Have we all become a bunch of attention whores? Some people, it seems, will do just about anything to be known, like pound down a buffalo testicle milkshake while wading up to their eyeballs in rattlesnakes for their fifteen minutes of fame, or shave a poodle for a slice of the high life. Anyone can be a millionaire now days, all you have to do is guess the right number, lie, cheat, or steal. The strange thing is that mass media has always been more than willing to provide jollies to the lowest common denominator. Television has become the universal brain sucking box, a wasteland and talent vacuum. All you have you have to do just is sit and stare while commercials even tell you what buy or how to dress and eat. Everything on the radio is recycled. Sex sells and the market is flooded, even 14-year- old girls strut their butts on myspace trying to get noticed as the next big diva. It has become a great game, to make the most money while doing the least amount work. Selling out is the most fashionable trend around. Quite the opposite can be said about America’s talented. Artists pump gas and writers wait tables.

It isn’t all that bleak in the world of creativity. Through hard work, perseverance, and a devotion to the point of obsession, some still manage to ride the crest to fame. Gov’t Mule’s Warren Haynes is a good example.

Jess Hopsicker: So you’re considered one of the top 100 guitar players of all time, what goes into garnering that sort of appreciation?

Warren Haynes: That’s a good question, I guess a question for Rolling Stone, I was very flattered, honored, to be on that list. I had no idea; our office got the call saying I made it but they don’t tell you what number you are, until the article came out. I just assumed I was number 100.

Warren Haynes: I felt lucky to be on it all. I was very honored had made it, there’s a lot of great people that made the list and a lot of great people that didn’t make it.

Let alone making 23, that is pretty impressive.

WH: I was very shocked yeah.

JH: It seems you give every once of yourself while you’re playing, is that your obligation as an artist?

WH: I don’t know if it is the responsibility as much it just seems to happen. People that are completely immersed in their art and hooked on what they do, just tend to do it, whether you owe to the public or not. It just seems to happen.

JH: You’re also one of the hardest working performers today, is it hard to be a creative person and an A Type personality at the same time?

WH: I think creativity goes in cycles so you have to maintain some sort of focus and drive. But knowing that you’re going to have spurts of creativity, and segments of time when you dont feel so inspired, you continue to do what you do and try to draw inspiration from somewhere. It’s funny because I can use song-writing as an example. I’ll go sometimes two or three months without writing anything. I’m not one of those people that write every day or every week. Every time I start second guessing myself and going, "when am I ever going to write another song, have I written my last song?" Then eventually the wave will come back around, and then I’ll write two or three in a row that I’m really into. I’ll feel excited again. After all this time, you would think I’d be used to it. But it still scares me every time it happens.

JH: That you think you’ll never be able to write anymore?

WH: You wonder. I’m hoping that it will never happen but whenever I go through a slump I always get those feelings, you know.

JH: But it’s better than getting too comfortable.

WH: It’s not good to be complacent, and artistically speaking you have constantly try and break new ground. Hopefully you can draw inspiration from different places, you never know exactly where to draw it from.

JH: What went into the creative process of becoming the person and musician you are today?

WH: When I was around six years old I heard black gospel music on the radio in North Carolina, and that was the first sound that made the hair on my arms stand up. I think from that moment foreword I had some sort of obsession with music. Then I discovered Soul music like James Brown, Temptations, Four Tops, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett. I started singing in the bedroom and spent hours and hours every day listening to music and singing along. Then I eventually discovered rock music like Hendrix, Cream and stuff like that, that’s when I wanted to play guitar. I never lost that desire to keep learning and keep getting better and better. Whereas, lot of the time you look around and the people that are playing music. You get tired of it and somebody else takes the place of that hobby, so to speak. It never felt like a hobby to me. It always felt like an obsession. As far as my career is concerned, I have been extremely lucky to have a career from the time I was sixteen. There have been lean years and there have been good years. But I have always maintained some sort of career. I think that’s mostly from just doing what I think is in my heart. Never second guess the marketplace. I don’t want to say compromise, life is full of compromises, but as far as compromising your integrity I have always tried not to do that and to just play music that I would go and pay to hear and make records that I would buy. That has always been my rule of thumb. Not worrying about chasing the trends. Jumping on whatever trend that’s happening at the moment. If you want longevity you’ve just got to do what you do and know that things move in cycles and waves and that your time will come. We’ve always just built an audience based on the type of music we love to play. Do what you do and whoever likes that approach will become part of it, you know.

JH: Does music today tend to lack that sort of wholeness that you have to offer?

WH: I think that there is a young generation of musicians and artists and people that just want to be celebrities that are willing to sell out at the drop of a hat. They just want to be famous and don’t care what it takes, whereas the generation that I grew up in, people were more concerned at being really good at what they do, than with being famous, not everyone, but a larger percentage. Now there are a really high percentage of people that just want to be famous and don’t care what they have to do to get there. That compromises the overall picture.

JH: You have been working rather closely will the jam environment, how is that working for you?

WH: That’s a scene that kind of just appeared one day and garnered some sort of staying power and grew and grew and grew. I’m glad that it did because even though Gov’t Mule is predominately a rock and roll band, there are a lot of things we have in common with the jam scene, mostly that we play a different set list every night and take a different approach to the songs night after night. Improvisation is the lifeboat of our music. We take a lot of roots music, as far as rock, blues, jazz reggae, soul, country, folk; all these things and mix it together to create whatever it is that Gov’t Mule does. But we’re very different than the average jam band. And I think that’s okay because I think the scene should include all types of root-oriented and improvisational music There’s no reason, you can’t hear an improvisational rock band on the same stage as a jazz, bluegrass, or reggae band. People who love music love all types of music and I think the thing that has made the jam scene so successful is the open-mindedness and the unwillingness to sell out to the corporate MTV force-fed type music world.

JH: Non-denominational.

WH: Pretty much, that’s a big concern. Nobody wants to be told what to listen to. People are entirely too intelligent to be told this is what they should listen to.

JH: though it seems we’re getting a lot of that lately.

WH: Yeah, all the way around though, not just music, but in everyday life, politics, and art. I think in some ways arts at an all time low, as far as how important it is in our society. It’s a scary indication of where we are as a society.

JH: Are you getting sick of Phil Lesh questions?

WH: No

JH: Are there any surprises in store for the Mountain Jam?

WH: Yeah there are some surprises that were going to announce eventually but we have to wait a little bit longer before we can legally announce them. There are some really good surprises coming up at the Mountain Jam.

JH: I believe that is just about it.

WH: You mean no Phil Lesh questions?

JH: Actually, no, I don’t have any.

WH: You just wanted to know if I was sick of it?

JH: Yeah.

WH: No. I’m not.

JH: Is there anything else we haven’t covered?

WH: Gov’t Mule is almost finished with a new CD that we’re hoping to have out in August, and were very excited about playing all of the new material, which we kinda started to do, I don’t know how much we’ll play between now and when the CD comes out, because we still want there to be some surprises. We’re very excited about that and I think it’s the best thing we’ve done, musically speaking, and from that point foreword we’re going to be doing a lot of touring.

JH: Excellent.