One More Saturday Mule

"The face you make when the Mule are kicking your ass and you're loving every minute."

For the third time since 2017, Gov’t Mule performed at the Great South Bay Music

Festival in Patchogue. The first show was blazing headlining set, featuring a guest spot

from Paul Nelson and G. Love. 2023 was another great “Dark Side of the Mule”

performance. Saturday found them as the headliner, but doing a “festival style” single

set once again. This meant ten songs, as opposed to the 17 and 18 they have been

playing so far on this tour. That was disappointing, since they sounded as good as ever

on a beautiful Long Island evening.

The silver lining is that 10 Mule tunes are as long as many bands’ entire show. The set

was all old-school Mule, with most songs coming from the first decade of their career.

They opened with a searing “Bad Little Doggie” and didn’t let up until the show-closing

“Soulshine.”

“Lay Your Burden Down” featured some great bass work from Kevin Scott. In this

reviewer’s humble opinion, he is the best player the band has had since the passing of

Allen Woody in 2000. The bottom end was deep and thunderous, as it should be.

“Slackjaw Jezebel” featured some great call and response from he and Haynes.

Terrance Higgins, who has become the band’s full-time replacement for Matt Abts, did

some great work on the song and seems to be far more comfortable behind the kit than

he was a year ago. “Game Face” contained a full “Mountain Jam” in the middle, to the

delight of the increasingly enthusiastic Saturday crowd. After sating them with an

Allmans cover, they followed “Beautifully Broken” up with a Dead tune. Bruce Hornsby,

whose set preceded the Mule’s, guested, while Warren broke out Jerry Garcia’s Doug

Irwin “Wolf” guitar. John Mailander also joined in on fiddle. Unfortunately, Hornsby didn’t

seem to be mic’d properly, since his vocals were barely audible even standing twenty

feet from the stage. But it made for a nice sing-a-long and the crowd ate up every

minute of it. “Funny Little Tragedy” featured Danny Louis stepping out from behind the

keyboards to join Haynes on guitar. Wearing a Ramones shirt, his banging out chords

seemed additionally appropriate. The song also featured a long portion of the Police’s

“Message in a Bottle” in the middle with Haynes doing his best Sting on vocals.

“Thorazine Shuffle” and “Mule” were everything you’d want them to be. Both tunes, from

the band’s earliest days still sounded fresh after all these years. Knowing that they had

a set finish time, it seemed inevitable that the show would end with “Soulshine.” They

tore it up as always and as the evening wound down, Haynes flashed a peace sign to

the crowd and was gone. The band will return to the Tri-state area in September with a

show at Pier 17 with Ziggy Marley. As always, do not miss.

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