As the American Southern rock jam band Gov’t Mule prepares to release their twelfth studio album, Peace… Like A River, the group has released one final teaser: their newest single, “Made My Peace.” Listen to the new single via the official visualizer below.
The band’s leader, Warren Haynes, has a history of drawing from, and performing alongside, legendary rock artists. Recently Haynes has performed at Willie Nelson’s 90th birthday and at the CMT Music Awards’ Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute and is featured on Dolly parton’s upcoming Rockstar album. For this latest single “Made My Peace,” Haynes drew inspiration from The Beatles. John Lennon often double-tracked his vocals in their recordings, which Haynes replicates in this new song, as well as incorporating a harmony slide guitar inspired by George Harrison.
As for the meaning of the song, none describe it better than Haynes himself. “‘Made My Peace’ is one of the first songs we recorded for this new album,” he says. “It deals with a lot of different aspects of what we’ve all gone through. It touches on the emotions I was having to get past with the loss of my dad, who was an extremely important figure in my life. There are several songs that reflect on loss, but more in a way of making the future count. Taking the rest of your life and looking at it with a fresher, more aggressively positive attitude.”
The upcoming album explores the massive changes the world has experienced in the past few years. Haynes says that the album calls upon “the golden era of rock, soul, jazz and blues,” and Gov’t Mule combines it all to create an album that easily could have been released in the 1970s.