Live shows push Mule to new levels

You never know what you’re going to get with Gov’t Mule.

The group was started by guitarist and vocalist Warren Haynes, previously a touring musician with David Allan Coe and the Allman Brothers Band, in 1994, playing a rambling blend of Southern rock and blues that immediately struck a chord with jam band aficionados.

The band plays live all the time, but you’ll never hear the same set list twice, and even individual songs get different treatments every time they’re played: You can see for yourself on their exhaustive online database MuleTracks, where you can download MP3s of every live performance they’ve given in the past decade.

“We’re a band that is driven by live performance, and we thrive on the road,” Haynes said. “We really enjoy making studio recordings, and we’re getting better at it with each one, but we still prefer the live setting as far as feeling completely comfortable to express ourselves.”

On each of their 10 studio albums, Gov’t Mule – or the Mule, as they’re known by their dedicated fan base – tries to capture the immediacy and unpredictability of their live shows.

Now in their 20th year, band members decided to do something special for their most recent studio recording, a double album titled “Shout!” It follows an unusual format: The first disc features 11 new Mule songs, while the second disc features those same songs (in a slightly different order) as reinterpreted by various guest vocalists – Elvis Costello, Ben Harper, Dave Matthews, Dr. John and others.

“To have singers of that stature only sing a verse and a chorus might not be the right thing to do,” Haynes said. “I thought, ‘Why don’t we have them sing the entire song?’ … I made a list of each song and what singer other than myself I’d like to hear sing it.”

But Haynes says he encouraged those artists to repurpose the song however they saw fit, to find a way to connect to the song personally instead of copying it note for note. Some of those interpretations stick fairly close to the originals; others, including Grace Potter’s take on “Whisper in Your Soul,” approach the material from unexpected angles.

“In each case, I was pleasantly surprised with the interpretations,” Haynes said. “I knew they were all going to be great and they were all going to be very different, but until you hear what that is, you don’t really know what to expect. I was really knocked out with what everyone did.

“Having the two versions gives you more of an insight into the songs themselves, but you also get insight into what a singer does when they interpret a song.”

The approach to “Shout!” seems perfect for a band like Gov’t Mule, since Haynes and his bandmates – bassist Jorgen Carlsson, keyboard player Danny Louis and drummer Matt Abts – are always trying to stay one step ahead of audience expectations. They’re not the kind of band that will rehearse a song until it’s exactly right; they’d rather hop onstage and feel their way through it.

“It’s a little scary by mainstream terms, to play a song you haven’t played in a month or even a year without a great deal of rehearsal,” Haynes said. “But we also like the rawness and the looseness that comes along with taking a fresh approach to something and maybe not remembering the way you did it the last time. Once you adopt that mindset, it kind of changes everything.”