There's Your Mule

Last night's rock and roll excursion took me and Jodi and my bandmate Tom to The Fillmore in Silver Spring to see Gov't Mule. Tom is a big fan of their leader Warren Haynes. He's a great guitar player and a soulful singer. He's also a busy guy. Gov't Mule is his band, but he's done solo stuff and spent some time in the Allman Brothers Band and played a bunch with the Grateful Dead guys after Jerry Garcia passed on.

The Allman Brothers is a good way to describe Gov't Mule. It's jammy based southern rock. Here's a clip of them at a Sirius studio show doing my favorite track of theirs: "Broke Down On The Brazos."

This track is a guitar players delight. Great riffs and licks. Solos like crazy. I wonder if Warren's guitar tech has to rewire that pickup selector after each show. Warren is a great guitar player. He can be lay down the sleaze but is also a really tasteful player. As demonstrated by this track from his 2011 solo record Man In Motion. This is called "River's Gonna Rise."

Usually I like shorter, hooky kind of songs. But sometimes I like to hear a good jam. I wasn't planning on seeing Gov't Mule until Tom asked if I wanted to go. Since I am pretty much always up for a show, I said hell yeah. I am glad I went because it was a great time. They played over 3 hours, including a great cover of "Working Class Hero" that I am going to want to steal for my band. We choose wisely by getting stage right and had a great view of Warren for the whole show.

Tom read up and found out this is a Gibson reverse Firebird

Warren and Jorgen Carlsson

One of his signature Les Pauls

So a really good time out. I was starving so I recommended we cap off the late evening with a visit to the Tastee Diner in Bethesda. MMMMMM! Nothing like pancakes and eggs and hash browns at 2am!!

Me rocking my new GM tee at band practice today