Warren Haynes, Government Mule

Haynes at shredding best with Gov’t Mule at Palace

ALBANY — Nov. 15, 2014 -- For some, Warren Haynes lives in the shadow of the southern-rock guitar greats. For others, he casts his own shadow after years of playing with The Allman Brothers, Gov’t Mule and other projects.

The Mule came to the packed Palace on Friday night for its 20 Years Strong tour. A night of Haynes is a night of guitar shredding alongside hefty blues-rock that lies somewhere between Lynyrd Skynyrd and ’80s Allman Brothers. The four-man band played straight and solid throughout the show, enabling Haynes to do his thing out front. Haynes is a no-nonsense, hard-working rocker. For more than 21⁄2 hours, he sang with considerable effort and, rather than using a
rhythm guitarist for support, he carried all the guitar work himself.
He spotlighted keyboardist Danny Louis a few times, but mostly, it was all Haynes all the time. He is perfectly content to carry every show on his back. It took until the fourth tune for Haynes to rip it up properly. “Old school,” he said to the audience before diving into “Game Face.”

In the middle of that song, the lights went down and the band spaced out a little, then merged into a swinging “Mountain Jam,” an Allmans classic. They played this for too short a time before returning to “Game Face.” From then on, the band started cooking, not always getting it together, but always trying. Bassist Jorgen Carlsson often came out of nowhere to power the sound during Haynes’ solos. Carlsson’s playing pushed Haynes often, Haynes often finding himself with nowhere to go on his solo and relying on “fanning” the strings to escape the moment, rather than stay with the narrative of his solo.

They played a few melodic tunes, including “Which Way Do We Run,” “Child of the Earth,” and probably Hayne’s best tune, “Soul Shine,” which he recorded with the Allman Brothers. On this last one, he let Louis take a nice Hammond organ solo before Haynes dropped his head back to hold at length a series of notes during the coolest solo of the night.

They nicely covered Tom Petty’s “Breakdown,” not a tune you would expect the Mule to cover, nor the fans to embrace. It worked well enough, though, and, if nothing else, offered a break from the relentless overdrive jamming, though, in the end, they pushed this song to the brink, too.

“I’m a Ram” offered some diversity, as Haynes broke out a wah-wah sound for the reggae feel of the verses. Matt Abts is an animal drummer and showed this during his solos, but during the songs, he lingered beneath the sound, rarely seeking to influence and, unfortunately, never leading, despite his ability and years with the group.

After a drum solo, the band followed with The Doors’ “People Are Strange,” a strange cover for Haynes, but an interesting one. Louis played a nice solo on the trumpet, an instrument he once played professionally before switching to keys.

With so few bands left playing the music the Mule plays, its fans were eager to celebrate. In true old-school, southern rock fashion, they stayed on their feet the entire show, raising fists and screaming at most everything Haynes did. Haynes ended his successful career with the Allman Brothers last month. With the Allmans off his list, and with a reputation of touring year-round, he has an open schedule for a new project. Based on his energy and stamina Friday night, we should expect a lot more of him in a variety of forms.