Gov't Mule
Heavy Load Blues

A pox on it was the cut and he was wielding the scissors.

There was and still is this barber who is an avid reader of the Buscadero and a fanatical follower to the extreme of Gov't Mule: the Mule, the Mule, Dani', you have to listen to the Mule.

The fact is that after more than 20 years of them echoing in my head, a few months ago I bought the latest album by Gov't Mule, «Heavy Load Blues».

The Mule are, to put it simply, the creation of Warren Haynes, a man in whose veins the blues flows copiously and who really knows what to do with a guitar, otherwise, he wouldn't have been called to take Duane Allman's place in the revivalist finale of the Allman Brothers Band in the '90s.

An extremely eclectic character with a great passion for jams, I, in my substantial ignorance, have formed the idea that, according to popular belief, Haynes and the Mule gave their best in concert, especially when they adapt others' repertoires to their own sound with extreme ease: «Sco-Mule» in collaboration with jazz guitarist John Scofield, «The Dark Side of the Mule» and «The Stoned Side of the Mule» to celebrate Floyd and Stones respectively, that «The Dub Side of the Mule» together with Toots Hillbert is the one that, at a rough guess, I have the best memory of and a slightly deeper knowledge.

As I see it, the only discordant note in all these stage testimonies is that from time to time Haynes gets carried away embarking on endless interpretations of his own pieces or others' classics and for me, raised on bread, jam, and punk rock, listening to a piece that lasts more than 4 minutes is often an unspeakable torture: in other words, and to bring up the Allman Brothers Band again, I've always preferred the studio versions of «Whipping Post» and «In Memory of Elizabeth Reed» to those that occupy an entire side each on the double album «At Fillmore East».

That said, the first thing I liked about «Heavy Load Blues», even before getting rid of the hateful cellophane, is the length of the tracks: 13 in total and only two, the opener «Snatch It Back and Hold It» and «I Asked for Water», put my safety at risk with their 8 and 9 minutes respectively and bits of seconds.

The other great thing, even more so, is that in the end, I find myself holding a really full and reasonable disk of blues without tricks, without deception, and without frills: from the classics «Blues Before Sunrise» and «I Asked for Water», going through so-called minor classics like the aforementioned «Snatch It Back and Hold It», venturing into the soul of «Ain't No Love in the Heart of the City» and «Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody's Home», to the unexpected venture into «Make It Rain», without neglecting absolutely valid originals like «Hole in My Soul» – it's always true that those who don't love the blues have a hole in their soul – and «Wake Up Dead».

Here, this is an album that bleeds blues from every single note – lots of electric blues sometimes in the manner of a Muddy Waters, sometimes in the ways of a B.B. King, with a couple of glimpses of acoustic blues as was used in the Mississippi delta – and from every single verse – the woman runs away with my best friend and takes all my hard-earned savings too, I don't sleep at night anymore and I find myself greeting dawn with the blues demon, at this rate one day or another I'll wake up dead, watch out because that friend of mine passed away just yesterday.

In short, the same old worn-out stories that, from Robert Johnson to Warren Haynes, they insist on telling in the same way but I always find them irresistible when they tell them so well.