This Life as We Know It: Warren Haynes Completes Gregg Allman Tune, Reconnects with Derek Trucks on ‘Million Voices Whisper’

“During lockdown, most of what I was writing made sense for Gov’t Mule and that wound up being two albums. But I also wrote a couple songs that were leaning toward a Muscle Shoals direction, kind of country-soul, somewhere in between Man in Motion and Ashes & Dust,” Warren Haynes says of the material that prompted his new record, Million Voices Whisper. “Then the more I continued the writing process over the last couple of years, the more it seemed to go toward the direction that it wound up in. It’s still very soul-music influenced but it has a lot of different influences mixed in as well—some jazzy stuff, some funk stuff—with a common direction that’s a little different than anything I’ve done in the past. Of course, bringing in Terence Higgins, John Medeski and Kevin Scott instantly put a new twist on everything, too.”

As Haynes suggests, the new album manifests the alchemy of his touring group, which features the Dirty Dozen Brass Band’s drummer, Medeski Martin & Wood’s keyboard player and the bass player from Gov’t Mule. Million Voices Whisper also draws on Haynes’ longstanding musical relationship with fellow Allman Brothers Band guitarist Derek Trucks, who appears on three of the songs, two of which they wrote together. (Their ABB lineage is further represented through an unfinished Gregg Allman tune that Haynes completed for the record.) In addition, Haynes enlisted his Last Waltz tourmates Lukas Nelson and Jamey Johnson to co-write a song apiece, and they both perform on the album.

When considering the record as whole, Haynes observes, “I feel like these songs were written with a different approach to my lyric writing. I was trying to go down a dirt road and see where it would take me. There was a cognizant effort to write about subjects that I haven’t done so much of in the past. Based on the last few years and all the changes we’ve all been through, there’s an underlying change in message that pulls them all together. That carried over to the music, as well. I wanted it to be a new direction that was fun and exploratory.”

These Changes (ft. Derek Trucks)

The catalyst for Derek being part of this record was the song “Real, Real Love,” which Gregg had started but never finished. I ended up finishing it and after I did, I called Derek and said, “Hey, I just finished this tune that Gregg had started, and I would love for you to be part of the recording process.”

What ended up happening is I went down to Derek’s place near Macon, and we spent three days there writing songs. That’s all we were doing.

“These Changes” and “Hall of Future Saints” were two of the songs that we wrote during that time period, along with two or three others. I have a feeling those will surface as well.

Mike Mattison was hanging out at Derek’s place, and he was on his way back home. He had a 90-minute drive or something, but we had started working on that tune before he split. He had some nice thoughts about the overall vibe. It had not gotten very far by the time he had to leave, but he helped shape the direction of where the song was headed musically.

Derek and I then finished it over that three-day period, along with the other handful of tunes that we wrote. I would stay up late to work on lyrics, and then, the next day, we would reconvene and take a fresh approach to what we had been thinking about the night before. It was the most writing that he and I have ever done collectively, and it was a really cool part of this whole creative process.

Then, after those three days were over, we had some work tapes of all the different songs in varying degrees of completion. I knew that I was gravitating toward “These Changes” and “Hall of Future Saints” for my upcoming record, which was imminent. Then the conversations became, “Hey, I think we should record these tunes together. Let’s f ind some time for you to come into the studio.”

I really wanted for Derek to be there physically with us, as opposed to recording it remotely, and he wanted that as well. Oddly enough, Kevin Scott was not available the two days that Derek was available. So I called [former Gov’t Mule bass player] Andy Hess, and he came in, played on those three tunes and did a great job. Andy and I had done a gig together, maybe six months or a year ago. We just did a one-off gig with me, him, Terence and Medeski, which had felt great, so it was cool to bring him back into the fold for that.

Go Down Swinging

What I had in mind was for this one to be like Van Morrison meets B.B. King. That probably didn’t come about until after the song was written, but once I started playing it, I tried to think of a vibe in my head and that just presented itself. It was probably a little further along arrangement-wise than some of them, but Kevin Scott threw me a little bit of a curve ball. We were talking about how the song should feel, and I brought up some swing reference. Then he said to me, “Oh, I feel it more like Paul McCartney.” I was like, “Oh, that’s cool. I never thought of it that way.” So he was feeling it more like “Got to Get You Into My Life,” which works beautifully. That’s one of the things I love about leaving everything open to interpretation—there are a bunch of different ways to approach a shuffle or a swing feel, and as a result, that one has kind of a unique approach.

You Ain’t Above Me

I wrote “You Ain’t Above Me” in the middle of the night. I was lying in bed and got this idea for a lyric and a melody. So I got up, sang it into my phone and went back to bed. Then the next day, when I got up, I listened to it, and it all started making sense. Sometimes with those things, you’ll wake up the next day and go, “Oh, that’s terrible,” and you just forget about it.

But it resonated with me, so I started working on it. It’s a soul ballad kind of thing, not really an Otis Redding vibe, but it has that classic late-night soul vibe. It’s one of those songs that, from a lyrical standpoint, might be more obvious from a female perspective, but it would also be almost cliché. From a male standpoint, it becomes a little more unique and complicated.

This Life as We Know It

I was in Montauk on vacation with my family over the 4th of July, and there was a full moon and fireworks. We were looking out over the ocean, and it was just this spectacle, this beautiful thing. I couldn’t remember a full moon on the 4th of July in my recent memory, and it created this poetic picture.

So I started jotting that down and seeing where it all went. Then the next thing you know, I had this lyric that was all about moving forward and looking at life through a more positive lens, which is not a very typical lyrical approach for me. People sometimes ask me: “Why don’t you write more happy songs?” I’m like, “Well, when I’m happy, I’m busy being happy. When I’m writing, I’m usually trying to get something out.”

I didn’t add music until I got home a few days later, and the music wound up being really upbeat as well. I like the fact that the opening lyric puts you in a place in time, and it’s cool when it works out that way. I didn’t go into it thinking of it that way, that’s just the first thing I wrote: “There’s a full moon on the 4th of July lighting up a Montauk sky.” That led to everything else, and it all came pretty quickly.

Day of Reckoning (ft. Lukas Nelson and Jamey Johnson)

I had gone down to Nashville to do some writing with Lukas Nelson and Jamey Johnson. The three of us worked on a couple of tunes, Jamey and I worked on a couple of tunes separately and then Lukas and I worked on a couple of tunes. “Go Down Swinging” was written during that time—I had a fair amount of it, but it was nowhere near complete. I showed it to Jamey, and he had some really great lyrical ideas, which wound up taking the song in a better direction.

Then, during that same time period, I played both of them “Day of Reckoning” and Jamey started singing this low gospel counterpart to the song while I was playing it. It was just the three of us sitting around in a room and Lukas had this idea for these question-and-answer vocal parts, what they call a round, where one person sings, then the next person sings, then the next person sings. I thought it really took the song to another level.

So the original work tape I had on my phone was me playing it and those guys singing along without even really knowing the tune very well. What happened during that time period stuck with me, and I thought, “I’d love to get those guys in the studio to be part of the tune.” I love the way our three voices blend together, which we discovered during The Last Waltz tour— Lukas’ voice is a little higher than mine and Jamey’s is lower than mine. So we have that cool chemistry where we’re all pushing at the same time, and that’s really a necessary ingredient in a great three-part harmony blend.

When we got into the studio, I wasn’t able to get both of them in there while we were tracking the tune. So we tracked the song with just the band, and then when Lukas and I were on tour together in California, we went into a studio in Sacramento and did his vocals and his guitar—he played some fantastic guitar on there as well. Then I sent what we had done to Jamey. He added his part in his studio in Nashville, and it’s gorgeous.

So that song turned out great, and it’s very different from the rest of the record. It has this Southern gospel thing about it, but it’s still coming from a soul music direction. I think it has some Staple Singers influence, but it’s a very unique track. The song itself kind of defies categorization, but then having our three voices singing together kind of puts it into a different light as well.

Real, Real Love (ft. Derek Trucks)

“Real, Real Love” is a song that Gregg had showed to me one time. Maybe it was just the lyric, I don’t remember if he actually had any musical ideas for it or not, but there was no recording or demo of it. He had started writing it but never finished it, and then he passed away. All that was left was this incomplete lyric, so I got inspired, finished the lyric and wrote music and the melody for it. That’s when I called Derek, and it became the catalyst for him being involved.

I’m really glad that it traveled down that path. Derek co produced the three songs that he was a part of, and I love the way all that stuff turned out. It was great being back in the studio together for the first time in a long time.

Lies, Lies, Lies> Monkey Dance> Lies, Lies, Lies

 I wrote “Lies, Lies, Lies” at home, but I had no demo recording of it or anything. I just had all these pieces, and we learned it on the floor piece by piece, then strung it all together. I wanted to leave a lot of it to interpretation, so we wound up calling that middle section “Monkey Dance” because we felt like it was like a separate song.

We took the same approach as we did on Heavy Load Blues, where we would snatch it back and hold it, snatch it back and hold it, and each take was different. Each version that we did, especially the improv stuff in the middle, was completely different, and the arrangement kept changing throughout the recording process. It was a very interesting tune, coming more from a funk standpoint than probably anything I’ve done on a record. I don’t think there’s anything even on the Man in Motion that’s quite as funk-influenced, but the middle section kind of goes into a Miles Davis meets Frank Zappa meets psychedelia thing.

I wanted there to be two or three songs on the record that stretched out and gave the hardcore music fans something to sink their teeth into in the same way as the live performances. It’s mostly a song-oriented record, so I wanted to curtail that to a certain extent. But I’m lucky that a certain percentage of my fans want to hear jamming, want to hear us stretch out, even on a studio record. They would find it disappointing if we didn’t include some of those elements.

From Here on Out

“From Here on Out” goes all the way back to the COVID lockdown. It was one of the f irst songs we recorded, and it became kind of a template for the direction of the record.

The horn section adds a vibe to it. When I started writing that song, it wasn’t quite as up-tempo as it became. Some of the songs I write on acoustic guitar can be interpreted several different ways. That song started out a little more folky, and then as I was getting closer to finishing it, it wanted to have more of an up tempo vibe.

Terence has his New Orleans groove that he brings with him to whatever he does. So even though he’s one of those guys who can play any style of music and is really adept at a lot of different approaches, that New Orleans history is in his DNA. So when we’re searching for the right feel of the tune, that always plays into it. Of course, what he and Kevin Scott play together is kind of the foundation of whatever tune we’re working on at any time.

So since none of these songs had been demoed and I had never played them with a band prior to rehearsal, we were trying a lot of different feels to see what stuck. Then, when it started making everybody dance, making everybody bob and weave, we’d say, “OK, that feels good. Let’s see where it goes.”

A lot of the arrangements just happened. I would have maybe 80% of the arrangement in my head—that number varied from song to song. But with every song, I wanted us to open it up to interpretation and discussion and figure out what we could do to make it better. I never want to get married to what I think is going to be the arrangement of a song, unless it’s the rare occasion where I’ve spent a ton of time figuring out exactly what I want it to be.

I love for a lot of that process to happen in the studio. Part of the beauty of working with great musicians is that things have a way of changing for the better and ideas come along that one person couldn’t think of.

It’s very rare that I have a definitive demo of something that I’ll play for everybody and say, “This is how I envision the song going.” Usually, I like to see people’s impressions when I play it by myself, and everybody starts to fill in the blanks with how they think it ought to go. Then it’s an organic thing—the way musicians react to hearing something for the first time.

Till the Sun Comes Shining Through

I wrote “Till the Sun Comes Shining Through” with my friend Rhett Akins, who is a big Nashville songwriter. We’ve been friends for decades and we’ve written a few songs through the years, but they’ve always been for other people. One day, we were writing together in Nashville and he said, “Hey, man, let’s write something for you. Let’s write something you would do.” So that idea popped up.

It started with the title “Till the Sun Comes Shining Through” and we kicked it around. Then, a few hours later, we had this tune. There was even a solid demo that we recorded during that writing session—it’s always good to capture that in the moment if you can.

The big difference was that, when we got into the studio to make this record, I thought that it needed to go a little further. So we decided to add that long slide guitar solo at the end. It wasn’t part of the original demo, and that change in the arrangement didn’t come about until we were actually in the studio recording.

Terrified

I wrote “Terrified” at home. I would just sit around and play it on acoustic guitar or on electric guitar, and it always had a funky feel, but I tried it different ways, not wanting to get too locked into how it was going to turn out until we got into the studio.

The New Orleans kind of Meters vibe came about in the studio. That’s not the way I envisioned it initially. I think I envisioned it a little more Detroit funk, but once everybody started playing, it got really deep into the New Orleans groove. I was like, “Yeah, this is cool,” so we went with it because that felt natural.

Hall of Future Saints

This song started with the music down at Derek’s place in Georgia. He began playing that rhythm hook, which is really cool, and I just started playing along with it. We worked on the music for a long time before I ever started writing lyrics. I think that was the last day I was there, the third day of writing, and we finished sometime late in the evening. He went to bed, and I went to my room hoping that some sort of lyrical concept would pop up, and it did.

I wrote the lyrics that night and then got on a plane the next morning. We didn’t really have a working demo or a work tape of that tune other than the music, which was kind of a primitive little work tape. He hadn’t really even heard the lyric until we got into the studio.

It’s one of those odd lyrics where I’m paying homage and referencing a lot of influences, but it’s actually written about a dream I had and then I decided to turn the dream into a song idea. Of course, at that point, the sky’s the limit. We could take it wherever it wanted to go, and the idea of the ad-lib pointing at the different influences in the outro just came about in the studio. We did this long jam that was really interesting, but it felt like there needed to be some call-and-response vocal that went with it. So I carried that lyrical process even further.

We could have faded it out and made it much shorter—I think it’s the longest song—but there was a lot of fun interplay going on, with Derek and myself and with Medeski and Andy Hess playing some really cool stuff. So especially as a closing number, it seemed to cry out to include the whole jam as opposed to fading it early.

Once I started looking at “Hall of Future Saints” as the ending song, with “These Changes” being the opening song, it made sense on a lot of different levels. The album opens with Derek and I jamming together for the first time in a long time and then closes with us jamming together, which I think is appropriate.