Warren Haynes plays Opry to plug new album

NASHVILLE — Having played on some of the world's biggest stages as guitarist for the Allman Brothers and leader of Gov't Mule, Warren Haynes had no good reason to think appearing before a few thousand people in Tennessee Saturday would throw him.

"The whole day, I've been, like, not nervous and not nervous and not nervous," Haynes says. "Then, right before we go on, I'm like, 'This is the Grand Ole Opry. This is nerve-wracking.'

Haynes and roots-music band Railroad Earth played the 90-year-old radio show for the first time Saturday, promoting the upcoming release of Ashes and Dust, their new album together. Haynes played one of the album's songs, the bluegrass-y Company Man, dedicating it to his father, who he later described as "an Opry fanatic."

Haynes performed another song that was more familiar to the audience: Opry member Garth Brooks' 1991 hit Two of a Kind, Workin' on a Full House. By way of introducing it, Haynes said: "I just started doing it recently, and people say, 'Why is Warren playing that Garth Brooks song?' No, Garth Brooks is playing my song, and I thank him very much."

Haynes felt good after Saturday's performance, though he felt like he'd hardly had time to get warmed up. "Any time you're in one of these one- or two-song situations, you hit it and quit it, and you go, 'Now we're ready; let's go play,'" he says.

With a sound that draws on bluegrass, folk and Appalachian musics, Ashes and Dust, due July 24, might be a better fit for the Opry's country-minded clientele than most of Haynes' output, which included a 25-year run with the Allmans, from 1989 until the group disbanded last year. On most of the album's tracks, Haynes is the only musician using an electric instrument, playing electric slide or hollow-body jazz guitar against a backdrop of banjo, mandolin, fiddle, Dobro, acoustic guitar and upright bass.

"I've written all these songs through the years that kind of work together but don't sound like Allman Brothers songs, don't sound like Gov't Mule songs," he says. "I've accumulated so many that I've got to start recording them."

Haynes initially had planned to record some of the songs with Leon Russell, the great Band drummer Levon Helm and bassist T-Bone Wolk. But Wolk died in 2010 before they could get into the studio. Then Helm died in 2012. "I'm like, well, this record's never going to happen," Haynes says.

After meeting the members of Railroad Earth at a show they opened for the Allmans, though, he realized he had found another group of musicians that could help him bring the songs to life. "I started working with the guys in Railroad Earth and thought, 'This is a nice direction for these songs,'" he says. "They felt really good with that kind of Celtic instrumentation."

Haynes will play a handful of dates with Gov't Mule in July, then he'll begin a tour with Railroad Earth to promote Ashes and Dust starting Aug. 1 in Bridgeport, Conn.

"Mule's got one more run in the fall, he says. "Other than that, I'll be promoting this record till sometime in the middle of next year."