{"id":2442867,"date":"2019-04-11T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-11T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=303959"},"modified":"2019-04-11T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-11T22:00:00","slug":"govt-mule-launching-tour-with-vail-and-aspen-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/govt-mule-launching-tour-with-vail-and-aspen-shows\/","title":{"rendered":"Gov\u2019t Mule launching tour with Vail and Aspen shows"},"content":{"rendered":"
Warren Haynes, singer-guitarist for Gov’t Mule, photographed at an Aspen performance. The band returns for two nights at Belly Up this weekend.<\/strong>
Aspen Times file<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Singer-guitarist Warren Haynes and his band, Gov\u2019t Mule<\/a>, are carrying a legacy of throwback Southern rock, explosive guitar theatrics and folk storytelling.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s now been five years since Haynes played his final note with the Allman Brothers at the band\u2019s farewell show, and it\u2019s two since the death of Gregg Allman and the band\u2019s drummer Butch Trucks. Haynes regularly pays tribute with Allman Brothers\u2019 songs at Mule\u2019s live sets, and in the spirit of their improvisation-heavy rock.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a tough couple years for everyone in our camp and our extended family,\u201d Haynes said recently from his home north of New York City. \u201cThe Allman Brothers\u2019 music will live on without our help or anyone else\u2019s help. \u2026 That music proved itself to be timeless a long time ago and I\u2019m just grateful to have been a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gov\u2019t Mule opens a three-month, 30-plus-concert international tour this weekend in Colorado with a Friday night show at Spring Back to Vail followed by two concerts at Belly Up Aspen on Saturday and Sunday.<\/p>\n

The big spring Mule tour follows a two-night March run of Haynes\u2019 collaboration with the Asheville Symphony Orchestra in his North Carolina hometown, which saw Haynes and a band \u2013 including fellow greats like John Medeski, Oteil Burbidge and Jeff Sipe \u2013 preforming orchestral adaptations of his songs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a wonderful opportunity for me to do something I\u2019ve never done before,\u201d Haynes said. \u201cIt was a cool combination of orchestrated music and improvised music that would weave in and out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tour is also a sort of soft launch for Mule\u2019s 25th anniversary. The band\u2019s first show was on May 12, 1994. The first Mule album was released the following year.<\/p>\n

Mule\u2019s earliest shows included a mountain town run that included Breckenridge and Steamboat Springs.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of our earliest shows were in Colorado,\u201d Haynes said. \u201cSo I\u2019m looking forward to going back and seeing what we played in those early shows and patterning some of the spirit of these shows around what we were doing back then.\u201d<\/p>\n

The band started as a side project for Haynes and the late Allen Woody while they were on a break from the Allman Brothers.<\/p>\n

\u201cA 25th anniversary is not something any of us ever expected,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were going to do one record and one tour and we didn\u2019t have any aspirations beyond that. But it kind of caught fire on its own and turned into a real band. And here we are 25 years later.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haynes has long been a regular in Aspen, playing here with the Allmans, with Mule and with side projects including his acoustic Ashes and Dust Band and the Sco-Mule collaboration with jazz guitarist John Scofield. All of that diverse work \u2013 and out-of-the-box experiments like the symphonies \u2013 inform Gov\u2019t Mule.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing surrounded by so many great musicians, I\u2019m constantly getting inspiration from all directions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Haynes and Gov\u2019t Mule\u2019s repertoire of jam rock with notes of blues and soul and some jazz \u2013 Haynes has long dreamed of doing a jazz-centric instrumental album \u2013 is on full display in the band\u2019s latest record.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very diverse record \u2013 it covers a lot of ground musically,\u201d Haynes said. \u201cAnd it all connected with our audience right away.\u201d<\/p>\n

The quartet went into an Austin recording studio on Election Day 2016 to begin work on its most recent record, \u201cRevolution Come, Revolution Go,\u201d released in 2017. Songs from the album like the come-together anthem \u201cPressure Under Fire\u201d and the cathartic rocker \u201cStone Cold Rage\u201d sound now like responses to the early Trump era. But, Haynes noted, he actually wrote them before the election about the mounting tensions in the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were written about the divide going on in our country that wasn\u2019t going to change, regardless of who won the presidency,\u201d Haynes said. \u201cSo it takes on a little bit of a different meaning after Trump is elected, but it\u2019s still the same message.\u201d<\/p>\n

A handful of songs from the record \u2013 including the title track, \u201cTravelin\u2019 Tune,\u201d and \u201cDark Was the Night\u201d \u2013 have become staples of Mule sets in the last two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur audience is always itching for new material,\u201d \u201cBut this stuff seemed to connect more immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Warren Haynes, singer-guitarist for Gov’t Mule, photographed at an Aspen performance. The band returns for two nights at Belly Up this weekend.Aspen Times file Singer-guitarist Warren Haynes and his band, Gov\u2019t Mule, are carrying a legacy of throwback Southern rock, explosive guitar theatrics and folk storytelling. It\u2019s now been five years since Haynes played his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2442867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-16 15:03:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2442867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442867\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2442867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2442867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2442867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}