Warren Haynes: Bringing The Jams To The Symphony & Touring With Slash

Warren Haynes has been associated with three of the most high-powered live rock bands in history – the Allman Brothers Band, Gov’t Mule and various orbits in the Grateful Dead universe. With the Warren Haynes Band, he’s just as capable of blowing the roof off the joint as any of them.

While touring was taken off the agenda during 2020-21, and the glut of tours on the road the next two years didn’t make the life of a road warrior much better, Haynes has taken advantage of the time in the studio, releasing Heavy Load Blues (2021) and Peace… Like A River (2023) with Gov’t Mule and collaborating with others including Dolly Parton, Edgar Winter and Blackberry Smoke on their recent projects.

And now it’s time to hit the road under his own name again. He’s heading to Europe June 14 for a Warren Haynes Band run, returning Stateside for seven shows on Slash’s “S.E.R.P.E.N.T Festival” tour between July 5-14, and from July 19 through Sept. 10, he’s performing a career-spanning show called “Dreams and Songs Symphonic Experience” with local symphony orchestras from each of the cities he and his band will visit.

,The three tours represent three very different stylistic turns for Haynes, but portend a real treat for fans, who will be able to watch one of the world’s guitar masters stretch musical boundaries and provide a few surprises along the way.

Represented by agency WME and managed by Hard Head Productions & Management, Haynes is bringing what he says has been an unusually creative period to the stage in 2024,and plans to follow up with a new studio album and live symphonic record later this year and in 2025, respectively.

Pollstar: You have a European tour, Slash’s “S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival” tour and your own “Dreams and Songs Symphonic Experience” coming up in 2024 after taking a bit of a break.

Warren Haynes: Since I have a new record coming out later in the year, it’s time to get back to work. So starting with the European dates, I think we’re doing two weeks, then we come home and take a short break and then start touring in the States with this new band that I’ve put together for the record and for touring purposes.

We’ve got John Medeski on keyboards, Greg Osby on saxophone. Kevin Scott, who is now the bass player in Gov’t Mule, and Terence Higgins, who was in my last solo band, playing drums. It’s a fantastic band. Rehearsals start in a few days, and this will be like fresh territory.

Tell us what to expect from the Warren Haynes Band this year. Given the different projects, will you be using the same musicians as you would for a more typical tour?

The band that we put together for this tour will also be the band when I do the dates with the symphony. I think we’ll add a couple of background singers for those dates as well, but otherwise it will be the same band that will be on stage, with the symphony, for those shows, which I’m really excited about as well.

I’m planning to release a live record with a symphony next year. That is more of a retrospective of the last 30 years of my life, but kind of interpreted in a symphonic way. So that’s going to be an interesting tour. The “Dreams and Songs Symphonic Experience.”

We’re going to do two sets with the symphony, which will be music from all the different projects and bands I’ve been involved with the past 30 years. There will be some some Allman Brothers songs, some Grateful Dead songs, some Gov’t Mule songs, and songs from my solo projects, some covers that I’ve kind of hand-selected through the years. And it’ll all be uniquely interpreted with the symphony. And then we’ll also do a set with the band without the symphony. So there will be a lot of music in those evenings.

Were you considering players who might be more compatible with a symphonic production, where you’ve got charts, as opposed to a jammier, improvisational situation?

Yeah, there was definitely that consideration in putting this band together. But the consideration was made to pick musicians who would be great in both environments.

John Medeski and Greg Osby were both part of a live recording that I did a few years ago in Asheville, North Carolina – my hometown – with a symphony that’s hopefully coming out next year. That record will be Oteil Burbridge on bass and Jeff Sipe on drums. But, for the purposes of this tour, Kevin Scott and Terence Higgins will be there.

It’s going to be interesting because the symphonic thing is kind of new territory to me. I’ve done it enough before, to where I feel pretty confident. But it’s still not my wheelhouse. After we do the two sets with the symphony, we take a break and the band comes out and plays a set. That’ll be like taking ankle weights off.

As far as improvisation is concerned, we won’t have to think about arrangements and staying true to charts and stuff. When you’re working with a symphony, everything has to be meticulous and understandably so.

And then there’s Slash’s tour, which you’ll be supporting the first seven dates. He has said the blues he’s doing lately is a welcome deviation from what he’s known for, and a chance to stretch. Is it that way for you?

I think that kind of expresses my feeling about it. A lot of what I’m doing right now is stuff that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and I’m finally making time for. And I think that’s something that I’ve always felt was important.

But in a post-pandemic mindset, it’s even more important. Let’s do what is most important to ourselves. And I think the audience understands and appreciates that as well. If you have things on your list that you need to check off, let’s start checking them off now, you know?

Besides both of you being Gibson Les Paul aficionados, how did come to join the “S.E.R.P.E.N.T.” tour with Slash?

We’ve been casual friends for quite a few years. But the last two or three years, we’ve done more together than we ever had. We did that CMT awards show where he and myself and Billy Gibbons (of ZZ Top) were the three guitar players on the Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute after Gary Rossington died. We hung out for those few days and I invited him to be part of my Christmas Jam, which is my charity show in Asheville, North Carolina, that I do every year.

He and Myles Kennedy came up for that. So we’ve been doing more stuff together. He’s a great guy, a great musician and it’s fun hanging and playing together. I think it was just organic. He thought, “Well, I’m doing this blues tour. Maybe Warren would be a cool addition to that.”

And the symphonic tour will be quite a departure from that, when it ramps up after you finish with your dates with Slash. Tell us about that.  

Well, the secret weapon is Rich Daniels, who is the conductor. He travels with us and is part of the show. So we’ll have a common conductor for every show, and he’s able to work with the local symphonies and prepare for what’s going to happen.

It eliminates a lot of rehearsal time that would be necessary if that element were not in place. So Rich is really responsible for cutting through a lot of the red tape and making things work and flow as smoothly as they hopefully do. He’s wonderful.

And he also is an alto sax, jazz player. Sometimes he’ll step off of the podium and come up to the mic and play a saxophone solo and then go back to conducting. And it’s amazing to watch because people don’t expect that. He’s a great musician and a and a fantastic conductor and an important part of the team.

And you’re going to wind it all down with a night at Red Rocks Amphitheater, near Denver. It sounds spectacular.  

Even with Gov’t Mule, we’ve been really stepping up production quite a lot in recent years, and that will carry over to this tour as well. And of course, at Red Rocks, the visual is part of the venue and all the video that’s projected on the rocks themselves. But those shows will be less about the production value and more about the uniqueness of the experience.

Which makes it the perfect place to do it, I think. I love Red Rocks. I’ve played there dozens of times, and it’s one of the most magical venues in the world. It’s almost cliche to say that Red Rocks is a magical venue, but it truly is. And I honestly don’t think I’ve ever had a bad show there. It’s just inspiring. And I’m always glad to be back.