As Gov’t Mule opens their Fall tour in Colorado, we look back to the February/March 2005 issue of Relix and this cover story on the group.

Warren Haynes isn’t like the rest of us. And that’s even before you consider his guitar playing. He sees and hears things that the rest of us don’t. Things that go bump in the night, inhabiting his dreams, or impelling him to write songs that foretell his very future. Blame it on growing up in Asheville, North Carolina, smack in the middle of Appalachian country. The western North Carolina town, known to tourists as “The Land of the Sky,” is just as famous for its long extinguished textile industry as it is for the disembodied ghosts that roam fitfully through its streets. Spirits like the Grove Park Inn’s Pink Lady, who hovers over the old stone hotel that overlooks the Blue Ridge Mountains, or the restless shade of shipping heir George Vanderbilt, who is regularly spotted pacing over the worn steps of the sumptuous Biltmore House that he built after the Civil War, or the chilling apparitions that eerily congregate at Helen’s Bridge at the edge of town. Even the Clyde A. Erwin High School has its own not-so-friendly ghosts that spook students and faculty alike. In fact, there are so many agitated spirits here that three paranormal research agencies are located in this high mountain town just to keep track of them all.

Things that Haynes takes for granted – or perhaps considers normal – would chill lesser mortals to the bone. Like the death of his beloved friend and conspirator, Gov’t Mule bassist Allen Woody. “I don’t want to say it wasn’t one of the worst things that ever happened – because it was. But I really believed that I dreamed it was going to happen before it did, and that that helped prepare me for it,” explains Haynes, leaning forward from his perch on an elegantly neutral no-color sofa in San Francisco’s Miyako Hotel, in the very same austere suite of rooms that John Lennon and Yoko Ono set up housekeeping for an entire month back in August 1972. Haynes and his manager/wife Stefani Scamardo have been ensconced here the past two days – and have made the place their own, creating their own elegant chaos – Chanel make-up sharing counter space with empty Starbucks Frappuccino bottles (which Haynes bolts down with uncanny regularity) and wrappers from half-eaten 24-inch Philly cheesesteaks, lays check-to-jowl with the guitarist’s brimming case of CDs, which he uses to lull himself to sleep on the band’s tour bus.

“I try to get him to clean up,” bemoans Scamardo half-seriously, tossing her magnificent yet strangely aggressive tangle of black curls, giving her husband a bemused look.
“She just never gets that I make order out of chaos. I can’t clean up because it would change the inner dynamic,” jokes the guitarist, who tends to write most of his lyrics in the middle of the night. "I’m usually writing at 4 a.m., too. Everybody else is asleep and I’m half asleep and my brain starts – it’s that in between asleep and awake thing.
“But to continue about Woody, I don’t believe that dream was an isolated circumstance. I believe that not only have I had those kinds of dreams a lot in my life, but I think that people in general have them. In Appalachia a lot of the old folks will tell you that your dreams prepare you for what’s going to happen, especially for the negative things. That if you dream that something was going to happen, and when it finally does happen, you don’t even make the connection but you’re subconsciously more prepared than you would’ve been. There was some weird connection. There was a moment where like, oh, yeah, I knew that. I knew that was going to happen. Dreams are so much heavier than we realize. And I think that we only ever get a glimpse of what they really mean,” says Haynes, his face frozen/caught somewhere between a painful grimace and a lopsided smile, strangely echoing the pained and bittersweet lyrics of “Smile at Half Mast,” the poetic epitaph he composed after Woody perished in that New York hotel room on that hot, muggy August night in 2000.

But you can’t think that a man who titled Gov’t Mule’s latest opus Déjà Voodoo doesn’t have some first-hand experience of knowing “the truth is out there” – or, in Warren’s case, “in there.” As well grounded as the seminal guitarist seems, there is an element of being attracted to the dark side. Haynes got his first stint in the limelight in 1980, at the age of 20, playing guitar with outrageous country maverick artist David Allan Coe, who wrote such outsider classics as “Take This Job and Shove It,” and equally distinguished himself by living in a hearse parked outside of Nashville’s fabled Ryman Auditorium. While Warren never bunked in with Coe, he does admit to having preternatural powers that first emerged in dreams that foretold the arrival of wayward relatives or finding lost objects. But perhaps the most significant manifestation of his special powers appeared at 14, when the young picker penned a song that would strangely predict a key event in his life.

“I wrote this song called ‘Sky Man,’ and it was me singing to Duane Allman. This had to be in 1974 or so – it’s like me singing directly to him. It’s kind of like I’m telling him he’s an inspiration to me in the song – and remember he’s been dead three years by now – but also the song says something about me being there in that scene years later. One of the lines goes, ‘Now your brothers all know me’ or something like that. But it was one of these weird songs that I wrote, never showed anybody, but I think about that now and it’s so strange that I actually predicted what was going to happen to me 15 years later – that I would be a member of the Allman Brothers.”

It was in fact, as members of the Allman Brothers – who have many of their own brushes with the unseen world – that he and Woody had first sewn the seeds that would later germinate into Gov’t Mule in late 1994. The two compatriots decided that they needed more artistic stimulation than the then-creatively inert jamband progenitors could provide. Along with Dickey Betts’ skinbeater, Matt Abts, they formed an outfit specializing in gritty yet artful blues scorchers. The Allmans’ percussionist, Jaimoe, christened them Gov’t Mule. Operating as a side project, the nascent power trio gigged when the Allmans weren’t touring, and recorded three albums before they finally decided to leave the southern rock behemoth in 1997 and pour all their efforts into the Mule.

“When I left the [Allman Brothers] band there was a lot of tension, not a lot of creating going on. There were no plans to do a record, no writing, no rehearsing, and Gov’t Mule was kind of immersed in the opposite of that as far as we were writing, rehearsing, recording, doing all those things,” explains Haynes.

This new outfit was also imbued with a sense of adventure and experimentation but most of all, an artistic impishness. Most people tend to think that the reason they dubbed themselves Gov’t Mule is because of their impressive work ethic, but it’s just not so.

“We usually say that Gov’t Mule means something different to everyone, and leave it at that,” laughs Haynes. “But since you pressed, I guess I’ll tell you. Jaimoe was actually referring to the size of a woman’s ass. But not just anybody’s ass, it was James Brown’s wife’s ass. When Woody and I were still in the Allman Brothers, we had started Gov’t Mule as a side project but we still didn’t have a name for it. The Allman Brothers were headlining this three-day festival in Memphis. We headlined one night and James Brown was headlining the next night. Well, Woody and Jaimoe stayed over to watch James Brown. There’s this part of the show where he was waltzing with this woman who turned out to be his wife. Jaimoe pointed at her ass, and said ‘government mule,’ referring to the size of it. Woody just laughed, and thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. It’s like some sort of Mississippi colloquialism and totally Jaimoe. It just cracked us all up, and we decided to name our band that.”

For years afterwards the band would dissolve into uncontrollable laughter if one of them spotted a woman with rather large hindquarters and even just muttered the words “government mule” under their breath but they had a tacit agreement never to reveal the origins of the name so as not to disrespect Mrs. Brown. But when Adrienne Brown died in a freak accident following cosmetic surgery – rumored to be liposuction on that prodigious backside – the band finally decided to come clean.

“Yeah, we had this real white-bread version of where our name came from,” says Abts. “I guess because we didn’t want to offend James Brown. But after she passed away, we started letting the cat out of the bag. It’s a true story, she died on the operating table. This was something, some kind of cosmetic surgery, and I don’t think she woke up from the anesthesia. Oh, my goodness! I mean just such a bizarre story; she was probably having liposuction on that government mule.”

(Actually, Adrienne Brown collapsed and died at a Beverly Hills, California, clinic, two days after her cosmetic surgery. An autopsy showed she died from a combination of drug use and heart disease – but her memory lives on in Gov’t Mule’s rather strange tribute to her anatomy.)

By 2000, Mule – as they tend to call themselves – had gotten a reputation as an unparalleled touring machine, racking up as many as 250 shows a years and adding two more albums to their discography, including the propitiously titled Life Before Insanity. They were about to enter a studio to record another album when Woody was found dead in his hotel room in New York City on August 26. His death ignited a sense of melancholy and loss that hasn’t entirely dissipated three and a half years later. Abts still refers to Woody in the present tense, while Haynes admits that what the band has been through has allowed more of himself to surface in the lyrics of Gov’t Mule’s songs. He now makes sure that he always speaks what is in his heart – something you feel he thinks he neglected to do when Woody was alive.

“I guess I’ve been more open and vulnerable, because going through what we’ve been through, I’ve stopped sweating the small stuff. It’s only the large stuff that matters. And so I don’t worry about pretense, and I don’t worry about sugarcoating the truth. There was a lot of self-analysis going on, and a lot of guilt, and somehow that made its way into the songs.” Songs like “Bad Man Walking” (co-written with Danny Louis) and “Wine and Blood” bear that out, allowing Haynes to turn himself inside out, and in the case of “Bad Man Walking” to show the maligned effect fame has had on him – a claim that is hard to accept, observing the guitarist among his fans.
“Hey Warren, I took a week off work to see you. I’ll be at your next four shows,” a fortyish Orlando software exec tells Haynes, as he makes his way onto his tour bus parked outside San Francisco’s fabled Fillmore Ballroom. “Ah, thank you for that,” says Warren, all big smiles and bigger vowels, clasping the rather ghoulish-looking black-clad zealot’s hand, before signing a stack of photos thrust at him. A mother with two small boys comes up to Haynes, shyly takes a hold of his arm, and says hello in a hardly audible voice. “Now who do we have here?” asks the musician, stooping down to talk to the two tow-headed boys who clearly don’t have a clue who this large, leonine man is. For all they know, it’s Santa Claus in bright blue, his shortsleeved shirt emblazoned with ringed planets and shooting stars. They hang back quietly watching with big eyes while their mother asks for an autograph.
“Do you remember me from the Warfield, when you were here with the Brothers?” demands a small lank-haired man, stabbing the air agitatedly with a cigarette. “I was the one who got you all that Gatorade.” “I definitely do remember,” says Haynes. And you know for certain he really does.

There are few rock stars that listen more intently to fans, or are as cordial to them. That goes a long way toward explaining why the Mule’s two nights at this historic ballroom are sold out. Not only is Gov’t Mule a formidable band, but the care Haynes puts into his interactions with fans is the same attention he gives to his playing – from the gentle sigh of his guitar on “She Said, She Said” and “I’m So Tired,” both light, wistful renderings of his favorite Beatles songs, to the impish tease of the first strains of the Allmans’ “Mountain Jam,” to the angst of “Game Face,” or the hard-charging encore “I Am a Ram,” his astrological autobiography.

Haynes and Abts toyed with disbanding Gov’t Mule after Woody’s death, and their brief tour opening up for Ben Harper seemed to bear that out – the two of them performed with Woody’s gear set up beside them. “I thought this helped Warren and me a lot,” explained Abts, adjusting his black wool stocking cap over his rather striking platinum hair – an unexpected and strange doppelganger of Iggy Pop – against the chill of the San Francisco night – or maybe even more importantly, the chill of their massive loss.

“We went out and opened Ben Harper’s shows. That was an amazing experience. We actually set up Woody’s amp and the two of us went out and played with Woody’s rig right there. It totally made sense for us, and again, that was part of the whole grieving thing, to get over that. That was in November and Woody died in August; everything was still up in the air. It really wasn’t until we got to San Francisco, at New Year’s, that Warren and I did the same thing; we opened for Phil Lesh. The first week in January we booked some studio time and started the whole Deep End project with the bass players on the West Coast. I was probably a little more positive than Warren was. I think Warren was even more confused, if you can believe that, than I was, about where to go next. But once we started in the studio, on the Deep End project, it felt good. It would’ve been really hard for me to imagine not playing with Warren.”

The bereft duo used the Deep End projects to burn out some of their grief and anger – anger because according to the Mule drummer, Woody was due to enter a rehab facility two weeks before he died, making his untimely death even more tragic. Although Haynes may have been psychically prepared for Woody’s death, Abts wasn’t blindsided by his friend’s tragic end – but not because he had any prescient dreams. The evidence of the bassist’s rather compulsive behavior was right in front of him every night: Friends saw him self-medicate as the trio powered through grueling tours.

“My vision of Woody after all that we went through, is that I visualize him very happy. Warren and I have talked about this recently, because Allen Woody had a great sense of humor. He was a really funny guy. But the last six months of his life were torture. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced going through anything with an individual – he had some drug problems. And it’s really painful and heartbreaking, but in the last couple months of his life we were going to force him into rehab. And he was literally a couple weeks from going into rehab when he died. And it was such a miserable time in our life but you have to go through all the stages of grieving. It’s textbook, you know? But now, Woody pops in my mind and he’s laughing, and his sense of humor is intact, and that’s what I think of, in the present, and that’s a good thing. We miss him dearly. And it’s been three years. It’s hard to believe.”

Going right into the belly of their sadness, Abts and Haynes got in touch with all of Woody’s bass idols and asked each one to take over his bass parts on a Gov’t Mule song, if only to put off making a decision whether they would continue the band or not. The Deep End Vol. I came out in 2001 and became Gov’t Mule’s fourth studio album as well as a deepfelt tribute to their fallen compatriot. They recorded each track with top-tiered bassists that Woody admired, tapping such stellar bassmasters as Cream’s Jack Bruce, Bootsy Collins, the Who’s John Entwistle and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The second installment, The Deep End, Vol. 2, released a year later, had no fewer high-wattage players; in fact most of the musicians, like Les Claypool, Metallica’s Jason Newsted, Yes’ Chris Squire, and Me’Shell NdegeOcello asked to be included in the collection. Finally, in late 2003, Gov’t Mule released The Deepest End, the final chapter in the series, and at the end of what became perhaps the longest running audition for a replacement for Woody, they hired former Black Crowes bassist Andy Hess.

In the meantime, Haynes was playing guitar with Phil Lesh’s Phil and Friends, but he had also been lured back into the Allman Brothers’ circle. He joined the band for their annual stand at New York’s Beacon Theater in 2001, and then later cowrote almost all of their Hittin’ the Note in 2003. “That wouldn’t have happened if Woody was still there,” says Haynes, running a restless hand back and forth over his chin. “Woody and I both – not so much in a spoken way – knew that there was no reason for us to go back because we were placing full-time attention on Gov’t Mule. And there was no reason to look back. But of course all that changed when Woody died.”

For better or for worse, death always seems to be a lightening rod for opportunity for Haynes. At the risk of a reductionist analysis, the guitarist is rather a necromancer of sorts, something he sheepishly admits to. “I had this revelation that I would have never known Allen Woody had the Allman Brothers not continued after losing Berry [Oakley] and Duane [Allman]. Andy’s an amazing player, and we’re lucky to have him. He’s different than Woody but that’s what we have to have. To be in search of somebody like Woody would just be futile, and nobody wants to clone their lost ingredient. I’ve been in so many situations where people have lost members. It’s almost spooky. Being involved with the Allman Brothers, and then being involved with Phil, and The Dead, and Gov’t Mule. It’s like, wow, it’s all a little too close to home.”

That’s why Haynes decided to call last year’s tour Rebirth of the Mule, to exorcize the old ghosts and to explain that the band was an entirely new entity now, what with keyboardist extraordinaire Danny Louis and Andy Hess as fully-tenured members.

“We had played with Andy off and on a few times, and always loved playing with him. He had become unavailable at one point because he was playing with John Scofield, and prior to playing with Scofield he was in The Black Crowes. So that’s somewhat indicative of how versatile he is,” explains Haynes. “He plays jazz, he plays rock and roll, and he plays blues, all these different things very convincingly, which is something Gov’t Mule kind of demands. And Andy is an amazing player. He’s similar to Woody in a lot of ways, but very different in other ways, and he’s a great human being, someone you want to be on the road with.”

This is an important consideration, given how long this band stays out on the road. Perhaps the person who sums it up best is Woody and Warren’s guitar tech, Brian Farmer who has worked with Haynes since 1999. Fans might know him as the Farminator, as he is often called, or as the guitar tech often sporting the “I’m Not Him” T-shirt onstage. Why? Because he uncannily resembles Haynes, down to the grizzled ginger-color hair and the girth of his body. While Farmer insists neither man recognized the resemblance when he interviewed for the job, they’re not above goofing on fans, like last Halloween, when Warren insisted the duo swap identities for Mule’s show in New Orleans. “Warren walked up to me and said, ‘Hey, would you go shave?’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean, shave?’ Because I mean I’ll shave once a month or something, then I let it grow out. I said, ‘Why?’ And he said, ‘Well, I want to dress up like you. Go get me your ‘I’m Not Him’ shirt and your camouflage pants,’ because I used to wear nothing but camouflage pants all the time. I shaved, and put on one of his dress shirts. He walked out onstage wearing my shirt, but nobody really got it until we were standing side by side. It was pretty funny.”

What’s funnier is after working for Gov’t Mule for about six months, Farmer found out that he and Warren share the same birthday – a birthday they also share with Harry Houdini, which might go far to explain the Halloween slight-of-hand. "We went up to Canada and I was looking on the manifest and I notice the date, April the 6th, 1960. I say, to the official, ‘You’ve got the right birthday but the year is wrong, because I was born in 1961.’ So I’m at the border arguing with somebody that they have the wrong birth year for me, and the guys says to me, ‘Well, is your name Warren Haynes?’ I take a look at the list and my name is right above his, April 6th, 1960. But it gets weirder. I look at where it says “place of birth.” I looked at his and it says Asheville, North Carolina, and mine says Nashville, Tennessee. And that was even more bizarre. So it starts getting even weirder. And he’s one of three boys. He’s the youngest of three boys and I’m the middle of three boys. So there’s a lot of weird things there."

But nothing so unsettling as losing Allen Woody. “I guess the biggest difference is that with Allen, it felt like a roller coaster going around a corner, careening up on two wheels,” laughs Farmer. “It was so dangerous. It always felt like at any given moment something was going to just blow apart. So it was a real dangerous thing, when Allen was in the band. It was just so exciting but you never could let your guard down. I was constantly turning, constantly running around, I was constantly checking on both guys. It was very, very adventurous, which it still is. It’s a little bit safer now. And I hate to use the term but for me it’s a little bit more mature. Because you know, I mean you’ve got Danny over there who kind of veers off in leftfield sometimes, and Warren still doing that same thing where Warren still gets dangerous, but it’s just such a thicker sound. Andy’s such a groove machine. It’s so swampy and dirty feeling now. It’s different but it’s strangely very familiar.”

But even though Haynes has replaced his friend in the band, he hasn’t in his heart. “We played together for 12 years, that’s a lifetime in musical years. I still dream about him even now. In fact I just had a dream about him the other day. I dreamt that he was still alive, that we were somewhere in some jam session, and he showed up and wanted to play. Usually if I dream about Woody it’s about him still being alive for some unknown reason. And it’s funny because I talk to Gregg [Allman] about that, and he just says, almost nonchalantly, ‘Well, you’ll always have those.’” Gregg Allman should know.