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.”

Good for the Soul
[ By a Thread ] also has an old school sound but we went for a completely different sound for this record. Even though we worked in the same studio with the same team, we had different equipment across the board – different microphone selections, different approaches in general to what we wanted the music to sound like. From a sonic perspective, we did a lot of experimenting in trying to make the music sound like the era it was representing. I’m not a fan of records that somewhat evoke old music stylistically but have modern production value. I tend to gravitate more toward the old sound.

We recorded it on analog tape and we recorded at 15 ips, which is very old school, using an old Neve console, old tube microphones, old tube compressors and EQs and very little modern anything. From a guitar and amp standpoint, I used different gear than I’ve used recently with the Mule. I used some of my own – my signature model Les Paul – and I used one of Gordie’s. But, for the most part, it was vintage instruments. I have a friend, Charlie Daughtry from Austin, [who] loaned me some [Gibson] ES-335s and ES-345s from ‘58 to ‘61.

Express Yourself
There is a big difference in the lyrical approach between Gov’t Mule and this record. The lyrics help me decide which camp a certain song belongs [in]. Lyrically, Gov’t Mule songs tend to be more character-driven and more about stories. This record is different that way because it is more in tune with the soul influence with more one-on-one relationship songs.

From Dizzie Gillespie to Root Boy Slim
Holloway did some great stuff. There’s a track called “Sick of My Shadow,” where Holloway’s playing tenor sax through a wah wah, a la Eddie Harris or Miles Davis’ On the Corner – there are a handful of examples you can point to that had that wah wah saxophone sound.

I think it was Gordie’s idea at about 3 o’clock in the morning and Ron spoke up and said, "Oh, that’d be fun. I used to do that back when I was in Root Boy Slim. In the ‘70s, he played in Root Boy Slim and the Sex Change Band. They were produced by Gary Katz who produced Steely Dan, and Holloway was in that band and said it brought back memories of using that sound way back then. The fact that Holloway played with Root Boy Slim and Dizzie Gillespie is pretty indicative of his musical character. [ Laughs. ]

By a Thread
It is nice to have project in mind that you’re writing for so you can reflect on that. In general, when I’m writing, I tend to just write for the song – see where it winds up and then decide later where it belongs. If there’s an upcoming Gov’t Mule record, I’ll tend to write more with Gov’t Mule in mind, and in the case of my solo record, I’ll tend to write more with that direction in mind. But especially since we were recording those records back to back, I was writing a lot of material simultaneously and placing songs in different piles, and some of the songs bounced back and forth. There’s a song called “Hattiesburg Hustle” on the new record that could have been interpreted by Gov’t Mule, and the Gov’t Mule song “Frozen Fear” on the new Mule record could have been on this record.

Soulshine
This is a record I’ve waited my whole life to make because soul music was my first love. Before I ever heard rock and roll music, I was listening to soul music. Before I picked up a guitar, I was singing – and everything I was singing was soul music. For me, I think it’s the right time to showcase this side of me. Obviously anybody who’s followed my career has seen this side of me before – but not to this extent.