To dumb stuff down, Warren Haynes played rhythm guitar to Derek Trucks lead guitar in the Allman Brothers, and to continue the idea of boogie for beginners, Haynes plays Southern jam to John Scofield’s jazz fillets on Gov’t Mules new, though recorded live 15 years ago , Sco-Mule. Six instrumentals, two alternate versions , and three bonus tracks for over two hours of meeting of minds somewhere on the side. Warren Haynes plus bassist Allen Woody and drummer Matt Abts added Scofield and keyboard player Dr. Dan Matrazzo in Georgia in the late 1990s, and this first meeting of the great guitarist and the great guitarist is now legendary.
The result is an acquired taste though it fits together so comfortably it doesn’t feel as though everyone is simply biding the time to play their type of music (for the most part). The 23 minute “Afro-Blue” has Scofield take the lead but as the improvisation builds it ends up sounding more like the Allmans than either Scofield or the Mule, within the the first five minutes it has boiled and subsided and if that is Scofield playing lead, the truth is his jazz pedigree is much more on display when Dan takes charge. This is very clear on “Tom Thumb” which sounds just like the sort of thing we expect from Steely Dan, and it is because the keyboards, though a secondary instrument, take it over.
In jam, you are looking at a war between friends when you have two guitarist, but how much do sparks fly here? The truth is that John gets his chops from rock and Warren, like any master improviser, gets his walking cards from jazz. Extended jam after extended jam sounds like mutual admiration societies, they feed off each other whereas if you ever listened to, say Miles Davis Black Magus, where jazz guitarist John Mclaughlin found the place where Jimi reached but died before he could nail down tight, we might miss the clash of sounds. Scofield is going for something else, the live shows heralded a friendship and partnership between the two guitarists that lasts till this day, and what he was going for, because his tone is so hard and heavy, he wants to force your attention, and so he can share the limelight with Haynes who is absolutely more protean than even Scofield, he sounds like Haynes.
For a live album, Sno-Mule feels a little aimless, it doesn’t really build though the last composition feels like a last composition, it feels as though this evening the only place left for them might be “Mountain Jam”. But nothing quite builds momentum, it doesn’t feel like a performance at all and the shouts of the audience at the end of a track is somewhat on the surprising side.
As an introduction to Scofield it will do its job for jam fans, though as a follow up to last years also live and also old live Dark Side Of The Mule, maybe less so for Haynes fans. Still, every composition makes its point and after five minutes of squawking even “Do It To Death” pulls it together.
