Monday, October 12, 2015

Heartbreak and Old Flames, The Cass County Tour


Don Henley and his Cass County Tour arrived at the Los Angeles Forum last Friday night. I told Mary Kit before we got the tickets, "I don't want you to be disappointed with this show because we might be listening to cowboy music all night." MK is more of an All She Wants To Do Is Dance  kind of gal, but we are both huge Eagles and Don Henley solo career fans and jumped at the chance to see him. Without getting too involved here, let's just say Don has that special gift as a songwriter to make you feel that his words are your life. MK and I are obviously not unique in this feeling as this has been a key to his success. As for us, no other musician has tapped into that personal well of emotion more than Don Henley.
And speaking of relationships, Henley had the magic to add Shawn Colvin as his opening act on this tour. She is one of my favorite artists and I will reserve a future blog to just focus on her music. I recommend you go buy her new album, Uncovered. It is her second cover from another wonderful group of songwriters. Shawn setup this concert evening perfectly when she said that she basically writes, "breakup songs" and said, she loves the line by Trisha Yearwood that "sad songs make me so happy."

With that, we tap into the musical mind of Don Henley and his genius to entertain a full house at the Fabulous Forum with a crafted mix of his solo career, theme-selected covers and new songs. The new album pays country homage to his youth in Linden, Texas listening to music on the radio at home and in the car with his dad. The concert starts with about 30 old radios of various shapes and sizes hung from the ceiling with a spot light. The spot-lighted radios are synchronized moving quickly from one radio to the next with audio of an old radio dial changing stations, playing classic radio sound bites from the 40's to the early 70's.

Cass County has debuted at Number 1 on the Country charts and as Henley described during the concert, this is nothing short of "a miracle." But, as a (not in a box) rock legend, Mr. Henley knows a thing or two about making hits. He brings in a line up of home run hitters including, Mick Jagger, Miranda Lambert, Merle Haggard, Vince Gill, Martina McBride, Alison Krauss, Trisha Yearwood, Dolly Parton, Lucinda Williams and Stevie Nicks. If you're like me, you'd buy the album on the harmony vocals alone!

Here is the Set List of the Cass County Tour. Explore my Radio, Don Henley and the Cass County Tour YouTube Playlist below with most of the 2015 tour set list order. I was able to video corral the Cass County songs from the album (except the bonus track of the Jackson Browne song, Here Comes Those Tears Again. I will add that to this playlist when it comes to YouTube). I've also ended the playlist with a couple of recent interviews that I think you will enjoy.




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