Article Contributed by Gabriel David Barkin
Published on February 15, 2026
Warren Haynes | San Francisco, CA | February 13th, 2026 | photos by Gabriel David Barkin
Warren Haynes performed solo at the historic Fillmore Auditorium on Friday night as part of his “Winter of Warren” tour. “You wonder what I’m doing here,” he told the adoring crowd before setting high expectations:
“Whatever happens, man.”
Haynes went a bit deeper describing his expectations for this brief solo tour when I talked with him last month. “[Playing solo] is a whole different approach. It’s like featuring the singer-songwriter side of what I do. There’s not a ton of room for virtuoso guitar playing – although I try to do as much guitar playing as possible over the course of the night. It’s really more about the songs and my voice. And shining a light on where [the songs] started out before they became band arrangements.”
He added that the solo shows on this tour would be “really fun – because I can draw from so many different aspects of my career.” And yes indeed, he played songs on Friday that touched on nearly every facet of his storied résumé, including stints with the Allman Brothers (“Come On Into My Kitchen” and “End of the Line”), the Dead (“Brokedown Palace”), and of course Gov’t Mule (“Beautifully Broken” among others). He paid tribute to his longtime collaborator Col. Bruce Hampton with “Endless Parade.” He sang several songs from his solo albums Ashes & Dust and Man in Motion.
An hour before the show, I got wind that there was a special guest in the house. Jerry Garcia’s 1943 Martin D-28 was in town for the evening and expected to make a surprise appearance. The Martin has been busy lately, having appeared on stage in the hands of Jeff Mattson at a Dark Star Orchestra show in Oakland just last weekend. Haynes played the “guest” guitar for several songs to open each of the two hour-long sets, telling the crowd that, “The fine folks that brought it asked me if I wanted to play it, and I said sure.”
Kudos to Andy Logan, founder of Grateful Guitars Foundation*, for sharing the use of this vintage treasure. The Martin is the guitar Garcia used to record “Ripple,” as well as several of the acoustic cuts on the live album Bear’s Choice (History of the Grateful Dead, Volume One). Garcia also loaned this guitar to Peter Rowan to play on the “Old & In the Way” sessions in 1973. We’re talking history, man! (* Grateful Guitars is a 501-c3 nonprofit that obtains world-class musical instruments for talented players who seek to carry on the tradition of jam band music into the 21st century and beyond.)
That Martin guitar was just one aspect that made the evening special. The floor at the Fillmore is virtually always a GA standing thing. Other than at private events (for instance the annual Rex Foundation benefit), I’ve only seen chairs on the floor one other time on my innumerable visits to the Fillmore over the past four decades. This was in fact the first time I’ve ever seen chairs laid out in rows like a theater, as opposed to cocktail tables set up for a more formal affair. About 300 patrons had seated tickets, and the rest of the audience on the floor stood on the sides and behind the seating area.
The seating arrangement was likely a strategy to get people to pay attention to the music. If that was the intent, it seems to have worked. The sold-out crowd on Friday was quiet and courteous during Haynes’ performance – other than the occasional, well-earned “Woo!”
Between songs however, Haynes bantered freely with the audience. One fan (okay, that just may have been my wife) shouted out, “This is so special!” Haynes responded with a thank you, and then added, “You mean like that song ‘Creep’ special?” He teased Radiohead fans by singing a single line from the 90s alt-rock hit: “I wish I was special!”
After switching from Garcia’s Martin to his own red Gibson ES-335 a few songs into the first set, Haynes stripped Elton John’s “Madman Across the Water” down to its bare-bones blues roots. With sparse accompaniment on the electric guitar, the singer’s voice took center stage. Haynes has an enticing mixture of smooth and smoky timbres and a range that reaches high on the scales while diving deep into the listener’s soul. Although he played several instrumental solos throughout the night, the intimacy of the solo performance provided an opportunity for fans to focus on Haynes’ expressive vocal stylings.
Other cover song interpretations followed suit. The second set included George Harrison’s “Give Me Love, Give Me Peace” and an inspirational version of Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic.” Haynes told the audience the latter was a song he asked the Allman Brothers to learn so they could play it at Bill Graham’s memorial concert at Madison Square Garden in 1991. At this point, it’s worth quoting Haynes’ entire introduction to “Mystic”:
“The Allman Brothers always gave Bill credit for basically helping to put them over … In the old days, the Allman Brothers would play Fillmore East, then they’d get on a plane and fly to San Francisco and play Fillmore West, and then they’d get on a plane and fly to New York and play Fillmore East. And they just kept doing that because Bill Graham was like, ‘I’m going to break you motherfuckers. I’m going to break you hard. I’m going to turn all the people on to the music.’”
The gem among gems, cover-wise, was Haynes’ take on John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero.” Again choosing a spare guitar arrangement, Haynes let Lennon’s revolutionary vibe flow directly and vigorously from his gut to the mic.
Make no mistake though, guitars were shredded. This is Warren Haynes, after all! Playing slide on a Gibson Les Paul to close the first set, the guitarist began with the intro riff from Led Zeppelin’s “In My Time of Dying” before segueing into a plaintive “Come On Into My Kitchen.” After the second chorus of the Robert Johnson song that was a staple of Allman Brothers’ setlists, Haynes kicked up the tempo and jumped into “Look On Yonder Wall,” a blues standard made famous by Elmore James. Haynes stroked the strings with his slide to punctuate the Fillmore atmosphere with tremolo-laced cannonballs.
To introduce his own song “Forsaken Savior” (released on Gov’t Mule’s Shout!), Haynes reflected on the lyrics that some may feel were prescient regarding a certain current U.S. president. One of the lines, for instance, asks, “Are you scared the world will never sing your praises?”
“You write a song and you think you know what it’s about, and then you discover years later, oh, maybe I was wrong.” He paused for a beat before continuing. “And I hate when I’m proven wrong. So this song, when I wrote it, was absolutely not about Donald Trump. I wrote it a long, long time ago, and it did not enter my mind — and that’s the way I would prefer it to be.”
For the first of two encores, Haynes introduced “Railroad Boy,” noting that Gov’t Mule had recorded a rocking, boisterous version of the Appalachian folk ballad on their By a Thread album. He announced that the version he was about to play was in a lower key than the Mule version, and more in keeping with the song’s roots. “You’ll get a better picture of where it came from.”
The standing room crowd around the seats was allowed to rush the stage for the second encore, and everyone in the Fillmore stood for Haynes’ rendition of Leonard Cohen’s achingly brutal “Hallelujah.” Despite the song’s somber lyrics, it was an exultant and triumphant close to a night that reflected the intimate relationship between the singer and his devoted fans.
Set 1:
Brokedown Palace
Is It Me or You?
Dreams and Songs
Beautifully Broken
Madman Across the Water
A Friend to You
Fallen Down
Come On Into My Kitchen (In My Time of Dying intro) >
Look on Yonder Wall
Set 2:
Give Me Love, Give Me Peace
Endless Parade
Into the Mystic
Old Friend
Working Class Hero
Forsaken Savior
This Life As We Know It
Real, Real Love
End of the Line
Encore 1:
Railroad Boy
Encore 2:
Hallelujah
