Warren Haynes Unveils ‘Dreams & Songs’ Symphonic Live Album with “Banks of the Deep End”
Warren Haynes and the Asheville Symphony Orchestra, photo by David Simchock
Throughout his four decades at the forefront of Southern rock, Warren Haynes has inexhaustibly innovated on time-honored musical traditions. In a career full of bold moves, largely harmonizing the gritty traditionalism of blues and roots with the improvisatory fluency of jazz and jam, one of his most striking projects has been an embrace of orchestral performance. The singer, songwriter and guitarist’s rare symphonic shows situate his music in arrangements that work productive tensions to reach new heights of grandeur. Now, he’s set that effect to tape with Dreams & Songs, a new symphonic live album.
Haynes’ forthcoming project captures the hometown kickoff of his Dreams & Songs – A Symphonic Journey 2019 live series. Onstage at Asheville, N.C.’s Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, the rock pioneer debuted an ambitious reimagining of his repertoire alongside the 64-piece Asheville Symphony Orchestra and a stacked band of reliable collaborators, with Oteil Burbridge on bass, John Medeski on keys, Jeff Sipe on drums and Greg Osby on saxophone. To preview the collection, he’s shared an expansive rendition of Gov’t Mule’s two-decade live favorite “Banks of the Deep End,” demonstrating the compelling intersection Haynes’ spontaneity and the orchestra’s stirring persistence.
“‘Banks of the Deep End’ is one of the songs that we probably play more than any other,” Haynes said. “Although it doesn’t vary as much on a nightly basis as some of the other tunes, it somehow takes on its own personality just based on the song itself and the lyric and uniqueness of the chord structure and the melody. Playing it with a symphony emphasizes all the dramatic and dynamic changes that the song presents, and it’s wonderful hearing it in that light.”
Haynes announced Dreams & Songs just before he took the stage at New Orleans’ Orpheum Theater to revive the Dreams & Songs Experience last night. Alongside The Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra and his Warren Haynes Band, the frontman worked through three sets of his own originals and favorites from the catalogs of The Allman Brothers Band, the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia and Gov’t Mule. Find the evening’s full setlist in the social post below.
More information on Dreams and Songs will arrive soon. Listen to “Banks of the Deep End” here, and watch the official live video below.
