ivan, Raymond and myself. Gordie recommended Ian McLagan because he was living in Austin which is where we were recording and Gordie said, “I’ve been doing some stuff recently with Ian and he sounds amazing. What about trying a two keyboard set up so it’d be a funk version of Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson in The Band—where there’s two keyboard players playing simultaneously? So I called Ivan and he had worked with Ian before—maybe with Keith Richards—and they were friends and were willing to give it a try.

The group of musicians assembled for this record had amazing chemistry. We recorded in the studio quickly—we didn’t dwell on things. We would go in and spend a little bit of time working up a song and record a few versions of it and decide which was the keeper and move on. It came about really organically and I was really happy with it.

The blend of my voice with Ivan and Ruthie’s voices is cool. I kind of imagined it would be, but when you actually hear it for the first time for real, it’s like, “Wow, that sounds great.”