The modern country singer Don Henley called authentic: “Bless his heart”
The version of country music that Don Henley grew up with tends to look a lot different from what’s going on in Nashville today.
As much as people like the idea of working with seasoned veterans and getting the best tunes that anyone’s ever asked for, the country music that populates the charts tends to be a lot more synthetic than what Henley remembered, usually relying on the kind of production you wouldn’t find that out of place on a standard pop tune. But Henley always knew that the legends were out there somewhere; you just needed to know where to look for them.
Then again, what Henley has done since Eagles was never classified as truly country in every sense of the word. There were many tunes that could be considered country tunes on Eagles records like ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’ and ‘Desperado’, but it’s not like those same people who loved Dolly Parton and Waylon Jennings were going to become instant converts to the California rockers the minute they heard ‘Hotel California’.
It all came down to the way that Henley thought the song should be presented, and when listening to his solo work, Americana is probably the best description to use for it. The tunes are beautifully written and show vivid pictures of what life in America is like for blue-collar workers, and when it comes to the greatest names in country music, that mattered far more than tunes about drinking beer and the pleasures of owning a truck.
Because if we’re being totally realistic here, the kind of music that Henley helped foster on the charts never truly went away. There are plenty of bands that flirt between being country and heartland rock, depending on which song they are playing, but whereas someone like Jason Isbell or even Ruston Kelly would be considered alternative country at this point, Jamey Johnson was doing everything that Henley hoped a country singer could.
Despite having a few songs on the country charts like ‘In Color’, a lot of his best songs tend to be rooted in more traditional heroes like Johnny Cash than anything close to the Florida Georgia Lines of the world. He was studying the old ways the same way that Jack White did when putting together The White Stripes, and Henley felt that was the voice that he needed on his side when making his own records.
And while Cass County did benefit from having legends like Mick Jagger and Dolly Parton on it, Henley couldn’t help but get hints of country music’s past when listening to Johnson, saying, “George Jones, with all the troubles he had, there’s an authenticity to that that you hear in that voice. The nearest thing we’ve got to that is Jamey Johnson, which is why I put him on my album. I said, ‘Well, if I can’t have George, bless his heart he’s gone, I’ll get Jamey Johnson because he’s the nearest thing.’”
But that has a lot less to do with the raw sound of Johnson’s voice than you would think. It’s one thing to get someone that sings specifically with that retro style, but as opposed to a band that Greta Van Fleet that openly copies their influences, Johnson feels like a child of all of them and is finding that comfortable middle ground, having the authority of George Jones with the gruffness of people like Merle Haggard.
And if Henley wanted to see country music change for the better, he hoped to see more people like Johnson taking the reins for the old guard. While Johnson has had a variety of health issues that sidelined him for a few years, people like Chris Stapleton are certainly happy to fly that flag for authentic country singers in the modern age.
