Warren Haynes - Million Voices Whisper

Todd Beebe
Apr 16
15 min read

Warren Haynes musician holding a Gibson Guitar wearing a black suit and black shirt - no tie. Yellow text reading Warren Haynes and red type reading Million Voices Whisper

Warren Haynes is a true modern day music legend. From his humble beginnings with country artist, David Allan Coe, Warren went on to play in The Dickey Betts Band. When the Allman Brothers Band reformed to celebrate their 20th anniversary in 1989, Betts asked Haynes to join him in the Allmans as the second guitar player. That led to a 25-year run for Warren and some of the most memorable music of our time. In 1994 Warren, along with Allman Brothers bassist Allen Woody and drummer Matt Abts, formed the power trio Gov't Mule. Woody passed away in 2000, but Abts and Haynes have kept the Mule torch burning strong for over 30 years now. Warren recently released his solo album Million Voices Whisper, which may be his finest work to date. The release finds Haynes trading guitar licks with his old Allman Brothers band mate Derek Trucks and collaborating with artists Jamey Johnson and Lukas Nelson. It's all there: incredible playing, singing and songwriting, all delivered in a package that can only be described as "Warren Haynes." Considering the amazing career and the success he has had, it's inspiring to see how humble and down to earth he is. A gentleman in every sense of the word. I had the pleasure of speaking with Warren recently, all about the 30-year anniversary of Gov't Mule, his incredible new album Million Voices Whisper, his time working with Dickey Betts, and a reflection on an incredible career that's still going strong in 2025.

Todd Beebe: Let's go way back to when you were a kid. What was the first musical thing you remember that caught your ear and you were thinking "wow, I really love that!"

Warren Haynes: The two memories that stand out for me: one was Sunday morning. I must have been about 6 years old or something like that, in my parents car, hearing black gospel music on the radio and it just... something changed. It just made the hair on my arm stand up and made my whole body feel different. And I can still get a glimpse, visually, of that moment in my mind. And the other one was similar: in my parents car hearing The Sound of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel. And again I was probably around 6 or 7, or however old I was. And just, something about the music of that song. I was too young to understand how heavy the lyric was but maybe that played into it as well. But something about that music just really moved me and those are the two things that I can remember that were like my early music memories.

TB: Do you recall the first time you ever heard classic blues as opposed to, say, hearing it through Cream or Led Zeppelin or Fleetwood Mac? Do you recall hearing any of the older artists like Son House or Muddy Waters or Howlin' Wolf?

WH: Well, I remember hearing B.B. King long before I had even picked up guitar. I had started singing earlier. I started singing when I was around eight or nine and I was mostly listening to soul music. The Four Tops, The Temptations, Sam and Dave, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett. At that time I hadn't really acquired this interest in guitar. But I remember hearing B.B. King and just loving his voice, and then a few years later when I started hearing guitar music, it dawned on me "Oh wow, he's also playing that great guitar! It's the same person doing both things!" And that was a revelation for me that you could do both of those things!

TB: How old were you when you got your first guitar and what kind was it?

WH: Well let's see. My oldest brother had an acoustic guitar when I was 11 and I played it more than he did. So when I turned 12 my dad bought me an electric guitar and it was a Norma. A Norma guitar and a Norma amp. One was $49 and one was $59 at the local hardware store.

TB: Wow! And I'm assuming you don't have that anymore?

WH: No, I wish I did, but I don't!

TB: While we're on the subject of first guitars, what was Warren Haynes' first concert that he ever saw?

WH: The first concert that I saw was the Edgar Winter Group when I was 12. The instrumental Frankenstein was a hit on the radio at that time and I had the single. I went to see The Edgar Winter Group and the opening act was The Marshall Tucker Band and nobody had heard of them because they had just released their first record. That was my first actual concert.

TB: Oh wow! So was that show with Ronnie Montrose on guitar? I know he played on that song.

WH: Yeah it was with Ronnie Montrose! And I was able to tell him that later when we played together, that he was the first show that I ever saw, and Edgar Winter as well. When I worked on his tribute to Johnny Winter record, that was the first time that Edgar and I had played together and I told him that story as well!

TB: Wow! Yeah I love Ronnie! Well Matt (Abts- drummer for Gov't Mule) played with Ronnie for awhile right?

WH: Yes! And we played in LA one time and Matt and Ronnie had been talking and he invited Ronnie to come and sit in with us which was cool!

Warren Haynes in sparkly black pants, black jacket, black shirt, holding a red Gibson guitar standing next to a Gibson amp

TB: Okay, so let's talk about your signature guitars that Gibson has put out. I actually play one of your signature Les Pauls and it's one of my favorite guitars. It's just beautiful! Gibson has another Les Paul model that's about to be released that's got P-90s in it that's your new signature model. When is that going to be available to the public?

WH: Anytime now I would say! They're releasing articles about it and stuff and I've been playing one on stage. There's also a three pickup P-90 non-reverse Firebird coming out as well.

TB: Oh wow, that's great! Okay, so have you had any issues controlling the notorious P-90 hum that players have with those pickups, particularly in a live setting? (Note: Pickups are used in guitars to "pick up" the signal of the guitar's string and send it to the amplifier. Popular in the early 1950's, P-90's are "single coil" and notorious for having a loud, continuous hum that bothers many players. In 1955, Seth Lover made a pickup for Gibson to deal with this problem. Using two coils, the hum is eliminated, hence "bucking the hum", which led to them being called "Humbucking pickups.")

WH: Well they've done a pretty good job with the hum cancellation. They still sound like P-90s, but the hum for the most part is gone. You know, they just have a different sound! The bass pickup when you play loud will squeal on you, you know? But I love that sound! So I'm really enjoying kind of experimenting and kind of delving into that because I've been a humbucker guy for so long. But every time I play a guitar with P-90s I always go "Wow, that sounds great!"

TB: You have a real 1959 Gibson Les Paul, which many players consider to be the holy grail. Are there any good stories behind that one or how you found it, or how it found you I should say?!

WH: I got it from my friend Ronny Proler who had owned it for a long time and had always maintained that he thought that I was the one that should own that guitar. So it took years, but eventually that wound up happening and it's a beautiful instrument! I played it on a lot of the final Allman Brothers shows in New York and stuff and they just have a thing that can't be replicated.

TB: Yeah, the vintage stuff is just incredible! It has so much history that goes along with it. But that being said, I'm sure you agree with me that the Gibson Custom Shop does a heck of a job of replicating this stuff!

WH: Yeah! And you know my signature model guitars sound fantastic! I'm more familiar with them and I'm able to kind of maneuver them even more so than the original '59. So I don't usually take the vintage ones out on the road very much. If I'm close to home or in the studio I'll use it. But most of the time on stage I'm playing my signature model guitars.

TB: Yeah, I guess we all think Joe Bonamassa's a little crazy for taking his stuff out on the road! I know we've talked about some of this stuff before, but I just want to get a lot of this on record for the interview. What slides are you currently using in 2025?

WH: I'm using a Dunlop slide. We paint the inside of them. So they have this strange appearance 'cause they all look different. But also the paint on the inside makes it stick to your finger a little bit more. So it kind of serves two purposes.

TB: I want to talk a bit about you playing in standard tuning with slide so much. I've heard you say in the past, that kind of came about while working with Dickey (Betts), because he would go right into the next song and you didn't necessarily have a chance to grab another guitar than was in say, open E or a tuning for slide?

WH: Well I think it started before that too. I like the idea of not having to switch guitars to play slide. I like the idea of just having the thought of "oh maybe I'll play slide on this song!" And maybe it occurs to you in the middle of the song or something like that. So I focused on teaching myself how to play slide in standard tuning a long time ago. But when I joined Dickey's band I played a lot more slide than I ever had. So that kind of threw me into the fire a little bit!

TB: I've spoken to you before about a common trait you and I share, and that's the fact that if you grab a guitar and it's just not doing it for you, you won't bother tinkering with it, changing pickups and capacitors, etc. You'll just grab a different guitar. I'm the same way. Has that changed at all over the years?

WH: No, it's still the same. I really don't know that much about working on guitars or amps and stuff. I wish I did but it's just never been something that I was obsessed with. I tend to gravitate towards something that already sounds good, you know?

TB: You performed at the In Memory Of Dickey Betts memorial concert at the Macon City Auditorium on February 28th of 2025. Obviously you had a long-standing relationship with Dickey, working with him in the Allman Brothers and even in his solo band before that. Can you speak a little bit about the legacy of Dickey Betts and what it means to you?

Warren Haynes in a brown suede jacket, black shirt and blue jeans holding a yellow/orange sun burst Gibson guitar

WH: Well you know Dickey, as a guitar player and also as a songwriter and singer, just had his own style. And as a guitar player, he created something that people recognize instantly as being him. And that's the ultimate compliment for any musician I think. For me personally, I was a huge fan before we met and I think we met in 1981. I started playing with Dickey somewhere around 1986, and in 1989 he invited me to be the other guitar player in the Allman Brothers. And that led to me being in the Allman Brothers for 25 years and opened every door imaginable. And so I owe Dickey the biggest opportunity of my career.

TB: You have The Brothers shows coming up at Madison Square Garden April 15th and 16th. That's just incredible! Is this going to be a continuing thing that we're going to see happen on a regular basis? I know we would all love that!

WH: Well we did one show 5 years ago.

TB: Right!

WH: That came about by Jaimoe (Allman Brothers drummer) reaching out and saying "hey we should play together again!" Now we're doing two shows for the same reason. That first one was the 50th anniversary and this one will be the 55th anniversary of the Allman Brothers. At the moment, that's all we're planning on and very much looking forward to it!

TB: Let's talk about your new album Million Voices Whisper. It's just fantastic, I can't stop listening to it! Go Down Swinging almost sounds like a lost Otis Redding/Stax track! I absolutely love it! What was the writing process like?

WH: Thank you! Yeah, obviously Otis is one of my all-time favorites! All the Stax stuff I was a huge fan of! I think the new record, from an influence standpoint, it's really coming from a soul music direction. Obviously there's a lot of blues influence as well, and mixing those two things together. But also it brings in the kind of singer-songwriter side of me to the equation. I'm kind of just stirring all those things up together with a wonderful band that we put together for the album. You know, it just kind of grew organically. It turned into its own sound and I love that!

TB: So when you sit down to write a song, do you have a guaranteed system that always works for you? Does the music come first or the lyrics or both? Or does it come a number of different ways?

WH: It depends, you know. Usually the up-tempo songs start with some sort of guitar riff or chord progression or some motif that comes around, and then I add lyrics later. But usually the mid-tempo or ballads start with a lyrical idea. As Gregg Allman used to say: "there's as many ways to write a song as there are songs." Meaning that, it's different every time.

TB: The new album has such a positive vibe running throughout the entire package. Everyone interprets a song differently I suppose, but on something like This Life As We Know It, whenever I listen to it, I'm hearing a celebration of coming out the other side of the covid years. Is that what you were going for when you wrote that?

WH: Yeah, I mean that's exactly what it was! I was in Montauk, Long Island on vacation. It was the 4th of July and there was a full moon and there were fireworks and we're looking out over the ocean. And it was right at that time when people were just venturing out again and starting to travel and live their lives and get back to normal. And I just was inspired and wrote the lyrics first. And when I got home, a week later or something, I added the music. But yeah, it was just a very positive moment based on the challenging couple of years that came before it, you know?

TB: What a beautiful tune Warren! So Jamey Johnson and Lukas Nelson show up on Day Of Reckoning which is obviously one of the highlights on the album. You worked with both of them on The Last Waltz tour. Did you make plans to record together at that time? How did that come to be?

WH: Well as you mentioned, we sang together on The Last Waltz tour, and we always loved the way our three voices blended together. So I wanted to capture that on this record. So when we were writing together, Lukas wound up contributing to that song, Day Of Reckoning, and Jamie co-wrote Go Down Swinging. I thought it would be really great to get their voices on the record. And of course Lukas played some fantastic guitar as well! He's doing a lot of that great guitar work on Day Of Reckoning.

TB: Real, Real Love is a Gregg Allman tune that you finished up. The story reminds me of a song you wrote years ago, Old Before My Time. I remember hearing that you saw lyrics that Gregg had written that were lying on his piano or something along those lines, and you finished it up?

WH: Yeah when we wrote Old Before My Time I was staying at his house for a few days and we were just doing a bunch of songwriting. I tended to stay up later than Gregg and he tended to get up earlier than me. So one morning he had written the opening lines to that tune on a napkin and it was just sitting at his piano. After he went to bed on one of the nights we were working I saw it and got inspired and sat and wrote music for it and wrote a bunch of lyrics to it. The next day we were supposed to go to the airport and I had a chance to show it to him right before we left. We didn't actually get together and finish it till later on. But yeah, that was another interesting story. With Real Real Love, he had started that song a long time ago. I don't even know how far back it goes. But after he passed, Bert Holman, who was the manager for the Allman Brothers, sent me an email with a photocopied lyric of that song in Gregg's handwriting and he asked me "do you remember this song?" And I was like "yes, I do remember him showing it to me! But we never really did work on it. It never got finished." So I got inspired to finish it. I called Derek (Trucks) and said "hey, we should record this tune!" That kind of led to he and I talking about getting together to write some music together and in some ways it was kind of the impetus for this album.

TB: Smooth Sailing is on the bonus disc, and I love that one! You co-wrote this with the legendary Booker T. Jones. Booker's such a great guy and obviously an iconic musician. How did you end up hooking up with Booker to write that one?

WH: Well I think that happened when we were in LA with The Allman Brothers, receiving the lifetime achievement Grammy. It was during that time period. And Booker and I decided to get together and write something for the first time. I went to his apartment there and we spent a few hours there and that song came pretty quickly. I'm really happy with the way it turned out! The reason I didn't include it on the standard CD, and it's only on the bonus CD, is I think the songs on the bonus CD sound different than the songs on the regular CD. But I'm really happy with the way that it came out! I have really fond memories of writing that song together and of course I've been listening to Booker my whole life. But we've known each other for quite a while and played together a few times here and there and it's always an honor.

A mule head with an American flag in its mouth. Red type face at the top that reads Gov't Mule. Blue green hues permeate the image with a heavy handed vignette around the outside.

TB: So Gov't Mule is celebrating 30 years! Wow!

WH: Yeah I know, it's crazy!

TB: Is there a lot of stuff in the archives from the Allen Woody years that we'll see released to celebrate?

WH: Yeah! We're working on that right now! There's some archival stuff that's going to be coming out. There's a bunch of unreleased studio tracks with Woody and the original power trio. There's also some live recordings that are fantastic, so I'm excited! I can't believe it's been 30 years! We remastered the first Gov't Mule record, and there's an entire bonus disc of unreleased stuff that's really fantastic!

TB: Oh wow that's incredible! I can't wait to hear it! I've also heard you have an album coming out that you recorded with the Asheville Symphony Orchestra?

WH: Yes! We recorded this record with the Asheville Symphony Orchestra that Don Was produced. It's a live record. It's the symphony along with the band we put together which was Oteil Burbridge (bass), John Madeski (keys), Jeff Sipe (drums) and Greg Osby (saxophone). Bob Clearmountain mixed the live recordings and it sounds fantastic! I'm hoping that's going to come out very soon as well. We delayed it when covid hit because we didn't want it to get lost during the whole covid shuffle. Because it's like a once-in-a-lifetime retrospective. It's a double CD that has live versions with the symphony of songs from my solo records, Gov't Mule songs, Allman Brothers songs, Grateful Dead songs. It just kind of spans my career, but done in a really interesting way with the Symphony and this great band. So I'm excited for people to hear that as well! It's different than people might expect it to be. It has a lot more improvisation and captures the spirit of what we do more than people might expect for a record with a symphony!

TB: That's great! How is your son Hudson doing? Is he getting into guitar at all? What kind of music does he listen to?

WH: He's playing drums! He's been playing drums since he was like six or seven. He picks up guitar a little bit. You know, he plays a little bit of guitar but he's more into the drums. He's into all sorts of music! His newest phase, he's into Frank Zappa, which I think is really cool!

TB: Oh yeah, it is for sure! Any stories or memories with Buddy Guy? I actually saw Gov't Mule play at the original Buddy Guy's Legends back in 1995!

WH: Yeah! I remember that! It was really fun! Tell Buddy "Hi" from me! When Gov't Mule recorded Snatch It Back And Hold It on our Heavy Load Blues record, we recorded it live obviously, which we always do, but I played a three pickup Gibson SG based on the fact that Buddy was holding one on the cover of that record!

TB: Oh really? That's fantastic!

WH: Yeah! It wasn't mine. It belonged to Allen Woody and I borrowed it from his collection. But it was exactly like one I had when I was a teenager that I traded.

TB: That's great!. All right, 100 years from now, how does Warren Haynes want to be remembered?

WH: Oh! That's a great question! I guess for all the different stuff that I am lucky enough to have had the opportunity to do: different types of music, different bands. As a songwriter and guitar player, singer, I've been very lucky to have had the opportunities that I've had. It extends all over the place you know?