Two decades ago, this reporter was among the lucky Billboard staffers to attend an intimate, solo performance in a sort of lunchroom, a kitchen and dining area on the sixth floor at 770 Broadway in Manhattan.
The audience was mesmerized as Warren Haynes, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, sang his own "Beautifully Broken" and "Fallen Down," which he recorded and performs with his band, Gov't Mule, "Soulshine," another of his compositions and a hit for the Allman Brothers Band, with whom he recorded and performed for several years, and a magnificent rendition of "I've Got Dreams to Remember," co-written by Otis Redding and appearing on one of the soul singer's first posthumous releases.
Some years earlier, Gov't Mule -- formed in the mid-1990s initially as a side project for Mr. Haynes, Allen Woody, a bassist who had also joined the reformed Allman Brothers Band, and Matt Abts, a drummer -- had grown in popularity to the point that Mr. Haynes and Mr. Woody, who died in 2000, left the Allmans to devote themselves to their power trio.
With jam bands popular and in demand on the touring circuit, Mr. Haynes, who had also played in the Dickey Betts Band and with David Allan Coe, was one of the busiest musicians anywhere.
That busyness extended to recording, and this reporter was fortunate to spend time with Mr. Haynes in New York studios and attend several of his concerts. In both environments, the name Jimi Hendrix inevitably came to mind. The guitarists are stylistically distinct, but like Hendrix, Mr. Haynes, in the 1990s and aughts, was without peer in the power and intensity he brought to the electric guitar, the creativity he puts into the instrument, and the expressive sounds he coaxes from it.
But in that solo acoustic performance at the Billboard offices, Mr. Haynes's voice was the focus, an equal to the power, ferocity, and tenderness in the extended improvisations of his electric guitar with Gov't Mule. Like the blues deities B.B. King and Buddy Guy, Mr. Haynes is more than an exceptional instrumentalist.
Gov't Mule's 12th studio album, "Peace . . . Like a River," was released in June. Now a quartet, the band headlined dates with the Avett Brothers into June, its "Dark Side of the Mule" tour wrapped on Sunday, and Mule will resume touring next month.
For now, Mr. Haynes has some uncommon downtime, during which he will offer a similarly rare solo performance. It will be his sole solo performance of 2023, in fact, when he takes the stage Friday at 8 p.m. at the Clubhouse in Wainscott.
"I'm going to be out there hanging out for a while," Mr. Haynes said of his upcoming respite on the South Fork. "So it was like, maybe I can do a gig."
He enjoys performing solo, he said. "It's a different kind of challenge: I really tend to focus more on the singer-songwriter part of what I do. I will play a bit of blues, a bit of slide guitar, but for the most part am just singing songs and accompanying myself, so it's more about the song and the vocal than about the guitar, which is a complete departure from what I do normally."
Recalling that long-ago performance at the Billboard offices, he said that most of the songs he played there "could find their way into the set" tomorrow. "One of the cool things about playing solo is I don't really have to have a setlist. I can play anything that pops into my head, because there's no one to confuse."
Not that his bandmates -- Mr. Abts, the other original member of Gov't Mule, with whom he played in the Dickey Betts Band, Danny Louis on keyboards, and Jorgen Carlsson on bass -- have ever sounded confused: Those aforementioned extended improvisations, be they slowly unspooling motifs soaring toward the stratosphere or wildly explosive cacophonies of intensifying ferocity, are the domain of first-rate musicians, able to both listen to and anticipate one another's ideas and direction.
Mr. Haynes, speaking from Chicago earlier this month, was looking forward to this short breather, but allowed that "I'll be nice and bored by the time it's over. It will be nice to have a break, but somewhere during the break I always get antsy," eager to play again.
He and his band are not alone, he said, referring to the long interruption to live music wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic. "The one thing that I think we're all noticing is that everybody's working at the same time, for the first time that I can remember."
"Things are good," he said. "It's been a crazy few years, obviously, for everybody, but it's starting to feel somewhat normal again. We're back out on the road, and really happy to be working."
Tickets for Warren Haynes, Friday at 8 p.m. at the Clubhouse, are $100. Doors open at 7.
