Gov’t Mule Welcomes Reeves Gabrels, Debuts ZZ Top Cover In Schenectady

Gov’t Mule initiated their New Year’s Eve run on Sunday at Proctor’s in Schenectady, New York ahead of two concerts at the Beacon Theatre in NYC tonight and tomorrow. Warren Haynes and company unveiled a ZZ Top cover and welcomed renowned guitarist Reeves Gabrels (David Bowie, The Cure) for the three-song encore in upstate New York.

Mule launched the concert with the staple “Bad Little Doggie.” The initial stages of the show saw the quartet — Haynes, multi-instrumentalist Danny Louis, bassist Kevin Scott and drummer Terence Higgins — visiting Gov’t Mule’s 2006 album High & Mighty. The band performed the LP’s “Brand New Angel” and “Unring The Bell,” with the latter getting an 11-minute treatment.

Six songs into the opening salvo, Mule unveiled a take on ZZ Top’s “Neighbor, Neighbor.” Haynes led the band through the song appearing on the legendary rockers’ aptly named 1971 debut ZZ Top’s First Album and also peeled off some spicy licks on the Top number. The first frame concluded with “Shake Our Way Out,” off Gov’t Mule’s most recent studio album Peace… Like A River, and the Ann Peebles-recorded “Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody’s Home.”

Round two began with the classic “Thorazine Shuffle” off Mule’s 1998 record, Dose. The second set also contained Dose cut “Larger Than Life.” Covers in set two included Savoy Brown‘s “Street Corner Talking” and Allen Toussaint‘s “From A Whisper To A Scream.” Haynes and company wrapped the frame with a substantial rendition of “Mule.”

Frequent Gov’t Mule collaborator Reeves Gabrels joined the band to kick off the all-covers encore with Alice Cooper‘s “Is It My Body,” a staple for Mule early on but a rarity of late. Gabrels then had some fretboard fireworks in store for Humble Pie-recorded “I Don’t Need No Doctor.” The concert concluded with a rendering of the Faces favorite “Stay With Me,” Mule’s first performance of the song since 2018.

Check out video from the Gabrels sit-in below: