Gov’t Mule’s “Peace … Like a River” is out June 16 via Fantasy Records. The band performs at Wichita’s Temple Live on Sunday, June 18.
The record follows the band’s first-ever blues album, the Grammy-nominated “Heavy Load Blues,” but was recorded at the same time. Working in two adjacent studios, the group set up two distinctly different groups of recording gear for the distinctly different songs that they’d prepared for each release.
Working during daylight hours, the band tracked the material that would become “Peace … Like a River,” then returned in the evening to cut “Heavy Load Blues.” In both cases, the results were records that touched on familiar sounds for Gov’t Mule, filled with what the band Grand Funk Railroad called “Good singin’ and good playin’.”
In the case of “Peace … Like a River,” the group leaned into some of its influences, whether Pink Floyd, gospel and soul music, and Led Zeppelin’s particular brand of heavy rock for an LP that stands poised to become one of the most revered in the band’s extensive discography.
Co-founding member Warren Haynes (guitar/vocals) says that the band hopes to perform most of the record live through the next year, though fans should — as always — expect the unexpected as Gov’t Mule performs a different setlist each night, including past favorites and plenty of surprises.
Joining the band on the record are guests such as Ivan Neville, Ruthie Foster, Billy Bob Thornton and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons. Haynes is no stranger to guest appearances and noted that he appears on Dolly Parton’s upcoming LP “Rockstar” (her first rock album) on a tune that also features Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler.
“It was an honor to be part of that,” he notes.
Haynes recently spoke with KMUW during a break from the band’s busy touring schedule.
When you were making the last record, “Heavy Load Blues,” you were also working on this one in an adjacent room with different gear, different material and different hours.
Different equipment, different everything. There was virtually no overlap between the two projects; maybe a couple of guitars that wound up on part of each one, but, for the most part, completely different equipment, amps, guitars, keyboards, drum kit, so we could go back and forth on a moment’s notice. Although we did kind of come up with a routine that worked: We were set up in the big room for all the songs for Peace … Like A River and we were set up in the small room, which we dubbed “The Blues Room” for Heavy Load Blues. We would go in around noon every day and work on songs for Peace … Like a River until about 9 p.m. Then take a break, maybe have a bite to eat, then go next door to the Blues Room and play blues for the rest of the night. That was our schedule for several weeks, and it worked out great.
It seems to me that Gov’t Mule is a band that likes to give itself a challenge, and it seems like this was both rewarding and challenging at the same time.
We knew going in that it was going to be a challenge, but we were up to it because everybody was going crazy from being in lockdown. We still couldn’t travel; we still couldn’t tour or perform on stage. It just seemed like the best way to be creative and utilize our energy and frustration.
You spend so much time on the road, that time off had to be especially frustrating for you as a group.
Yeah, and it had been quite a while since we had recorded at that point. It was frustrating but I think it was frustrating for everybody. The music business was definitely hit hard by the whole COVID thing, but I think the whole world was, too.
It seems like some of the cultural/world events happening in 2020 and 2021 found their way into the lyrics on the album.
There are certain songs, like “Long Time Coming,” which reflects that, but a lot of the songs deal with personal journeys and relationships and the struggle and quest for inner peace. Each [song] has its own thought process, I guess. They were all written during the same time period, so they’re all connected. They weren’t intended to be connected, I just think we realized that there was some sort of theme there and utilized that.
I also wanted to make sure that there was a sense of humor on the record, so there are songs like “Shake Our Way Out” and some songs from the bonus EP like “Stumblebum” and “Under the Tent” and there’s a tune on the main LP called “Head Full of Thunder” that are just feel-good rock ‘n’ roll tunes with kind of humorous lyrics. They do still connect to the time and place.
Since you mentioned “Stumblebum,” I wanted to talk about that a little bit. It reminds me of something that Jimmy Page would do, which is come up with these otherworldly guitar tones.
Thank you.
I definitely feel that on that tune.
It’s very Zeppelin-inspired in a lot of ways. I think the riff and the drum pattern and just the overall vibe is taking a cue from Led Zeppelin, which obviously is a big influence. We’ve never wanted to be extremely obvious about any of our influences but they’re there. We wear them on our sleeves, and I think this album, in general, some of the influences are more obvious or maybe we took them a little further than we have in the past. That’s one of the things that I acknowledge about this record as well.
There’s a lot of water imagery on the record — “Just Across the River,” “After the Storm,” things like that. Why was water on your mind so much?
I didn’t realize that until we were in the studio, and I was compiling all the lyrics and starting to think about a possible title. I realized that the word peace appears many, many times throughout the lyrics and the word river appears many, many times throughout the lyrics. There’s two songs with peace in the title, two songs with river in the title. That was something that led to the title itself that I wasn’t really aware of. I guess because all the songs were written in a similar time frame, I guess the mindset behind those lyrics is the same one regardless of what topic I’m writing about. I don’t know. That’s something that caught me by surprise, too.
I wanted to ask you about “Just Across the River.” Amazing vocal performances on that one from you and from Celisse.
It’s very much influenced by Black gospel music, which is the first sound that I ever fell in love with as a kid. When I was probably six or seven-years-old, I remember hearing Black gospel music on the radio in North Carolina, where I grew up, and it causing the hair on my arms to stand up. I remember acknowledging this feeling of, “Why is this happening? Why is this music making me feel different?” The next thing for me was probably James Brown that made an impression like that. I grew up really loving soul music and, of course, soul music came from gospel music, blues came from gospel music, and rock ‘n’ roll music came from that lineage as well.
I’d never written a song that was quite as much in the gospel direction as “Just Across the River,” even though it’s not a religious song per se; it just has a lot of that influence. But we’ve covered songs like “John the Revelator” in the past, which is an old, old gospel blues tune. After writing it, I thought it would be nice to have a female voice in counter to mine. I had been hearing Celisse -- I had seen some of her videos -- [but] we had not met yet at that point. But then we worked together on this benefit in New York City called Love Rocks. She’s just a wonderful artist; she’s a great guitar player as well as singer, so I thought it would be cool to include her, and she really did a fabulous job.
“Your Only Friend” seems to be a song about dealing with someone who has addiction issues.
It wouldn’t be limited to addiction issues but testing a friendship for the zillionth time based on issues that keep reoccurring. I’ve been around that scenario many, many times. It’s one of the most emotional songs on the record for me, and I love the way that it turned out. But it took a lot to get me to that point to feel comfortable singing it. The first few times we did it, it was hard to make it through it.
Do you see that as something that will make its way into the live set? Sometimes I talk to singers, and they say, “It takes so much for me to summon up what I need for a song like that that I don’t think I can do it.”
I would love to do it on stage. I really love the song and I enjoy performing it, but I know exactly what you’re referring to and it might wind up being one of those tunes. There are certain songs of ours — and a lot of times they’re the more slow, intimate songs like “Towering Fool” or “My Separate Reality” — that wind up being that category of song where we don’t play it very often. I hope that’s not the case with “Your Only Friend.”
After my dad died, I hadn’t sung “Soulshine,” which is, in some ways, about my dad, [for a long time] after he passed. The first time was a little emotional, but I’m really glad that I was able to do it, and it made me have a new appreciation for the song.
