With a New Generation of Fans, Guitarist Warren Haynes Keeps the Flame of Classic Rock Burning

After a failed attempt to contact Warren Haynes at the Embassy Suites in Syracuse, the second-generation southern rocker-cum-jam band practitioner finally picks up the blower in a room ostensibly assigned to his road manager. Understandably, Haynes likes to keep a low profile. Over the course of the past few years he has developed a distaste for annoying fan calls, and as one of the most sought-after musicians in the classic roots rock genre, he's been touring pretty much non-stop. Playing leap-frog between the current incarnations of the Allman Brothers Band and the Dead as well as grinding axe for his own project, Government Mule, his road-intensive schedule warrants the occasional game of hide and seek.

"This has been my busiest year ever, which of course is not a bad thing," he relates with guarded enthusiasm. "But I won't lie, the traveling part is hard. It's the music that's fun." Paradoxes are the norm for Haynes, who began his life down in Asheville, North Carolina but now resides (when not on the road) in New York. With an apartment in Greenwich Village, a country house not far from the Apple and a wife of six years, Haynes claims Yankeeland as home.

"The Northeast is acually a huge market for the kind of music I play. The Beacon Theater in Manhattan has kind of become an unofficial home for the Allmans and Government Mule. We've been playing a series of shows there every March (with the Allmans) and a run of shows around New Years (with the Mule). We get a tremendous response from the fans."

While this cultural heresy dispells the myth of the southern-fried rocker, Haynes' Dixified roots can't be brushed aside entirely. A little more chat and he confesses to having played on what would have been the last album by the Outlaws (the disc was never released) and yes, he got his start in Nashville playing with David Allan Coe, who among other things is known for writing X-rated ditties with a redneck spin.