“I love my career in the Eagles, but I need some new material,” joked Don Henley at a listening party for Cass County, his first solo album in 15 years, at Capitol Studios’ famed Studio A in Hollywood Thursday night (June 18). “I do not want to spend the rest of my life being a jukebox.”
The Los Angeles event followed a similar gathering in Nashville last week during CMA Music Fest. Prior to a Q&A with Henley (conducted by Billboard and Yahoo contributor Chris Willman), I.R.S. Nashville president John Grady introduced eight selections from the 16-song set, including common-man anthem, “The Cost of Living,” featuring Merle Haggard, the sobering “Take A Picture of This,” about the dissolution of a baby boomer’s marriage, and the poignant “Words Can Break Your Heart,” featuring Trisha Yearwood, with whom Henley previously paired for Yearwood’s 1992 smash, “Walkaway Joe.”
Don Henley Previews Star-Studded New Album ‘Cass County’ in Nashville
In addition to Haggard and Yearwood, other guests include Dolly Parton, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride, Vince Gill, Alison Krauss, Lee Ann Womack and Ashley Monroe, but Henley, who wrote and recorded the bulk of the album in Nashville, balked at calling the set country. “I’ve been listening to country radio lately and I don’t know what that stuff is,” he said. “Country music has morphed into something I don’t recognize.”
Mick Jagger also drops by the album for a country turn that recalls Gram Parsons or Neil Young on the Tift Merritt-penned “Bramble Rose,” one of the few tunes on Cass County that Henley didn’t co-write with Stan Lynch. Lynch, former drummer for Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and longtime Henley collaborator, also co-produced the set with Henley. Of Jagger’s appearance, Henley said he thought to himself, “What’s the wackiest thing I could do?” on the country ballad, never expecting Jagger to say yes. Jagger recorded his verse in Los Angeles with Blue Note president/record producer Don Was, who was also in attendance.
Henley, who reminisced about recording backing vocals for Bob Seger’s “Against the Wind” in Studio A in the ‘70s, called Cass County an album “about home” and “the circular nature of life.” Henley grew up in Linden, Texas, the county seat of Cass County, population 30,000. The album was influenced by the music he heard growing up in Texas, but also the sounds and artists he heard, such as Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and George Jones, listening to the Louisiana Hayride radio show broadcast from Shreveport, La.
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Recording with some of his idols proved by turns inspiring and intimidating. Henley told Willman that he and Lynch “pushed [Haggard] too hard” in the studio, causing the legend to “rebel” before “getting the job done. We did that one with kid gloves.” Parton, accompanied by her female chauffeur and female hairdresser, quickly ran through her part on “When I Stop Dreaming,” originally a hit for The Louvin Bros. that she also performed with former singing partner, Porter Wagoner. As she got ready to record, Parton mentioned to Henley that the key was too high for her, but instead of requesting a change, she declared, “I guess I’m going to rare back and get it done,” and proceeded to do just that.
Among the other artists that Henley had hoped to get on the album were Jones, who passed away before he could participate, and fellow Texan Kacey Musgraves, whose touring duties never jibed with the recording schedule.
Speaking about the song “No, Thank You,” Henley explained how the Eagles fits into his life currently. The singer elaborated: “There’s a verse in the song that takes a little dig … You know, Rick Nelson put out a song called ‘Garden Party’ a long time ago about an experience he had at Madison Square Garden where he was trying to do some new material, and the audience started booing him because all they wanted to hear was what he had done in the past. And I love my career in the Eagles, and I really appreciate our fans, and God knows it’s a miracle we’ve been around this long. … I’ve got the best of both worlds, really. It’s wonderful to have the Eagles as the mother ship, and it’s wonderful to be able to go and do this other stuff.”
In addition to Lynch and Was, among those at the industry-only event were Henley’s longtime manager Irving Azoff, legendary producer/manager John Boylan (who Henley has known since they worked with Linda Ronstadt together in the early ‘70s), Capitol Music Group EVP Greg Thompson and screenwriter Mitch Glazer and his wife, actress Kelly Lynch.
Though no release date has been set, Cass County is expected to come out in early fall on Capitol Records, with I.R.S. Nashville handling any potential singles going to country radio. Though Grady stopped short of saying Henley’s duet with McBride, the uptempo, spirited “That Old Flame,” would definitely be a single, he pointedly commented that he could certainly imagine hearing it on country radio.
Henley’s last solo album, 2000’s Inside Job, peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard 200.