The pacing was a bit off at this point. You come to expect a hodgepodge of new covers following the new year’s countdown at a Mule show, and the band unquestionably delivered. And with such a comprehensive run through the canon of well-known Mule songs that lead up to that point, we definitely got Get Behind the Mule: Past Present and Future, the nominal concept for the show. But if the thought was that Mule was going to dig deep into the catalog and dust off some rarely-to-never played Mule gems as a part of that fan-centric celebration — and granted, Warren and Co. never did say what exactly was going to happen — it wasn’t to be. No matter. There was enough firepower and emotional heft for 10 quote-unquote regular Mule shows. You could dwell on the fact that the overall selection of Mule songs was predictably grouped, or disappointingly rote, depending on your point of view. You could dwell, but you’d be churlish.
It was getting late, and in the third set, overall pacing fell apart entirely, and, as it turned out, wonderfully. Set three wasn’t so much a narrative set as a collection of standalone monster jams that were long, loud and loaded with tasty, gristly meat, forming what amounted to a presumably curfew-pushing, truncated finale with no formal encore and four songs total. A left-field choice to start: Shakedown Street (WTF?!) and a loosey-goosey, but undeniably fun execution. And then, three massive, massive showpiece jam segments: first a protracted Sugaree that had the delighted crowd firmly in its grasp, second a groovalicious Sco-Mule, and third a tour de force Afro Blue, in an obvious nod to the legendary performance of the song that appears on Live: With A Little Help From Our Friends, still Mule’s greatest officially released recorded document.
Well-appointed guests — saxophone ace and recent Warren BFF Bill Evans, and two locally-based guitar wizards, Jon Herington and Oz Noy — filtered through, each getting multiple chances to blast off and blast off often. There was pass-the-hat, there was dueling, there were stunning peaks and electrifying climaxes, and in every instance, ample, ample crowd button-pushing, be it Warren tearing into the chorus from Dance to the Music during a Sco-Mule summit or the various flavors of tortured guitar and sax progression heard throughout Afro Blue. Wow, wow, wow, this sequence of songs. And then a goodnight. And then the house lights. And “that’s it?” And “yeah, hell yes, that was IT!”
It felt odd; it felt great. I thought consciously during the show about how so much of it was Mule unhinged, and playing transcendently, and painting outside its usual lines. I also thought consciously during the show about how I’d trade the next 30 performances of Broke Down on the Brazos or Brand New Angel for just one compellingly delivered Effigy, or that Dead-nodding chestnut Lay of the Sunflower, or Mule’s fuzz-bomb workout of If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day, or, shit, World of Difference, for the old-school Mule heads. It felt weird to not hear any traditional blues, as is Mule’s frequent New Year’s wont. It also felt like a good year to say “fuck tradition.” Either way, the Mule was, is and remains, a monster. Hell of a show. Take a break, lads, and come back to us.
