HT Review: Warren Haynes Band @ Lowell’s Boarding House Park
Warren Haynes Band @ Boarding House Park – Sept. 9
Words and Photos: Andrew Bruss
When the Warren Haynes Band came to Lowell, Mass.’s Boarding House Park, they proved to their audience that although they don’t rock as hard as the Allman Brothers, Haynes’ current project is single handedly the funkiest he has ever taken part in.
Haynes and Co. kicked off the first of two sets with Man In Motion, the first track off Haynes’ latest album of the same name. The groove that underlined the guitar lead was as infectious as it gets and gave the audience a solid understanding as to what they could expect from the group for the rest of the night.
For the most part, the first set consisted of material off Man In Motion, and was even moderately sequential. The album’s title track was followed by River’s Gonna Rise, the second track on the release. From there, the third track on the album was skipped and they tore into Sick Of My Shadow, a tune that roughly follows the same formula as the album’s first tune, but in the live setting, they stretched things out with a solid sax solo by Ron Holloway that segued right into a brief slide-guitar run that let Haynes work his fingers up and down the neck of the hollow body Gibson he favored that night over his more commonly wielded Les Paul.
READ ON for more on Warren’s latest project…
I’ll Be The One, off Haynes’ first solo release, 1993’s Tales of Ordinary Madness, slowed things down a bit and set a mood that the baby-booming audience could sway with their spouses to.
A cover of Allen Toussaint’s Sneakin’ Sally Through The Alley came next, before Haynes ended the first set with an improv-heavy version of his new tune, On A Real Lonely Night. As organ/pianist Nigel Hall channeled his inner Art Neville, Haynes brought some of that B.B. King blues-scale soloing to the forefront. The studio cut is over seven minutes long and in the live setting, the tune was almost twice as long.
After an organ solo, Holloway began to duel with the man behind the keys while Haynes moderated the musical dialogue. He took his turn tearing it up, and settled into a grove that demonstrated his generosity as a frontman. Although the band bore his name, Haynes was eager to draw attention to the musicians in his group by allowing them to take lengthy solos. While they each took turns in the spotlight, Haynes made a point of cuing Holloway, whose sax solo during the jam went on longer than those of his band mates.
The second set began with an older, mellower Haynes original, Patchwork Quilt, but by the time they tore into Hattiesburg Hustle off the latest release, things picked up where they had left off at the set break. Ron Holloway had demonstrated during the first set that he was willing to challenge Haynes’ instrumental prowess, and throughout the second set, Hall continued to earn his MVP status as the musician who had the most chemistry with the man everyone came to see.
After an hour-long second set, the group left the stage, but returned to encore with Soulshine, a Haynes-penned Allman Brothers tune that he is arguably more affiliated with than any other song he regularly performs.
Although this show lacked the hard riffs fans have come to expect from Gov’t Mule, or the dueling guitar licks of the Allman Brothers Band, the Warren Haynes Band’s show in Lowell gave his audience a clearer view into his artistic habits than any of his other projects. This group is the first time in a long time Haynes has had the freedom to put together a band without worrying about the artistic sensibilities of any other musicians. With that in mind, the choices he made spoke wonders of his musical tendencies. Rather than put together a bunch of hired guns, he hand picked artists like Holloway (who made albums with men like Dizzy Gillespie, as well as Susan Tedeschi and his Allmans cohort, Derek Trucks).
Haynes came to Lowell to show his audience that when left to his own devices, he isn’t interested in exclusively showcasing his own talents. The Warren Haynes Christmas Jam has proven he is generous with his time, and his interest in packing the stage with men and women whose talents rival his own showed that he is not only generous, but modest about the skills that have made him the go-to man in The Allman Brothers and for the surviving members of The Grateful Dead.
