Early in the Zoom call, as volume adjustments are being made, the topic of hearing loss and “rock and roll” ears comes up. When asked if he ever uses hearing protection while on stage, Warren Haynes is adamant: “No.” After over 40 years of steady touring, Haynes does concede to a bit of a deficit in the midrange frequencies, but he notes that his hearing is “better than it should be, probably.” Nevertheless, no earplugs for this guy.
“It just kind of defeats everything you’ve done your whole life,” Haynes explains. “I don’t even like in-ear monitors.” Which makes sense. Haynes is an old-school sort, the type who understands that there is truly nothing like blasting your guitar through a tube-powered amp at volume levels that move some serious air.
However, Haynes’ current tour – which stops in Houston at the Heights Theater on Tuesday, February 24 – features the esteemed guitarist flexing his acoustic chops. Haynes is best-known for his fiery electric lead guitar work in Gov’t Mule and with his solo band, along with previous stints in the Allman Brothers Band, the Dead (a latter-day Grateful Dead offshoot), Phil Lesh and Friends and outlaw (literally!) country artist David Allan Coe. But his acoustic playing has occasionally been put in the spotlight, as when he did a solo acoustic set at the Bonnaroo music festival in 2003.
“That was the first time I did something like that,” Haynes recalls. “It was pretty odd, doing it in front of a big festival crowd like that. I did that show not knowing that we were going to release it as a record (Warren Haynes: Live at Bonnaroo), but I was happy with it overall, and we thought, ‘Let’s put it out!’”
Since then, Haynes has done a few other solo shows, but never a full tour. In marked contrast to his solo debut at Bonnaroo, Haynes’ current “Winter of Warren” jaunt includes performances at smaller venues, allowing for freedom and experimentation. “These shows are more about the singer-songwriter part of what I do,” Haynes says. “The emphasis is on the song and my voice. There’s very little flashy guitar playing. It’s mostly me just accompanying myself. I try to pull out the slide and play some cool stuff here and there, but it’s mostly me taking a back seat to the song and the voice.”
However, Hanes points out that he does play some electric guitar here and there. “For the first four or five songs of each set, I play on acoustic, and then I switch over and play some electric,” Haynes explains. In addition to custom-built acoustic guitars from Rockbridge and McAlister, Haynes is toting a couple of Gibson 335 electrics and a Les Paul, plus an Epiphone 12-string. At several concerts on the current tour, Haynes had the opportunity to play a guitar with a historic past. “For the California shows, I borrowed Jerry Garcia’s 1946 Martin Herringbone that he played on “Ripple” and American Beauty and stuff like that. It’s a beautiful instrument, and I was honored to have it in my hands.”
Considering that Haynes’ reputation was built as a guitarist in bands that feature group interaction and extensive improvisation, the notion of a solitary Haynes goes against the grain. “I enjoy it, but it’s weird being on stage by yourself,” Haynes notes. “But most shows are in front of more intimate audiences, which is appropriate for this kind of thing.
“They’re not rowdy, and everyone is quiet during the performances. I enjoy it because it exposes a different side of what I do. In the same way that going back and forth between Gov’t Mule and the Warren Haynes Band, or when I was doing the Allman Brothers and the Dead, or whatever project I’m doing, it just allows me to do more different things. Which keeps me from getting stagnated.”
Indeed, Haynes’ approach to making music stands in stark contrast to that of many of his contemporaries, classic rock artists who continue to grind it out night after night, playing essentially the same 18-song set at every show. “I couldn’t do that,” Haynes says. “Nothing against people that do, because some bands, appropriately, are playing the same songs every night, because that’s what their audiences expect.
“[I’ve] been fortunate to have built an audience that doesn’t expect that and doesn’t demand that and is excited to see what we’re going to play night after night. It’s important to me to be able to shake it up and do different stuff,” Haynes says.
So was this adventurous approach that Haynes currently puts into practice with Gov’t Mule, the Warren Haynes Band and his solo appearances a planned strategy, or did it just happen organically? “A little of both,” Haynes says. “When I joined the Allman Brothers in 1989, we were playing pretty much the same set list every night. Then we started shaking it up a bit and alternating a few songs here and there.
“After two or three years of doing that, Kirk West, who was the Allman Brothers’ tour manager at that time, came to me and [bassist Allen] Woody and [lead vocalist / keyboard player] Gregg [Allman] and said, ‘You guys should consider changing the set up night after night, the way the Grateful Dead does, because there are a lot of fans who would come to multiple shows if they knew that they were different.’
“So the three of us liked that idea, and we presented it to the rest of the band, and everybody was like, ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’ So from that point forward, the Allman Brothers started doing that, and then I adopted that philosophy for my shows.”
By presenting a larger repertoire and including lengthy stretches of improvised music making in their shows, the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers both helped to show their audiences that such a live experience could be more interesting that listening to records or note-perfect performances with no sense of spontaneity.
“The fact that those bands were able to turn on the audience to the concept of music being better when it’s unscripted – not for everyone, but for those of us who love that sort of thing – that’s a pretty amazing achievement on their part,” Haynes says. “But if you go back to the great jazz bands and the great blues bands that were touring, they were doing a similar thing. They were taking a similar approach. So the Dead and the Allman Brothers were taking a cue from that. The fact that the concept is still around is pretty awesome.”
Warren Haynes will perform at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, February 24, at the Heights Theater, 339 W. 19th. For more information, call 214-272-8346 or visit theheightstheater.com. $57 and up.
For more on Warren Haynes, visit warrenhaynes.net.
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