Don Henley Solo Tour 2004/2005

Clearwater, FL

Don Henley will be appearing at the Ruth Eckard Hall on June 26th. If you will be going to the show or have questions about the show, hit the comments button below and add a message.

Flyin' Solo (St. Pete Times)

Flying solo
After four years of touring with the reunited Eagles, Don Henley just wants to be himself for a while, starting with a concert tonight in Clearwater.
By JANET ZINK, Times Staff Writer
Published June 26, 2004

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Don Henley hasn't recorded new material in four years, but that doesn't mean he has been sitting around doing nothing.

He has toured the past four years with the Eagles, to rave reviews from fans. As a founding member of the Recording Artists Coalition, he has lobbied government officials about the threat of music industry and broadcast monopolies to artists; in February, the Washington Post published an article he wrote on the subject. He has raised money for environmental organizations he founded. He is working to restore historic buildings in the small Texas town where he grew up.

Today, he begins a two-month solo tour with a concert at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater.

Why tour after finishing 13 gigs with the Eagles in May when he's not trying to sell an album?

"I want to work some more. I want to do some of my solo stuff. I want to not be an Eagle for a while," Henley said this week by telephone from his home near Dallas.

Henley also said he wants to perform while the performing's still good.

"I don't know how much longer this is going to go on," he said. "I'm going to be 57 years old next month. I don't want to be doing this into my geriatric years.

"Right now, I'm healthy, I'm in very good shape, and I want to go out and play."

A portion of proceeds from ticket sales goes to the Walden Woods Project, an organization he founded in the mid 1980s to protect the place in Massachusetts where Henry David Thoreau wrote Walden, which contains the author's now-famous theories on conservation.

Henley also established the Caddo Lake Institute in 1993 to preserve 30,000 acres of wetlands on the Texas-Louisiana border surrounding a lake near his hometown of Gilmer, Texas.

Henley said all the lobbying and fundraising makes him feel like the people he loves to skewer in his songs.

"I'm just like politicians who don't have time to do their jobs because they're always out fundraising for the next election," he said.

Henley declined to talk about politics.

"I have a lot of opinions and a lot of information," he said. "I subscribe to almost every political publication, even some very right wing publications."

But, he said, he'd rather not make anyone angry right now.

Two of his classic songs have become particularly relevant in the past year. Pop-punkers the Ataris last year made The Boys of Summer a hit single for the second time. And with the death of Ronald Reagan, fans remembered that Henley referred to the former president as "this tired old man that we elected king" in his poignant The End of the Innocence.

"People are still attracted to myth and illusion in this country. That's why they go to the movies," Henley said. "Ronald Reagan and the people around him were very good at bringing the Hollywood illusion to the public, and the public bought it, hook, line and sinker."

Don Henley performs at 8 tonight at Ruth Eckerd Hall, 1111 McMullen-Booth Road, Clearwater. Tickets are $70.50-$90.50. (727) 791-7400 or toll-free 1-800-875-8682.

Henley reaches back for string of chart-toppers (St. Petersburg Times)

By JANET ZINK, Times Staff Writer
Published June 27, 2004

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CLEARWATER - Don Henley kicked off his summer solo tour at Ruth Eckerd Hall on Saturday with a career retrospective focusing largely on his work without his Eagles bandmates.

Henley, who handles drumming duties for the Eagles, spent the show at center stage, armed only with a guitar, microphone or tambourine. His slightly raspy voice was in top form, ranging from smooth to sweet to soulful.

Dressed in an untucked plaid shirt and drab olive pants, Henley started out with Dirty Laundry, bringing the 2,100-plus fans in the soldout theater to their feet.

After three solo tunes, a fan yelled out a request for Hotel California, and he answered: "Let me take care of this right now. Do you really think I'm going to do a concert and not do Hotel California?"

He did, however, make the crowd wait until the end before performing the 1970s classic, along with Life in the Fast Lane.

On the way there, he unleashed a slew of solo hits true to their recorded versions: Sunset Grill, his paeon to small towns; The End of the Innocence, an anthem to disillusionment; and Heart of the Matter, a romantic ballad that dissects the emotions that linger after a relationship ends.

Halfway through the set, Henley covered two songs by Paul Simon and Randy Newman, who he said were a couple of his favorite songwriters. Before playing Newman's Political Science, a campy number that proposes blowing up every country on earth except Australia, which would be turned into a theme park, he said, "I like to envision this as a duet by Bush and Cheney . . . Broadway style, with top hats and canes."

He followed that with Simon's American Tune, which laments the crushing of American idealism.

There were no surprises in this show. The band, featuring Stuart Smith on guitar, who also toured with Eagles, and Rob Ladd on drums, displayed the polished musicianship and perfectly blended backing harmonies one would expect to accompany an artist of Henley's stature.

And Henley gave the people what they wanted: reliable readings of numbers they knew and could sing along with.

Quirky folk guitarist Jill Sobule, promoting her new album, The Folk Years, opened the show with a 20-minute. She clearly won over the audience, most of whom seemed unfamiliar with her, with her sweet-voiced love songs that alternated between achingly tender, goofy and vicious.

Jamie and Tressa (Fan Review)

Don started his summer tour in Clearwater, Florida tonight at Ruth Eckerd Hall, which has some of the best acoustics in the country. He was in a good mood, joking with the crowd all night long. At the beginning of the show some guy kept screaming for Hotel California and Don said, “let me take care of this right now. Do you think I’d ever do a concert without Hotel California?”

The set list was as follows. Just might not be in the exact order, since we wrote it on the back of the ticket and writing in the dark isn’t so easy.

Dirty Laundry

Sit Down Your Rocking the Boat

Everything Is Different Now

Sunset Grill

Taking You Home

Said he brought his son with him on this tour and that he was in Orlando “riding everything over there”. Said his wife was crying one night when Will was playing the drums and said she was upset because he was so good and he was going to be in the music business and women would be throwing themselves all over him, to which Don said, “works for me”. Then quickly changed it to “wrong tense, I meant worked.”

Witchy Woman

New York Minute

Last Worthless Evening

I’ll Be ______ Lovin’ You

Before this song commented on Ray Charles and how bad the music they called country these days was. How the “hat acts” hadn’t been as close to the rear end of a horse as him. Some lady in the audience said he looked like a cowboy in his western shirt. He said he looked more like a cross between a cowboy and some military crap. Said he’d been considering doing a country blues album for some time.

Political Science

Said he envisioned this song as a duet with Bush and Cheney. It was written by Randy Newman and talks about dropping bombs on the rest of the world and making them American.

So Far From Home ?

By Paul Simon

Boys of Summer

Life in the Fast Lane

End of the Innocence

Kind of acoustic with Steuart playing some little instrument, didn’t really look like a mandolin.

All She Wants to Do Is Dance

I Will Not Go Quietly

Hotel California

My Thanksgiving.

No Desperado!!! Before My Thanksgiving, he introduced the band and said they were “all good fellers. Because when you’ve been on the road for 40 years you don’t travel with assholes.” Then said, “well, maybe, never mind”. Wonder who he meant?

We were so happy that Scott Crago was the drummer this time. The rest of the band was Steuart Smith, Mike Thompson, Will Hollis, Lance (bass player) and Frank Simes.

Definitely one of Don’s best solo performances!

Jamie & Tressa