Year of The Mule comes to an end….Welcome to the Voodoo Lounge! Same band, same venue, most of the same people I am sure, just one year later. Oh, the difference a year makes. Ushering in 2004 with the theme Year of The Mule set the bar pretty high for Gov’t Mule. Now as we look back on 2004 we can see that in fact it was a pretty big year for the band. In the past year Gov’t Mule released a new studio album, played their 1000th show while in San Francisco and celebrated their 10th Anniversary while in New Orleans. Touring allowed them to return to Canada on the fall tour and the West Coast not once but on two separate tours. They were asked to join Kid Rock on his national tour and to return to Bonnaroo to play in front of 50,000 people. In 2004 Gov’t Mule headlined Red Rocks for the first time to support “Rock The Vote.” Mule also spent some time in cyberspace as they redesigned their webpage WWW.MULE.NET and also launched MULE TRACKS, their digital download program. When it comes to old friends and new, 2004 was no different then years gone by. Here is a partial list of the folks that sat in with Gov’t Mule: Gregg Allman Mike Barnes Rob Barraco Bonerama Jeff Chementi Karl Denson Dirty Dozen Brass Band Neal Evans Roger Fisher Marc Ford Audley Freed Corey Glover Gomez Smokey Greenwell Mike Hampton Ben Harper Eddie Harsch Mickey Hart JoJo Hermann Hook Herrera Ron Holloway Gordie Johnson Kevn Kinney Wacek Kozlowski Eric Krasno Bill Kreutzman Phil Lesh Cyrus Madden Zigaboo Modeliste John Mooney Muruga Charlie Musselwhite Ivan Neville Lee Roy Parnell Jack Pearson John Popper Mickey Rafael Chris Robinson Rich Robinson Rob Somerville Jimmy Vivino Bob Weir Bernie Worrell Jeff Young Drew Zingg Of course, not content to settle for all that, Warren Haynes let no experience slip away in 2004. In wanting to have no regrets, he had one of, if not the hardest working schedules of his career in 2004. While not playing with Gov’t Mule he did his regular runs with the brothers Allman, was asked to join The Dead for their summer tour, released his first solo acoustic performance album “Live At Bonnaroo” and performed solo acoustic dates based around its release. It seemed the press took notice of Gov’t Mule in 2004 as well. They graced the magazine covers of Hittin’ The Note, and An Honest Tune, along with numerous expected smaller stories and sidebars in newspapers and magazines across the country. Warren Haynes also garnered some press attention himself as he was featured in Rolling Stone and The New York Times Sunday Arts & Leisure section.