Features

Warren Haynes: Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag

An opportunity presented itself in 1986 when Dickey Betts invited Haynes to a vocal session where he was recording a demo. Matt Abts was the drummer for the Dickey Betts Band and recalls, “Marty Privette, the bass player, who lived in Nashville had been talking about Warren Haynes and [told Betts], ‘You’ve got to hear him play.’ He had quite a reputation back then.”

Betts liked what he heard, welcoming Haynes into the group and into Allman Brothers Band when they reformed in 1989. Throughout the years, as Haynes met new steady collaborators in Gov’t Mule, Phil Lesh & Friends and The Dead, he continued to push against the limitations that those studio sessions imposed.

“The whole idea of discovering the music as you’re playing it is something I’m very intrigued by and is a big part of everything we do,” Haynes says. “When you’re talking about some of the more complex numbers, especially in odd time signatures, there are certain ones that if someone gets off track, it’s really hard to get back on.

“An example in Gov’t Mule is the song ‘Wandering Child.’ If any individual loses the time signature, it’s hard to get back. And I can remember two instances where we almost had to stop playing because we were scared we weren’t going to get it back.

“In The Dead, an example would be ‘King Solomon’s Marbles.’ That’s another one where you’ve got to be completely focused and if you lose it, then it’s hard to jump back on the train.

“I’m more enamored with collective improvisation than I am with improving my own playing, and maybe those two things go hand-in-hand. You have to shut the cerebral part of your brain off to a certain extent and get lost in the music. You can spend years—sometimes decades—learning how to play what’s in your head, and then, I think you reach a point of, ‘Do I play that or do I challenge myself and not play it and wait until I hear what somebody else plays and completely respond to that with no forethought of what I was going to play?’

“The greatest example to me is the Miles Davis Quintet with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. When you listen to the band, you get the sense that none of them knew what they were going to play until they heard what someone else played immediately prior and it’s momentary composition. I feel like I’m getting better at that and it’s something that really appeals to me in a big way.”

Still, Haynes remains drawn to the more traditional form of composition as well. The self-described “lyrical fanatic” and “songwriter freak,” names a pantheon of influences that includes Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Elvis Costello, Neil Young, Roger Waters and Tom Waits.

“I tend to write based on lyrical inspiration more than musical inspiration,” he explains. “I find it easier to take the mood that a lyric evokes and create music to go with that mood. To me, that’s easier than finding the mood that the music evokes and writing a lyric to it, which is like threading a needle in the dark.”

Haynes cites books as particular sources of inspiration, with Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke and Paul Neilan’s Apathy and Other Small Victories as recent favorites, while the works of John Steinbeck and William Faulkner have served this purpose in the past.

“From a writing standpoint, I’m always moving in a sine wave,” he analogizes. “Sometimes I’m writing; sometimes I’m not. Throughout my life or career, I’ve always had slumps where I don’t write for months at a time. It always freaks me out when it happens, and then, out of the blue, I’ll get an idea for a song and then another one and another. The next thing you know, I’m juggling two or three songs at once and I’m out of the slump.”