WARREN PEACE

WARREN HAYNES and GOV’T MULE return with Peace…Like a River, a sublime example of longform rock ’n’ soul that draws inspiration from John Lennon, the Doors and the multipart masterpieces of Kansas and Queen

- MARK McSTEA

BACK IN LATE 2021, when Gov’t Mule released the Grammy-nominated Heavy Load Blues, their first proper all-blues album, they actually had another completely different album already gassed up, greased up and ready to hit the streets. Peace… Like a River, the previously underwraps album, was recorded at the same time as Heavy Load Blues, with the band working on tracks for that album by day, then switching gear to work on the bluesier disc at night.

As Warren Haynes recounts, the band took a novel approach to the already unusual concept of recording two albums at once: “We set up two sets of gear in two studios, keeping everything live for the blues album, which was done in a small studio, adjacent t o the main studio where Peace was laid down. Absolutely no gear was shared between the two projects — guitars, amps, you name it — everything was kept separate to maintain the two distinct sounds and feels.”

The resulting album is an ambitious, stylistically diverse record that covers many bases, with some surprising guest vocals by Billy Gibbons and Billy Bob Thornton thrown into the mix. Given that it has been sitting in the can for quite a while, Haynes is still happy with the final result and wouldn’t change a thing, even with the benefit of hindsight.