“In the world of improvisation, thinking is your enemy.” - Warren Haynes on the Secret to Meaningful Guitar Solos

Warren Haynes joins Guitar Interactive’s Sam Bell for an in-depth conversation about improvisation, guitar tone, finding your own musical voice and his new live orchestral album, Dreams and Songs: A Symphonic Journey. Warren explains how his experience performing Jerry Garcia’s music with a symphony inspired him to revisit material from across his own career with a 64-piece orchestra, and reveals the unique challenge of preserving genuine improvisation when dozens of musicians are working from written arrangements.

The conversation then develops into a fascinating masterclass on improvisation. Warren discusses learning to jam from an early age, the influence of soul singers on his melodic guitar style, and the lessons he absorbed from playing alongside Dickey Betts in the Allman Brothers Band. He also explains why guitarists need to separate practising from performing, why “every note should count,” and why playing fewer notes can sometimes communicate far more than displaying technique.

Warren also explores the importance of getting out of your own head when improvising, explaining why “thinking is your enemy” when you're trying to reach the point where you're completely lost in the music. Elsewhere, Warren discusses his lifelong search for great guitar tone, playing alongside Derek Trucks, Jimmy Herring, John Scofield and Joe Bonamassa, and why the best two-guitar combinations need enough common ground to connect while remaining different enough to create contrast.

Warren, I believe you have Dreams and Songs: A Symphonic Journey coming out in September, which is a live recording with a 64-piece orchestra playing a bunch of tunes from your catalog. What's the genesis of that idea? Was it in 2019, pre-COVID, that it was recorded?

Yes. The idea goes back further than that. When I did the Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration a few years before that, I had gotten a call from the Jerry Garcia estate saying that they wanted to do Jerry's music with a symphony and they wanted to utilise different artists interpreting the music, and they wanted to know if I was interested in being the first one. I said, "Absolutely, I would be honoured to do that." So I kind of dove into that world. I had never worked with symphonies before, but it was such an amazing experience that I started thinking about doing songs from my catalog that way, but more as a retrospective. I've never been a big fan normally of pairing orchestras and rock bands, or jazz bands, or pop bands together just for the sake of doing it. I think most of the time it doesn't really work for me. I think it's more of a song-by-song basis. So, I thought, between my stuff with Gov't Mule, my solo records, the Allman Brothers catalog, the Grateful Dead catalog, and all the stuff that I've been involved with over the past 30-something years, there's so much material to choose from that I could choose stuff that I think works really well. That was kind of the impetus for this whole thing.

There are several questions I have here as a musician, but also just as someone with such a catalog of music to choose from. With the opportunity to play with an orchestra, how did you pick the tracks, and were there any challenging ones that you wanted to include but couldn't?

No. I eliminated some songs that I thought, just in my head, didn't make sense with the symphony. Luckily, since there was so much to choose from, we had more than enough stuff that just seemed to mesh really well. It was mostly myself making these choices, but I was also involving Don Was. He and I were spending a lot of time together at that time. We were on the road together doing The Last Waltz tour, and we shared a bus, so we had a lot of time just hanging out and discussing these kinds of matters. He was invaluable in so many ways.

You mentioned just a minute ago the rock band versus the orchestra, right? That's a bit of a tension there. In my humble little career, I've played with orchestras, and as a guitarist it's a very different world, different disciplines in some ways. How was that for you, especially with the Jerry Garcia project as well, saying that was your first time with an orchestra in that kind of setting? What did you find challenging? What did you find different about it?

The biggest challenge from the beginning was, how do we incorporate improvisation into the overall picture? Because to me that is extremely important. I wouldn't want to just go play with a symphony where everything is preordained. Anything that I do, I want there to be improv involved, and especially doing Garcia's music as the maiden voyage for me, that was extremely important. Figuring out ways of doing that was imperative from the very beginning. We came up with three concepts on how to allow improv. One was there were times where the symphony would bow out and not play, and the band would jam. On cue, I would cue the conductor, and the conductor would bring the symphony back in at a certain point. There were other times where the symphony is playing what's scripted, but what myself or some of the other musicians in the band were playing was improvised on top of that. One of the most unique ones, going back to that Garcia experience, was we took music that was originally improvised and had it arranged for symphony. On the Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration we used to open with "Dark Star," and it was like an eight-minute arrangement of "Dark Star" where Steven Bernstein, the arranger, took what was originally eight minutes of improvisation and orchestrated it. He was taking Jerry's part and Bob's part and Phil's part and keyboard parts and applying them to different sections of the orchestra. So there were no repeat signs. You were just hearing this continual flow of improv, but it wasn't being improvised; it was being read off of sheet music. That was an interesting concept, and we applied those principles to this Dreams and Songs project. It was really important to have the ability to improvise, and with musicians like Oteil, John Medeski, Gregg Osby, and Jeff Sipe, that's what we all live for. So it was a huge part of the overall picture.

There are two angles I'd like to explore. First of all, playing music that you have a history with, with an orchestra, it must have felt... I mean, the recording that's going to be out in September sounds humongous. It's very impactful, and the depth of the songs comes through in a whole different way. But you being there doing that and having the history of it, what was it like for you at this stage in your career to hear some of those songs that you've lived with reimagined onstage that way?

It was amazing to hear all these tunes interpreted that way. Part of the process was I would take my arrangements and send them to all these different symphonic arrangers. We chose a lot of the best arrangers in the business, and rather than have one or two people do the entire program, we decided to reach out to seven or eight and have each of them do two or three songs. We tried to pick the right arranger for the right song based on the strengths of that person's arrangement skills. Until you hear it for the first time, you can only imagine what it's going to sound like. Then hearing it is a whole other thing. So the very first rehearsals, when you hear it all coming together, it's like, wow. A big challenge for me was being able to hear the orchestra loud enough to be inspired by it, because in some cases there's plexiglass between you and the symphony. Not completely, but enough to make hearing it a little tougher. Over the course of the rehearsals, they're constantly tweaking the mix and trying to get the symphony louder and louder in our personal monitors and stuff. As the rehearsal progresses, you're getting more and more of a picture of what's going on. In the very beginning, we could barely hear them. I kept saying, "Turn 'em up. Turn 'em up. Turn 'em up. Turn 'em up." I'm not an in-ear monitor person. I like old-fashioned wedges. But we played really quiet by normal standards. I was using really small amplifiers and making a point of having a plexiglass gobo in between myself and the orchestra so that they weren't getting too much of me. It was quite an experience. It was a learning process for sure, but hearing the orchestra play that stuff is so majestic and just powerful. It's inspiring, and it inspires me to play and sing differently than I would in a normal band.

I was going to ask about that very important thing. This is Guitar Interactive, so lots of guitarists are probably watching this. One of the things from an educational standpoint is that guitarists practice with a backing track, and it's very sterile. But when you play with a band, improvisation, that's the real learning place. That's where the inspiration happens. But to improvise with an orchestra, like you just said, it brought something different out of you. What did you notice that was particularly salient that came out?

My role at that point is to listen to everything they're playing and fit into it, fit into that picture. In any band, the size of the band should determine your role as a guitar player or any instrumentalist. In a trio, the sky's the limit. You can play as busy as you want to play, as aggressively as you want to play all the time. It's your job to fill up all that space, along with the bass player and the drummer. The bigger the band, the more you have to curtail your role a little bit based on what everybody else is doing, especially in an improv way. The best improv is when you're listening to what everybody else is doing and bouncing off of it. When you're dealing with musicians like Oteil, Jeff Sipe, Gregg Osby, and John Medeski, there's always something to bounce off of. When you add the symphony to that, you never know what you're going to respond to. I hear something that the brass section plays, and then I respond to that. I hear something that the string section plays, then I respond to that. It was really interesting because a lot of the times I was hearing these orchestrations for the first time and responding accordingly. The more rehearsals we did, the more I was able to be aware of what they were doing, but never to the extent that I expected it when it was coming. It was always a surprise. What they were playing was always a surprise to me, and I love that. I love being thrust into this challenge of having to redesign what you're playing in the moment. It's kind of what we all love.

You're a seasoned player, but I imagine with a 64-piece orchestra as well on that recording, there's also that feeling of making it count, making that improvisation and really paying attention in that moment.

Yeah. You don't want to overplay and clutter up the beauty of what they're doing, and you don't want what you're doing to get lost in what they're doing. It's a constant quest to find that balance.

Beautiful. What a wonderful opportunity. Depending when this interview comes out, I believe the album is out in late September. I think it's the 18th. It sounds great. I believe Bob Clearmountain's mixed it, and everything just sounds super balanced, and your tone is soaring. This is the thing you were saying about you fitting in, but you've also got those moments where you just come out and it sounds humongous, really, especially some of those solos and those riffs and melodies that come through and pop out. It's a different thing. Did you have to do much gear-wise for that? Just for the gear nerds out there, did you change anything about your usual setup? You said you used smaller amps.

I used mostly this Fender Michael Landau model that I borrowed from a friend of mine who lives in Asheville, because I didn't bring all my gear to Asheville. My friend Mike Barnes, who's a wonderful guitar player, loaned me this amp, and I wound up using it along with one of my, maybe a Deluxe or something. They were really, really small amps. I specifically wanted the tone to be a little cleaner, not quite as big, so it would fit in with the overall picture a little easier. It was fun responding to that tone that was a little cleaner than my norm for that sort of thing. I used my Bradshaw rack, but I didn't use many effects for this show. I had the Hughes & Kettner Rotosphere, the Leslie simulator that I use sometimes. I had a Boss brown octaver that I use occasionally. Maybe a delay. But for the most part it was just kind of a straight-into-the-amp sort of sound, which was nice.

Well, I think your sound, to my personal opinion, doesn't matter what my opinion is, but your sound's very natural sounding, very vocal sounding. That comes across on that. The way you use effects is quite subtle, it seems. It's just to kind of give it a different shimmer or something like that.

Especially in a situation like this, it just made sense to not use effects as much. But there are a few things here and there. I have a Bradshaw tremolo that is like a stereo tremolo, but I use it for two different mono settings, so there's a fast setting and a slow setting. And delay, but it's very subtle, as you mentioned, for this project.

Something that's interesting, I just want to point this out to people listening: you mentioned having a smaller tone. There's a lot of emphasis on people getting a big sound. When I listened to the pre-release, it fills the space perfectly, giving the sense of a big guitar sound, actually, but it's not clouding everything. Can you talk a bit about finding that? I mean, you mentioned the smaller amps, of course, but that being something that's important for guitarists to be mindful of.

I think when Gov't Mule was a trio, it was important to me to have a really big guitar sound. Even as a quartet, I'm always going for a pretty large sound. But when you've got a 64-piece orchestra, keyboards, bass, drums, saxophone, and two background singers, I don't want to take up as much space as a guitar player that I would take up in a trio or a quartet. Also, to blend with the sound of the orchestra, I want it to be a little more organic, a little clearer, a little less distortion. So going for a sound that makes sense with the symphony. Now, I also have to say that Bob Clearmountain did an amazing job fitting everything in its space as well, so I can't really take the credit for the way the guitar fits into the picture. But I do love the way that it takes up what I think is the right amount of space, not too much and not too little.

I'd like to talk a bit about improvisation in the global sense of your guitar playing, beyond the album, your career. There's a lot of melody in your playing and improvisation, especially on these longer-form improvisations. You've already kind of answered some of this in terms of responding and reacting to musicians, but what would you say are key tenets that you've picked up from your experience that have helped you construct those things in the moment? Have you actively worked with improvisation in the practice room, for example, or has it been just a case of the experience of live playing with people, in the studio, et cetera, that's been the education? What's it been like for you in that journey?

I've been improvising my entire life. Growing up at the time that I did, improvisation was a big part of rock music, and all of our favourite bands and artists were doing live records, so you got more of an insight into the way they performed live and the difference in the studio records and the live recordings. From the time I was 12 years old and we were forming bands around town, we were all learning how to jam together and how to improvise together. Of course, it takes a long time to get better and better at it. Fast-forward, I've been doing that my whole life, but I've also been surrounded by amazing musicians. Just through osmosis, you're learning all the time from everybody you're playing with. To go back to your original question, I started out singing before I started playing guitar. So, I was enamoured with and gravitating toward these great singers, like soul singers: the Temptations, the Four Tops, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Sam & Dave. A lot of soul music and Motown and that sort of stuff before I really got into rock music. I think since I started listening to singers first, I was always gravitating toward guitar players who had that sort of singing quality. In a lot of cases, guitar players who also sang, but at the very least, the ones that were singing through their instrument. I just always loved that. They would always revert back to melody at some point and reel you back in. If the soloist is going off on a nice tangent and getting pretty out there, then at a key moment there would always be this key melody that brought you back home. That's something that has been really important to me pretty much from the very beginning. Then, of course, when I became friends with Dickey Betts, I guess we met in 1980 or '81, playing together a few times. Then we started playing together on a regular basis around '86 or '87, next to him night after night, he has this amazing sense of melody, and the way he utilised that in constructing solos and improvising was unparalleled. He had one of the greatest senses of melody that I've ever experienced. So standing next to him, I had to learn not only how to be myself, find my own voice, find my own sound, but how to construct solos without superfluous information that you don't need. You know what I mean? It was all a learning experience. Then when I joined the Allman Brothers, all of a sudden the bar was raised so high. I was around all these amazing musicians all the time, and it becomes an imperative mission to figure out who you are, and which of your influences you want to let fall by the wayside and which of them you want to be the most important. It's all part of this journey to find your own personality, and I was kind of forced into that in a great way.

That's really interesting. I found that myself: when you're learning, you're kind of a sponge trying to take on all of it. You're listening to records, picking up licks, jamming, and then you end up with all these things. You mentioned getting rid of superfluous information, the extra stuff. It can come out and then completely derail an improvisation, or it takes the flow away. I wonder if you could talk to that, because I think that's quite interesting for guitarists. I think we get guitaritis, right? We just keep on going. Especially, I know you play slide, and I think maybe there's a lot in there that helps with the melody in some ways. It's a very visual instrument, so people can get very lost in just playing the notes or playing the lick verbatim. How did you navigate that yourself? What did you notice in your own journey with that?

I refer to that as separating performance from rehearsal. When you're practising, it's okay to go down any rabbit hole, as superfluous as that may be, because it's a learning experience. But when you're actually performing, you're trying to connect with who you're performing for. There should be no room for just playing scales and challenging your technique. It's time to tell a story. I think that's a big difference. Some friends of mine have watched other guitar players that were guilty of that crime and made the statement, "He's practising when he should be performing." There's a separation you can make in your mind of making every note count, because if you're allotted that space, that arena, every note should count. Even if it's a live performance and not a recording, every note is important. It's better to play too few notes than to play too many notes, I think. Now, I'm not knocking technique in any way. A lot of my favourite guitar players are fantastic technicians beyond my comprehension, but I think they would make the same assessment that there's a difference in what you want to portray as yourself as a personality and what you're trying to learn in your bedroom.

That's the big question, I think, for any artist: developing the craft but then cutting away the extra stuff, finding who you are through that. It's bigger than music in some ways, that journey.

Yeah. Not everybody is worried about that, and I understand that, too. From a guitar-player standpoint, there are a lot of people that are really amazing guitar players, but they're not really interested in taking it to the stage or to the studio. They're just doing it for their own enjoyment and the love of it, and I would never want to interfere with somebody's process on that. But if you're trying to find your own personality, it's important to think this way.

Do you think it's a conscious process? There's that saying that if we think about people we're surrounded with, everyone's got a different version of us in their mind from their perspective, right? It's the same with, you can't see your own eyeballs, you can't bite your own teeth. There's that kind of idea of how do you know what is Warren? Personally, in your own journey, is it a feeling that you start to get when you thought, "Ah, that's more me than that other thing"? Can you talk to that?

Going way back a few decades, it would be like, "Why did I play that? That was stupid. That didn't make any sense in the context of what I was playing." Sometimes it's as easy as you're thinking too much as opposed to feeling. The ultimate version of being yourself is when you get lost in the music and you're not thinking. So, the less thinking, the better. If you catch yourself thinking, it usually winds up being, "That wasn't very good. Why did I do that?” I think in the quest to find your own personality also becomes this quest of, how do I get lost in the music where I'm not cerebral about it? I'm just feeling it and riding the wave and not thinking. In the world of improvisation, thinking is your enemy, really, because the best you can ever play is when the band is just pushing you along and you're part of it, and you're not thinking. When you start thinking, it becomes analytical, and you lose that magic.

You become too self-aware almost, and it trips you up.

Yeah, absolutely.

You mentioned earlier with the orchestra, when you did some improvisations on the first rehearsals, it would have been one type of feeling. I get the sense that you're quite happy to have the spontaneity, to be different each time, maybe for that reason: that we can't come in there going, "Last improvisation I did on this section was like this." Even subtly, that can be a hindrance to making something spontaneous.

I think so. In the same way that when you're in the studio and you do a good take, usually the next take is not going to be very good because you're trying to remember what you liked about the previous one. Sometimes it's good to take a break. You go, "Well, that take was really good." Usually you want to try one more, see if you can top it, but what usually ends up happening is the take after the good one is trying to remember what you did before. Let's take a break and come back and try something from a different kind of perspective. That goes for if you're recording live with the band or overdubbing a solo or whatever the case might be. Whenever you're thinking, "This worked really good last time. Let me try that again," that's usually the kiss of death. Now, that doesn't mean, if you're constructing a solo in the studio, yeah, this is working, this is working, this is working, this is working, let's put it all together in a constructive sort of way, and that all makes sense. But I'm speaking more of improv.

You were saying about noticing when someone's practising onstage, and you're also saying about the idea of thinking when you're improvising, and that gets in the way. I think it's the same, because the way guitar can be taught sometimes, or presented, if I'm asking you how to improvise, some people may respond, "Well, it's the pentatonic scale, it's this," and all this information. In the practise room, it's thinking to get there, to become subconscious, hopefully. But then how to prevent that practising, the mental side of practising, getting into the live performance situation? I think that's the tricky part, right? We're not only practising the mechanical; we're practising, we're thinking about it, and then we're going out and playing. I know myself—I'm just talking about myself here, Warren—but you get a bit self-conscious, maybe. Not much sleep, not enough coffee before the gig, or whatever it might be, the wind's blowing in the wrong direction, and suddenly that solo or that feeling gets hijacked by the analysis. I'm wondering if there's anything that you do before you play live, anything outside in your life that helps you keep that focus when it comes to playing music, and if you practise at all, or you're spontaneous.

I'll go back to that in a second, but I want to respond to one of the things you were saying. Usually when you have that feeling of it's not working, it's usually because you're not inspired by your sound. The tone that you have at that moment isn't inspiring you, and you may not even realise that at the time. You might be like, "Why am I playing this?" or, "Why am I playing that?" But when your tone is right, everything's right. You know what I mean? It's a constant quest for that too, because I use the same gear night after night. Some nights it sounds great. Some nights I'm not happy. It's that endless journey, that quest for the ultimate tone. To go back to what you're saying, these days it's more important to me to play at soundcheck. I warm up more now than I used to. I think it's important to, like you said, eat properly, get enough sleep, not be tired. But somehow, walking onstage always seems to circumvent whatever else is wrong. You think, "I'm really tired tonight. I'm not going to have a great night," but you might have a fantastic night. Sometimes if you're under the weather, you think, "I don't feel good. Tonight's going to be tough," and then you walk onstage and everything's okay. There's something magical about what playing onstage does, that it transplants you into another zone that makes everything okay. But there are things: warming up, getting enough rest, all those kinds of things make a difference. I think for me, just being lucky enough to be surrounded by all these great musicians that I've worked with for decades now, you can't help but be inspired, because if you're not having a great night, somebody else is. You just listen to what they're doing and go, "Man, so-and-so's on fire tonight. I gotta get it together."

It takes you out of that. I find that when I'm in that kind of negative space, it feels quite selfish as well. I'm getting lost in my own woes, and actually there's a show and an audience and a band to be honoured. Taking part in their performance is so important.

Both of those things are really important: honouring and respecting the band, and honouring and respecting the audience. We've got to get out of our own heads and remember what we're there for. You owe it to the audience and you owe it to your fellow bandmates to do the absolute best you can. If you're not having a great night, you just try to pull yourself out of it. Like I say, if you listen to what other people are doing, usually that'll inspire you to get back in the game. I've also said that musicians are our own worst critics, I think, for the most part. Whoever the greatest guitar player in the world is walks offstage some nights going, "Wow, I sucked tonight." That's just the way it is. It's being human.

Warren, I'm conscious of our time, so I'm going to wrap up with just a couple more questions, if that's all right with you. You mentioned inspirations, and you also mentioned some influences earlier, like the soul singers. I've heard you in other interviews mention players like Johnny Winter, Hendrix, and the Kings. I'm curious: are they still a source of inspiration, and are there any new players? I know you work with Derek Trucks and people like that, these newer-generation players. Are there any new inspirations for you? What's fresh for you in your musical appreciation at the moment?

Whenever I work with Derek, or with Jimmy Herring, or with John Scofield, they're all such wonderful players that it's inspiring. I also really love and appreciate the contrast and the similarity in our playing. I always talk about how when two guitar players play together, it's important that there be enough similarity to make sense, but enough contrast that it doesn't seem redundant. When I work with those three guys in particular, it's just very natural, the chemistry between us, because there's enough common ground for it all to connect, but we're all different enough to where it just kind of makes it more dimensional. They're always playing something inspiring for me, so it pushes me to play differently. I had a similar experience recently playing with Nels Cline. We did a gig together and really had a fantastic night, and it was really joyous to play music that was that improvisational and clicked just naturally. We've played together a few times here and there, but this was the first time we've done a whole gig that was improv in nature. I'm sure I'm leaving out a lot of friends of mine. I'm on tour with Joe Bonamassa right now, and we're having a wonderful time. We jam together every night. It's a similar thing. When you have enough influences in common, but also enough influences that are different from each other, it just expands the overall picture. So I'm trying to be influenced by everybody at this point.

It takes away all that silly competitiveness as well, which is meaningless in music, really, but some people can be funny about it.

When you get onstage with the right musicians, it's not about that. It's about making the music the best it can be. Occasionally, you get into a situation where somebody's trying to one-up you or cut your head or whatever, and I just look at it as, yeah, they're not really in it for the right reason. It doesn't mean that it's bad music. In my opinion, it's much better to try and find a simpatico thing that really works. When Derek and I play together, we've been playing together for so long that we can kind of finish each other's thoughts, and that's another level of playing and improvisation. It starts with chemistry, but it comes from hundreds and hundreds of times playing together.

Final question. It's a two-part question. Is there anything that I haven't asked you, or that you haven't been asked before, that you'd like to share? If you can't think of anything, then I'm wondering what's next. You're currently on tour with Joe Bonamassa. What are you up to over the next year? You can choose one of those two or both. It's up to you.

This year is going to be very interesting. We're doing a bunch of dates with Joe, which is really fun, and then we're doing a bunch of dates with Ziggy Marley, which will be really fun. We have a bunch of shows that are just Gov't Mule. That'll be a blast. Then in September of this year, I'm going to release the symphony record that we discussed, and next year do some dates with orchestras. Right now, we've only announced Nashville. We're doing two nights in Nashville, but we're going to add some more to that as well. From a recording standpoint, I want to make a jazz-influenced instrumental record at some point. I'm not sure if it's going to be a Gov't Mule record or a solo record. I'm pretty sure that it'll involve some special guests and some collaborations. I would say that's on the horizon somewhere, but it's not something we've delved into just yet.

Great. Well, thank you for your time, Warren. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you, and there's so much wisdom there for guitarists. I highly recommend people check out the new live album.

Thank you.