 Well it's an honor to have my guest on today I cannot tell you how big of a fan I have been of your plane over the years my man and I can't thank you enough for doing the show Mr. Warren Haynes is here today how are you buddy? Good man how are you doing? I'm great man I gotta tell you I just watched this of course you have the Christmas Jam volume 20 coming out and you're about to do the 30th anniversary of it but I just watched this Dave growl thing and wow man. Yeah that's the only time he performed that live that creation of his called play which is like a 26 minute instrumental he recorded it in the studio by himself and then for Christmas Jam he brought all his friends and all these great amazing musicians from LA that came in and played it live for the first and only time and it's fantastic. Oh dude it's like no quarter made stranglehold. Pretty much yeah I couldn't believe it all I kept thinking was I look I love I love fruit fighters okay but I wish that he would do more of that stuff because it was just insane. Yeah yeah me too I love that that crazy instrumental stuff and all the odd time signatures and it's really cool. It really is because you know I grew up on AC DC Ted Nugent kiss and then I start getting into the almond brothers you know and and then around I think around 90 to 3 whenever the horde starts happening the horde tour and jam really comes out into full force you know it really opened my mind and also growing up around Primus in the Bay area to you know alternative music and then I start diving into Miles Davis I start getting into you know Zappa and all this outside the box music and it's really all I really listen to these days you know. That's great yeah I had two older brothers that turned me on to a bunch of outside of the box stuff early on so I heard Zappa when I was really young and my oldest brother was into Miles and Coltrane and all that stuff but and like most guitar players I went through the whole fusion era where we were listening to you know Mahavish New Orchestra and Return to Forever and Weather Report and all that kind of stuff and some of it holds up better than others these days but like Zappa I think is timeless you know I don't think you can improve on that. Yeah Zappa the dead almond brothers you know when you really get into those because you know you there was that era of jam where it was just people just thought you just jammed and they forgot about songwriting you know right and that's the key thing if you're doing whipping post without a jam it's still a crushing song you know. Yeah the short version is great without all the jam and but I think what Governor Mule tries to do which is taking a cue from the almond brothers and from the dead and from from other bands like Zappa and stuff is find that balance between songs and some special jam chemistry because one without the other is cool but if you have both and you can strike a cool balance of the two it's much more dimensional. Well that's what I always loved about you because first of all you are an incredible songwriter and you've been writing songs you know all the way back to when Garth Berks did one of your songs so songwriting has always been like one of your huge strengths along with of course their guitar playing and your singing so it's like it's so important to have a great song at the end of the day that's really why we're there you know. Yeah I love sitting and hearing someone play a great song on acoustic guitar as much as I love hearing some 20-minute jam that goes off the cliff you know. I grew up listening to singer songwriters obviously starting with Bob Dylan but you know even the more 70s stuff like James Taylor and Jackson Brown and all that kind of stuff when I was 14 years old I went through this phase where I studied all that stuff and it's so meaningful to hear somebody perform a song either stripped down or by themselves where you get the song in its entirety but in a whole another way you know. Oh god that's singer songwriter you know what was going on at the troubadour in LA and that whole scene Linda Ronstadt it's just mind-boggling and then even when you get into the 90s and you start getting into the old country of like Jeff Tweedy and Sunville and really bringing that stuff around yeah it's like my favorite for sure you know. I got the bridge on on on Sirius XM I'll listen to the bridge all day long at that station they just play singer songwriter stuff man. That's great yeah and I think any jam band and in order to have some sort of staying power you have to study the whole singer songwriter thing and and include it in your list of influences otherwise you know jamming is is great but it can't maintain the attention span and of of your audience if that's all you do you know. Can I ask you early on how you got involved as being a session guy because of course you're doing sessions you're singing and stuff and that's how eventually you start playing with Dickie and the almond brothers but how did that happen it was that something that you knew a producer that was bringing you in and like Asheville or were you doing that in Asheville how did you get into the session work. Well I grew up in Asheville which is five hours from Asheville I knew I didn't at that time I didn't want to go to New York or LA so Nashville was the only viable choice that was close by I had when I was 20 years old I had taken a gig with David Allen Coe which was my first gig on that sort of level and it was through him that I met Dickie Betts and Greg Almond which would eventually lead me to joining the almond brothers but joining his band I was able to play on his records which were produced by Billy Sherrill who did all the great George Jones and Tammy Wynette and Charlie Rich and eventually Merle Haggard but Billy Sherrill also did those Ray Charles country records which were fantastic so I found myself with this open door you know it wasn't a shoe in it wasn't like I could just start at the top I had to go through all the ropes like anybody else but I was young enough to be willing to kind of put up a fight so I decided to move to Nashville when I was 22 or 23 and try to do session work there the more I did it the better I got at it I actually got more work as a background singer than I did as a guitar player I think a lot of the producers thought my guitar playing was a little too much maybe maybe not Nashville prime time at that at that point but as I worked more and more I started realizing that I didn't really I didn't really like it it wasn't for me I didn't want to be a chameleon I wanted to be able to express myself in more of a personal way and then I had gotten a call around 1986 from Dickey Betts saying that he wanted to put a band together and wanted me to be part of it and wanted us to write some songs together so it all kind of just exploded from there you know I worked with Dickey for two or three years and then in 1989 they called me and said we're putting the All in Brothers back together and we want you to join and so at that point the whole world changed for me you know yeah and it kind of changed for me too because then you know there's that dead period of no no Allman Brothers and I was playing music at the time and then the Allman Brothers come back and I go see you guys at the shoreline and it's just game changer because I'm like oh my god here's a band I loved growing up and they you know they were gone because members were gone and passed away and everything and and also the music world had changed and a lot of those bands like Dylan and Allman Brothers started playing county fairs and stuff and it just dissipated and then you come in with Woody and it completely explodes for years and becomes massive and incredible and I call it the Soul Shine era you know the second set all that live at the Beacon and Stuff era and it's just mind-boggling how incredible that band was with you two in there because it was a huge choose to fill and I think it was just as good. Well it was from the very beginning the chemistry was really strong with the new members and with the original members at that point being really on top of their game. They were all getting along together they were all playing and singing great so from the very first rehearsals we did in January of 89 it just sounded fantastic and all of us were kind of scratching on our heads going wow this is kind of too good to be true because the previous incarnation of the Allman Brothers was nine years earlier and they were trying to adapt to the 80s and trying to write songs for commercial radio and trying to update their sound and it just wasn't working so as Dicky Betts told me they just kind of backed out of the music business for a while and then I think seeing the success of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Robert Cray on one side and the Grateful Dead doing huge arenas and stadiums on the other side at some point around 88-89 they started thinking hey somewhere in between those two things is us maybe there is a chance for us to kind of be ourselves again. Oh man it was game changer absolutely up until that point I don't really know your slide history but I think you're one of the one of my favorite slide players of course a lot of people talk about Derek and and of course the old days of Dwayne and stuff but the thing I loved about your slide playing is it felt less erratic to me and it was more slippery you know it has slippery beautiful feel and I you know I just love your slide playing were you playing slide way before that or did you start to have to learn it because the Allman Brothers were happening? Well I started playing slide when I was a teenager but I didn't focus on it as much you know I was pretty good at it but but not great and then when I joined David Allen Co's band he had a pedal steel player so I didn't wind up playing much slide if any in that band and then when I moved to Nashville I started focusing on it a lot more when Dickie saw me playing in a blues band in Nashville I was playing quite a bit of slide guitar and he was kind of looking for that so when he hired me to be in his band it was the perfect opportunity and reason for me to really focus on my slide playing so somewhere around 86, 87, 88 I started really buckling down and concentrating on slide guitar and realizing that I had kind of a different approach to it and a unique voice on it so playing with him kind of forced me into becoming a much better slide player. I'll tell you what it's fantastic I it's very pleasing whenever I hear you play slide because like I said it's just haunting and slippery a lot of the slide players are a little too erratic for me you know that you know and I like just slide not in like the term slide playing you know. Yeah you know one of the things that was different about my approach was that I was playing in standard tuning I do play in open D and open G and other tunings as well but my preference is standard and I think it allows me to be a little more melodic. I copped a lot of stuff from people that were playing in open tunings and adapted it to standard tuning like Duane Allman played mostly in open E the only two songs I believe that he played in standard tuning were Dreams and Mountain Jam but I also listened to people like Lowell George and David Lindley and Rye Cooter and most of those guys always played in open tuning but there were people like Rick Vito that played in standard tuning I just did it out of convenience so I wouldn't have to switch guitars if I felt like playing slide you know but it opened up a lot of doors for me to to kind of be able to think outside the box is not really the right expression but when you're playing in a standard tuning you're forced to think in that tuning whereas when I was playing in standard tuning I could just kind of play whatever was in my head which was a little more melodic. Yeah I got a question that I've always wanted to know um I went to the Fillmore Allman Brothers show and it was I guess it was going to be the celebration of like a 40 year anniversary of live at the Fillmore East and I got to the show and I was I remember I was at Soundcheck hanging out because I used to play the Fillmore a lot so I was in Soundcheck and no Dickie Dickie was supposed to be there and then Derek showed up can you shine some light on what happened at that show do you remember that show all of a sudden there was just no Dickie he wasn't in the band anymore yeah um that was a tribute to Bill Graham exactly and uh that was at a time period when the original members were not getting along so great and we were in the middle of a tour and one day Dickie was there and the next day he was gone um and we only had a few shows left so we finished uh those handful of shows and and then went home we wound up eventually doing six weeks without Dickie we did three weeks with uh David Grissom playing guitar and three weeks with Jack Pearson playing guitar uh but the show you're referring to I think Dwayne Bess was also there Dickie's son uh and Steve Kimock came and joined us for the first time uh and we just made the best of it you know it was the first time we played without Dickie but uh it was a very memorable night and everybody rose to the occasion and I have good memories of the music that was made that night it was great it was great it was just always a long question with me like wow what happened you know almond brother somebody just told me almond brothers you know yeah yeah man it's it's amazing uh I love your singing and it's it's it's so wild to see you and Greg sing back and forth on like soul shine and stuff yeah you played with him for years did you ever see Greg have a bad vocal night because I've never seen it you know he just was one of those guys that on his worst night still sounded great uh you know I've obviously seen nights when his voice wasn't in as good a shape uh as others but he was one of my favorite singers my entire life once I started listening to really good music his voice resonated with me and I learned a lot from him uh before we ever met and we met I think in 1980 or 81 uh you know he just had this uh honesty about his singing he didn't over sing but everything he's saying sounded like the right thing and so for me standing next to him every night I learned so much that you can't learn from the records you know and I think something about him singing his songs as well it takes on this honesty that is so hard for people to obtain but for him it just kind of came natural you know he he listened to all the great soul singers and blue singers growing up but he also loved folk music and loved Tim Buckley he was a huge fan of Tim Buckley and and you know Greg we talked about Jackson Brown earlier Greg and Jackson Brown were roommates in the 60s before the almond brothers they lived together in LA when when Greg was out there and uh so he's got that whole folky singer songwriter side to him as well that that I just love when he's singing uh softer and more melancholy it's uh just beautiful yeah I mean the first time I heard Stormy Monday that was I was like who's this and then I was you know that was it his voice was uh a big influence on me uh it's just mind boggling I was listening to uh the EP what's the EP time of the signs yes and your voice on times of the sign kind of sounds a little bit up in that Ian Gillan uh range now a little different than classic Warren Haynes to me I was getting a little Ian Gillan flavor I have I haven't thought of it that way but I sure was a fan growing up you know uh I love those early deep purple records and that's my favorite uh incarnation of deep purple is that the one they call mock two uh I love that that version of the band and uh I actually sat in with him a few times in the past few years and and it was cool like playing alongside of Ian Gillan singing because he was at that time was still singing great the band still sounded fantastic um my voice in in recent years is in better shape and I it has more clarity than it had at certain times in in my career when I was beating it up a little too much yeah I hear you man lack of sleep a little couple all-nighters next thing you know you're you know we used to do like 13 shows in a row without the day off and and stuff and you know and back in the old days when you're singing and not carrying your own pa or monitors you get one bad night with a bad monitor system and your voice is shot for weeks you know and uh so I through the years learned how to make take better care of my voice and getting a lot of the clarity back which allows me to to kind of uh sing hard but not always have to be as gravely you know I think most singers have two different voices there you know their soft voice and their loud voice and for years my soft voice had was just beat up so much that I wasn't able to utilize it as much as I am now were you doing a lot of like retraining it with like vocal warm-ups and warm downs and all that stuff yeah to a certain extent I still don't do as much as I probably should but I find that the best thing for me is just singing every day as long as I'm singing all the time my voice stays in pretty good shape it's when we take time off that it starts to kind of I don't know if relax is the term but you know your voice is like a muscle like any muscle you keep it in shape it'll it'll work for you but I've never been great at the warm-up warm down but I'm much better at it than I used to be for sure I gotta tell you I love government meal and I went to I flew out to see you guys at a voodoo fest years ago and uh tape schools on base I believe was on that night and it like those records from the first one dose all the way out are just unreal records man and and the live band is insane I have not seen you guys in years because I've been touring myself but can you run me down who is on the base now and now your four piece correct yes we became a four piece after alvin woody passed away in 2000 and we did the the deep end volume one and the deep end volume two recordings with uh all woody's favorite bass players jack bruce and chris squire and and john entwistle and larry graham and and bootsy collins and les claypool and all these people that that he loved um rocko prestia but we eventually at that time added andy hasson bass and andy was there for several years and then he left the band and then 15 years ago we hired yorgan carlson who just left the band recently and we hired this guy kevin scott who's been with us about six or seven months now and is just fantastic he's doing a terrific job um government mule was a an interesting band in the way that the bass plays such a huge role in the music it's such a big part of the overall overall personality and kevin scott has got personality for days in his plan and he uh loves alvin woody's playing but also loves andy hasson and yorgan carlson's playing but he's very much his own guy and so at this point we've we've hit him with about 250 songs he's had to learn uh and he's just doing an incredible job let me ask you uh you you did some time in the dead and there's been multiple guitar players that have kind of rolled into that position kimok uh you know uh we're in a course recently john mayer from dead and co for the last 13 years or so but how did you approach the gerry spot um as far as guitar playing did you look at it as like i'm going to give it my own thing or were you mixing in his you know i mean i heard you play in the dead but i'm just wondering when you're first getting ready to start it what was your approach to that you know do you go out you get the auto wall and you're ready to go you know well my situation was a little different in the way that my association with those guys started with phil lesh uh i got a call from phil lesh in the late nineties saying that he had put together a list of musicians quite a long list of musicians that he wanted to play with and that i was one of those people and would i be interested in coming to california doing a few rehearsals and a few shows and i said absolutely i would love to um and when i got there uh the thing that he told all of us was i don't want anybody to play or sing like gerry i want everybody to bring their own personality and i don't want to hear any of the signature stuff that that he played i want you to uh reinterpret and so not just myself but uh all the musicians at that time he was giving the same kind of parameters to because he wanted to hear other musicians interpreting that music in a different way and i think he was spot on he was exactly right um so i played on and off with phil for years and years and years which eventually led to me uh partnering with the dead uh two different times i guess 93 and 99 or 2003 and 2009 sorry um dated myself there um so when i got the invitation to join the dead it was a little different because i felt like well now i should probably pay more attention to some of the classic gerry stuff that i had when i was working in phil's band because that audience kind of expects some of that you know and whereas my approach the whole time i worked with phil was to do what he was asking and just bring my personality to the table and of course the guys in the dead uh were giving me all the the freedom in the world they're saying you do it however you want you interpret it your own way you can pay as much tribute to gerry as you you want or don't want from moment to moment which is really the same freedom that the almond brothers gave me when i joined the almond brothers in 89 you know i remember those guys saying you know we hired you to be you what however much duane almond influence you choose to showcase is your own decision and we're not going to ask you to play it more like duane or less like duane and that's that makes you feel at ease and i think you could be more creative when when you feel that kind of freedom yeah absolutely because then you can get some of the flavor but you can be yourself you know yeah and i could i could decide song by song or night by night how much i wanted to go down that road you know there's certain songs like when i was playing slide on on statesboro blues you kind of need to play it like duane almond because that's what that is that's what that song is you know but then when we would play dreams or in memory of elizabeth reed or whiffing post sometimes the jams would go off into completely different directions and for me that was a lot of fun to to kind of do it my own way you know do you feel that this i feel that they uh the jam scene and excuse me horde and all that kind of saved some bands like the black crows you know the black crows kind of morphed into a jam band and were able to survive all this time and i think that if they didn't get into that kind of scene they might have been left as maybe quote unquote an 80s band you know yeah it's hard to say because you know the black crows started i guess uh late 80s and a lot of the bands from that time period kind of fell by the wayside uh i think they kind of always had one foot in the rock and roll world and one foot in the jam band world and government mule was is similar you know uh we're a little heavier than most jam bands uh we are definitely a rock and roll band but in order to qualify as a jam band the main criteria are that you play a different set list every night and that your your music is kind of steeped in improvisation as long as you qualify in both of those ways i think the jam band scene is open to do so many different genres and styles of music and i've been encouraging for decades now for it to be even more open minded because i think the jam band scene uh initially could have included more jazz and blues and blue grass and and uh soul music and reggae music and now all those things are kind of starting to happen yeah i think if Curtis Mayfield was around right now he'd be in the jam band scene you know yes that's great i would love that same here same here and look at uh same way as government mule kind of has one foot in primus same thing you know yeah they had a foot in there and it kind of uh you know kept him going all through those those 90s can you give me any uh funny memories of that woodstock 99 uh yeah yeah you know 94 right 94 yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah we um well the craziest thing was that when we finally got the call for the almond brothers to be part of it uh we had already booked that night in Boston at what they call great woods which was an outdoor amphitheater and the show was sold out in advance and there was no way we could cancel it so the only way we could do woodstock was if we went on really early in the day and played our set and then immediately flew to Boston and played another show and that's the only time uh in my mind the that the almond brothers ever did that so we played a 90 minute set uh around 12 30 in the afternoon at woodstock and then immediately got on a plane and flew to Boston and played a three hour show and we were all joking around that the the Boston show was going to suffer we were all going to be tired but it turned out to be fantastic uh as did the woodstock show um but we were in and out so quickly like we were probably there like six or eight hours you know uh I went to bed on the bus and woke up and we were backstage at woodstock and I don't even know how we got there uh but Alan Woody was a big Primus fan and he was telling me we got to watch Primus got to watch Primus you know and we weren't able to to watch their show uh in its entirety so we were watching it on on the tv as we were pulling away in the in the bus but he's the one that that turned me on to Primus which was somewhere around that time I don't know 93 or 94 uh when when Woody turned me on to Primus and then I eventually became friends with Les and we've collaborated together and and uh I love what he does oh god he's a genius man wow that's that's stuff he's doing with uh Sean Lennon right now it's just mind boggling yeah I love that stuff we all went to see him uh in Austin Texas on a on a night off and it was fantastic of course Les and I played together many many times and he's one of the people that helped keep government viewing live too you know and when we couldn't decide if we were going to keep going and we couldn't think of like who the new bass player would be it was people like Les and Dave Schools and Mike Gordon and George Porter and uh Jason Newstead and that that came out Jack Cassidy uh Alfonzo Johnson all these people came out and did shows with us at a time when when we needed help you know Jason Newstead great great bass player man we had Newstead and George Porter and Greg Arzab uh all on the road at the same time they were all on the bus with us we would have three bass players because with with us doing a different set list every night we didn't want to go backwards and we didn't want anybody to have to learn like a hundred songs so we would kind of go through the songs and divide up okay Porter is going to play these Newstead is going to play those Arzab is going to play those and over the course of a three hour show there would be three bass players that's great man if you're if you're in if you're doing that gig you're like yeah i'm up for like five songs and then i can go hit the bus yeah yeah it was funny but it was also cool everybody hanging together on the bus because everybody was so supportive and they're all such great musicians that they were really just keeping government mule afloat at a time when when we were struggling you know losing Alan Woody was a huge blow uh for us and and i know that speaking for myself personally i wasn't sure we could do it i i wasn't sure that that i wanted to do it but we got so much encouragement that we thought well we'll see if we can reinvent you know and start a new chapter i'm glad you did i'm glad you did man because it's yeah me too man yeah the mule is just it's just gold to me i i was really listening to it last night and uh you know i was just like this stuff is incredible because you know you'll listen to something for like two three years and then you'll move on and listen to other stuff and then you go back and you listen to all the music that you've made and it's just like this guy is just mind boggling to me man you know it's it's so refreshing every time i hear it it's it's great well thanks you know we we're just kind of getting away with murder and doing music the way we want to do it and somehow we've been able to build an audience of like-minded folks that that dig where we're coming from and you know we started with the whole concept of just being a project so we were only going to make one record do one two or then kind of go back to our lives but it it became more than that so as we started thinking we'll make a second record or a third record or a fifth record or a tenth record we wanted each of them to be different from the one before it because we're all influenced by so many different types of music it would be a shame to not bring all that music to the forefront given the opportunity. Let's talk a little bit about equipment i did watch your rig rundown because i've always loved your tone i've always loved the one the the one last paul that you played all through almond brothers i i didn't really know but i guess it was like hanging on the wall at gibson with no pickups and all that but it's amazing to think about uh how great that guitar was right because that was an era where gibson was still you know they had the custom shop and stuff but it was still a little wonky here and there and now they're just screaming with like the murphy lab and all of that um i loved your les paul now i guess it's a 58 reissue uh my signature model is uh is a 58 body and a 59 neck and it has burst buck or one in the the rhythm position and burst buck or two in the treble position and it has this uh this buffer preamp with a switch that you can turn on and off that enables you to get all the treble back when you turn the guitar down really low on the volume knob and so that offers a lot of tone variations beyond what would be in a normal les paul and i've gotten so used to uh playing those guitars that uh it they're the most comfortable for me to play i know how to navigate those guitars um more than anything and we're also working on a signature firebird and maybe another signature les paul um you know i have a great relationship with gibson and they they allow me to kind of give a lot of input and explore different options and you know i've been a gibson guy my entire life let me ask you something so you're saying 58 body but 59 neck isn't a 58 59 60 the same body and just the neck shapes are different of all three you know that's that's a good question because i'm based in it on what i remember brian farmer my old guitar tech that passed away that's the way he used to describe it because he helped me with a lot of the the design work and stuff i don't know if there's a difference in the curve or not that that's that's something that i could easily be corrected on but that's what farmer used to always say it's a 58 body and 59 neck uh but i could be so wrong that it's the exact same thing well i know the neck shapes are all totally different like 58 always liked it was kind of baseball bat then 59 was kind of medium and then 60 was too slim for me that's the jimmy page you know joe wall's type of stuff to slim down neck but yeah that that's my my feeling as well the 60 necks are too skinny for me and i think it even changes the sound but some people love that like joe bonham also really loves the 1960 less fall and i think there are some early 60s that still have the the big 59 neck correct correct let me ask you um when you when you're i saw the signature model and it looked like it was a plane top was that a choice of yours because yours is heavily flamed yeah we we talked about doing a plane top in the beginning and then possibly doing a flametop uh later on um it was just something that they got batted around that uh seemed to be the preference you know uh i've really become fond of the plane tops uh although my my real 59 is a beautiful burst you know oh wow you got a real 59 when did you get that uh i guess i got it in the 90s uh no uh in the 2000s i've had it i've i've had it about god it's probably 15 years now i i'm having trouble with decades today for some reason i get it i get it dude i'm only 57 and i can't even remember what somebody goes what happened in 96 i have no idea 1896 where did you get it uh where yeah uh from my friend uh ronnie proler in texas he's a collector and it's just a gorgeous instrument it was named maddie before i got it so i could still call it maddie uh i'm not the one that named it but it's it's beautiful um farmer used to say that it has the best bass pickup that he had had heard and i'm i'm you know i'm sure that's an exaggeration but it it's such a beautiful sounding instrument and i played it a lot uh in the final beacon shows oh and i played it a lot in the studio but i i'm just i don't want to bring it too far from home you know oh i get it i get it were you looking for one for years and then this happened to be the right one or did you finally have the money like okay i'm gonna buy one what was that story that was kind of all the above you know when i joined the almond brothers in 89 uh i remember somebody had a 59 that they wanted to sell me for $15,000 and i was like i will never pay $15,000 for a guitar are you crazy and now you look back and go wow i could have gotten a 59 less fall for $15,000 um you know my whole life was like that well i'd love to have one but it sure is a lot of money and you know ronnie's been such a great friend through the years and helped me uh uh find the right one and uh it just just kind of all worked out and i looked at a lot i i played probably 30 or 40 of them you know uh i'm really happy with the one that i wound up with but i don't see myself as one of those people that'll continue down that that road you know not not bon amassa style i went to city just had it's just basically like a music store in 1965 they're going to yeah you know i i sat in with joe recently at red rocks and uh played one of his 59s or i think it was a 58 uh you know that he had on the road with him and and you know they're all fantastic but i just don't trust myself to carry them you know yeah what about amps i know you were a ds guy for a while and then soldano and now you're using those homestates i believe um yeah homestead homestead is a continuation of ds right uh these are ds uh passed away years ago and he had made me a bunch of one-of-a-kind amps that i really loved and this guy uh peter McMahon that was working with Caesar took over the company and and continued it as ds for a while but eventually started uh homestead which i i really like a lot uh i'm still using my modified soldanos which mike soldano modified for me years ago um they sound completely different than a stock slo 100 um so it's kind of like the soldano is my marshal and in the homestead is my fender uh in a way but they they both have their own unique voices but i've been recording with a lot of old marshals and stuff recently too i might even start using one of them live because the soldano is uh more of the sound on the first three records uh i used it almost exclusively back then but since then i've used more and more different amps and so i want to do more experimenting for the the live future so to speak and what era uh marshals is like jmp's plexies 50 watts 100 watts yeah i have a good 50 watt a good 100 watt there's uh they vary from 69 to like 73 and uh i have this 100 watt that's so damn loud that i got from gory johnson of big sugar it's the loudest 100 watt i've ever heard when we went in the studio i had to take two of the tubes out and make it like the 50 watt version just because i didn't couldn't stand in the same room with it but it sounds incredible you know and for the last uh for government mule record for peace like a river i used some of my old marshals and i used uh uh a vox ac 30 and and then but for the blues record when we did heavy load blues it was all small vintage amps you know like a supro and a gibson skylark and a gibson vanguard uh i also have this little alessandro recording app that i use all the time sometimes i use it by itself but sometimes i blend it in with like the 100 water 50 watt uh combo you know like a head cabinet combination and it just has this beautiful mid-range that that fills out the picture in a way that i really love where you ever uh did you ever come across the dumble have you ever owned a dumble uh he recently passed away but uh i know that uh quite a few people have him john mayer uh bon amassa a lot of guys out there playing dumble you know i actually never not only never owned one i've never plugged into one i've had a lot of opportunities and thought about it uh i guess i just didn't want to fall in love with a two hundred thousand dollar amp but um you know i spoke to him uh when i was living in nashville in the 80s we had a phone conversation and it was kind of like the conversation we just had about 59 less paul's backed in he was like well i can build you on for i think it was 15 grand or something and uh there's an 18 month waiting list if you want it in six months it's another 10 grand or whatever it was and i was just like wow this is crazy um but now you look at those things and it's like buying a maserati or something you know yeah yeah yeah speaking of that are you a car guy not not really my wife is more into cars than i am uh i i'm one of those people that believe it or not would prefer to be the passenger what about any other collection stuff like watches or anything other than guitars and amps not really uh you know i i have uh a few pieces of old sports memorabilia that i've accrued through the years but not because i'm a fanatic just because the situation came up and and it was available you know but uh guitars i even never thought of myself as a guitar collector i used to make fun of alan woody because uh he had he had over 500 instruments between basses and guitars and mandolins and all that stuff um and i used to give him so much shit about it and now i've probably got somewhere between 250 and 300 so it i feel like such a hypocrite i'll tell you what man i did watch the rig rundown and uh i love the firebirds dead bird uh was cool but the one with the p90s that guitar sounded fantastic i'm a huge p90 guy so when you plug that one in i was like oh my god the tone of that was fantastic well that's one of the things we're working on now is a signature firebird with three p90s and i have one that that gibson gave me years ago that was like a prototype and back then i i was scared of the third pickup because it was always in the way uh but once you get used to that the the tone possibilities is so crazy and the p90s sound great there's something about that combination of firebird with p90s that is really unique and special sound yeah i love it the mahogany body with the p90s to me you know leslie west uh with the you know the juniors and and santana woodstock that sound is just so great man yeah it's it's fierce ferocious uh it's we're also working on a p90 less paul wow time except that i love uh that you play the regular firebird and not the reverse firebird right that was that's the bodies you play or is it the the other way around i can't ever remember well i think the traditional firebird is reverse and the the non-traditional is non-reverse so it is very confusing but i have i have some of both you know i think the non-reverses stay in tune better and and in some ways play better uh i have a 64 uh traditional firebird with the the two pickups it was uh is that the what is that firebird are you firebird three i have a 64 that sounds fantastic but i don't i don't carry it on the road and i also have this purple custom paint job uh that alan woody talked me into putting banjo tuners real banjo tuners on and it does make it sound better there's something about it that affects the sound uh it's it's hard to keep in tune or hard to get in in tune uh but it's worth it once you do get in tune it's just it sounds really great that's the guitar that i played on like endless parade on on high and mighty uh farmer dubbed it barney he called it barney because it was purple but that's a beautiful sounding guitar as well um firebirds for me were the the opportunity to get a little closer to a fender but still have the gibson meet right did you ever play fender because i'm such a huge blackguard you know esquire fan and those are just like just dirty blue color rock machines did you never do not get into that uh i did in the 80s i had this great red stratocaster that i played as my main guitar for several years and it got stolen in new york city in uh the early 90s and i never replaced it and uh it was kind of coinciding with the time period when i had just joined the almond brothers in 89 and i was playing less paul more and more and the strat less and less but there are a lot of uh a lot of video footage from the early from 89 and early 90s where i even was playing that strat in the almond brothers which was uh me trying to bring a different sound into that band uh at the time and i i missed that guitar but i never had replaced it i love hearing other people play fenders but i'm not as good at it uh i guess because i you know i grew up on gibson's yeah the strat especially man it's hard to hard to sound good on i mean it exposes mistakes you know it's it's the yeah but you know i guess if that's what you're used to uh people that that grew up playing stratocasters aren't as comfortable on a less paul or an sg or something yeah that's true now let's talk a little bit about the christmas jam um you've got the uh it's coming up what on the december eighth or ninth that that's coming up december ninth uh in ashville north carolina which is my my hometown and and you started this 30 years ago right started it in 1988 in a little club that it was has been gone for decades it started as a local event with all local musicians in 1988 i had not even joined the almond brothers yet um we started it uh as a reason and an opportunity for the local musicians that were all friends to get together and jam and at the only time of the year that we were all home because everybody traveled uh and so the during the christmas holidays we would all be home so we would get together and and jam and you know raise a few thousand dollars and pick a charity and donate the money uh the first year uh was cool so we did it the second year was even better third year even better by the time we got to like the fourth year we were turning people away we had to move to a theater after three years in the theater we were turning people away so we had to move to the arena and so it's been in the arena now close to 30 years uh uh it was one of those things i never could have predicted would have kept going but uh it's you just turned into this beautiful event where people come and play music for all the right reasons it reminds us all why we started playing music in the first place yeah and you have this uh 20th uh volume 20 coming out i believe it's going to be on vinyl but gold dust woman is out right now with jim james and you and uh god i love jim james that sounds amazing man when you guys are singing and just that perfect perfect tune to hear you like really shine on it's a great cut well it's it's uh myself and grace potter and jim james just the three of us on the little side stage uh playing acoustically during one of the set breaks we have this little side stage set up where anybody that wants to can can go you're playing to the same audience it's all part of the the one big stage but uh while bands are changing over people go over there and do little impromptu performances uh dave grole did one as well he did ever long and he and i did times like these together on the little side stage bona masa and myself did uh if heartaches were nickels on that little stage but most of the stuff is from the main stage um but there's so much impromptu music that happens and that's one of the things that i love about it yeah it's beautiful it's a beautiful thing man and like i said uh i can't wait for people to see this dave grole thing play because it it really blew my mind and uh it was shot well too man is the whole concert coming out on video yeah it's not the entire thing but it's two blue rays worth of uh footage and three cds the show is usually like seven or eight hours long so we can't put the whole thing out but there's hours and hours of fantastic stuff that that's available and all the the proceeds go to to charity you know from the the dvds and the videos and the the cds and the vinyl yeah there is vinyl um and we're gradually trying to you know that we've done so many of them we're trying to go through and pick the best stuff and release as many as possible but that's the one that's that's coming out now and it's really fantastic uh jim james grace potter uh mike gordon um eric church uh of course government mule and we we did some stuff where dave grole sat in with government mule uh we did a cool version of rockin in the free world that segues into machine gun and back into rockin in the free world um and i encourage music lovers to check it out because the music's fantastic 100 100 a couple more questions then we'll get out here um i just recently did a couple venues in new york that you've done over the years one beacon and the other one madison square garden uh tell me what the beacon means to you and then tell me about that 50 year anniversary of the almonds at the garden well the beacon uh is my home away from home that's the place i've played more than any other venue uh and maybe i think i might be the person that's played there more than anybody else i've played there close to 300 times wow and you know we did we used to do with the almond brothers we used to play every year we started out the first year that we did it was four shows and i think the most that the band ever did was 19 um but government mule does multiple shows there i did a lot of stuff with uh with phil lash there and i've sat in with the black crows and widespread panic and and so many people there through the years uh wonderful venue i really love it uh the 50th at the garden with the brothers was fantastic on so many levels uh the music was great i was so proud of us the uh the lineup that we put together for that show was incredible and everybody just did an amazing job it was chuckleville on piano uh Reese Winans on Oregon um myself and Derek trucks and otil burbridge and mark kenyon is from the the last edition of the almond brothers and Derek's brother dewayne uh playing drums along with jamo um it was amazing but it was also surreal because it was the night before covid took over the world right a lot of people got sick that night and up until the up until show time we weren't sure if we were going to even play because that was the day when everything was going crazy and they kept saying we might have to cancel the show we wound up doing the show it was fantastic and then the next day everything went away yeah i did a bond scott tribute that night i do it once a year with all these uh celebrities and comedians and big musicians same night that's why i didn't go to the almond brothers thing because i was like oh damn i got a gig and it was the same thing people were calling me and text didn't go and hey is it going to be canceled because uh and i was like you know i'd been around i worked for the stones when sarah's hit and that was like two weeks so i was like no it's not going to be canceled we'll be fine and same thing the next day the whole the whole city shut down it was over yeah it was crazy um and a lot of people we knew that we're all sitting in a similar area uh got sick that night which was just it was just surreal thinking back on it i'm glad we recorded it and filmed it and were able to release it because that's that's a one-time thing you know yeah absolutely well hey man congrats on everything and uh like i said it's been an honor to talk to you i've been a fan for a zillion years and i absolutely love your playing and you're singing and you're songwriting and uh you know i'm hoping to see you in february when you're out here i'm a comedian so i'm on the road a lot these days i used to play music but now i'm a comedian but man i hope i can see in february before we go do you watch comedy are you into comedy huge i'm a huge comedy guy really who you well i mean it's it's cliche at this point but i've been a bill hicks fan since like i don't even know how how far to go back you know uh and i go back to george carlin richard prior you know when i was a kid i had class clown on vinyl uh we had all the the richard prior stuff on cassette tape you know i've been a comedy fan all my life all right where do you live nashville no i live in westchester new york oh wow okay yeah well you know maybe one day uh we'll see each other and uh you can come see some comedy or hopefully i'll get to see you in february and that sounds great i would love that it'd be great man thank you so much and uh get my info from uh your publicist and uh stay in touch please man great to talk and congrats on this uh this christmas jam i can't wait for people to see this two dvd set because it is fire thanks man thank you buddy all right i'll see you