USA TODAY: Don Henley: Music ‘keeps me from going nuts’
Brian Mansfield, USA TODAY 10:54 a.m. EDT September 23, 2015
Don Henley (Photo: Danny Clinch)
NASHVILLE — In No, Thank You, a song from his new Cass County album, Don Henley offers his perspective on days gone by: “Though nostalgia is fine, I respectfully decline to spend my future in the past.” Henley’s been telling people this, in one way or another, since at least The Boys of Summer in 1984 — “Don’t look back, you can never look back.”
“The point is that it’s okay to look back, you just don’t want to live back there,” Henley, 68, says. “You look back in order to see where you’ve been so that you can appreciate where you are now, and maybe where you’re going.”
And yet, Henley, who received a lifetime-achievement award from the Americana Music Association last week in Nashville, does look back on his first solo album in 15 years, out Friday. Named after his home county in the northeast corner of Texas bordering Louisiana and Arkansas, the emotional but unsentimental album draws on the music and the land of Henleys’ youth, but it doesn’t dwell there.
Cass County draws on the variety of musical styles Henley heard over the airwaves on stations such as New Orleans’ WNOE-AM, which introduced Henley to that city’s R&B sounds. In the summer, when Henley and his father would drive to the auto-parts store he owned in the next county, they’d listen to Shreveport, La., station KWKH-AM, which broadcast the Louisiana Hayride barn-dance show where acts such as Hank Williams, Kitty Wells, George Jones and a young Elvis Presley performed.
“We’d hear all that music,” Henley says. “That was a big part of my growing up.”
Henley and collaborator Stan Lynch started what became Cass County by recording a series of cover tunes that included a favorite first heard on KWKH, the Louvin Brothers’ 1955 hit When I Stop Dreaming. Henley recorded his version as a duet with Dolly Parton.
“She comes in and goes, ‘I know this song; I used to do it with Porter (Wagoner),'” Henley says. ” She sings it once, and she goes, ‘Mmm, it’s in a pretty high key for me. I guess I’ll just have to rare back and get it.’ And, boy, she did. What a voice that girl has, coming out of such a small person.”
Parton’s one of many high-profile guests on Cass County. The album opens with a version of singer-songwriter Tift Merritt’s Bramble Rose on which Henley trades parts with Mick Jagger and Miranda Lambert.
“The song reminds me of the Stones country period, like Wild Horses and Dead Flowers, when they were hanging out with Gram Parsons from the Burrito Brothers,” Henley says.
Henley also duets with Merle Haggard on an original called The Cost of Living and Martina McBride on That Old Flame, while Vince Gill, Alison Krauss, Lucinda Williams, Trisha Yearwood and others lend musical support elsewhere.
“I think this was the most enjoyable record I’ve ever made,” Henley says. “At this point in my life, I wouldn’t say songwriting has become easier, but it has become less traumatic for me. I’m not as afraid. I’m not paralyzing myself by trying too hard. I’ve been through that, where I raised the bar too high and I couldn’t meet it. This time, I went a little easier on myself: ‘Just be honest and write what comes out.’ It worked out fine.”
Recorded in Nashville, Los Angeles and Dallas, where Henley lives, Cass County draws on country music the way Eagles hits like Lyin’ Eyes did, rooted in the style’s traditions without sounding quite like anyone else.
“It’s not a country album; it’s not necessarily an Americana album,” he says. “It’s a Don Henley album.”
So Take a Picture of This is a classically structured ballad with a twist at the end, and Train in the Distance uses a familiar symbol to represent “dreams of far-off places and other lives to be led.”
Praying for Rain, one of the album’s most impressive pieces of song craft, offers a farmer’s perspective on changing weather patterns. A song that could have taken a smug, polemic tone instead assumes that humility is always better than hubris when approaching such things.
Don Henley will release “Cass County,” his first solo album in 15 years, this Friday. (Photo: Danny Clinch)
“I had to be very careful with that song, and I did it deliberately because I live in Texas,” Henley says. “I’m aware of the politics, and I’m aware of all the controversy surrounding climate change. I worked hard on that song so it might reach people who would otherwise not listen to what it has to say. We’ll see how that goes.”
Henley had Cass County mostly finished a year ago but delayed its release until after his tour with the Eagles, which completed a two-year run this summer.
“I know those songs are part of the fabric and wallpaper of the lives of millions of people all over the world,” he says. “I’m happy to do them, but I’ve got to do something else. That’s why I have this solo career.
“People ask me, why are you still doing this at your age? It’s because I have to. Not from a financial standpoint but for my sanity. That’s what I do, from a creative standpoint. It is now second in importance to me to being a father and a family man, but it’s still of great importance to me. It keeps me from going nuts.”
Henley has other projects in mind for the future. “I’d like to do a more autobiographical album,” he says. “I’d like to do kind of a soul-funk album.” He’s considering writing his autobiography, though he doesn’t want to shop the book until he finishes it.
“I’m not going to take a big check and have a deadline,” he says. “I’m not good with deadlines.”
Also, Henley and Glenn Frey are continuing to develop a Broadway production based on the Eagles catalog. “That’s tricky stuff, that musical thing,” Henley says. “Several people that I highly respect have tried and failed. We want to learn more than we know now about the process and how to make it work.” While such a musical would take years to get to the stage, “that’s somewhere down the pike.”
Given that he’ll be in his 80s if he waits another 15 years to release his next album, Henley’s aware that he needs to step up the pace of his output.
“I’m going to have to find some wonder drug to keep me alive 40 or 50 years to get all this stuff done.”