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Denver Post


Article Last Updated: 6/06/2005 06:57 PM

music
Eagle casts eye on boosting town

By Eric R. Danton
The Hartford Courant
DenverPost.com

While there's a lull in the personality conflict known as the Eagles, Don Henley has found other ways to keep busy.

There's his current tour with Stevie Nicks, for one. He hopes to find some time in July to record songs for a solo record. And he's involved in historical preservation, particularly in Linden, the small East Texas town where Henley grew up. (Linden is also the birthplace of jazz pioneer Scott Joplin and blues great T-Bone Walker.)

"I think it's a natural outgrowth of my interest in environmental work," says Henley, a Dallas resident. "I think history and beauty is worth preserving, whether it's in the natural world or whether it's man-made."

He returned to Texas from Southern California in the '90s after an earthquake destroyed his house. Henley, who turns 58 next month, says Texas also is a better place to raise his three children, ages 5, 7 and 9.

"I wanted them to grow up in the territory where I grew up," he says. "When you see kids in high school with Gucci handbags and cellphones driving Mercedes convertibles, it's a little disconcerting."

Such things aren't in great supply in Linden. The town of 2,400 in the northeastern corner of Texas is part of the poorest county in the state, Henley says, and times have been tough recently.

"It's suffered, like a lot of small towns across the country; it has suffered a severe economic decline, to no small extent because of the proliferation of chain stores and superstores," he says.

There's only so much the singer and songwriter (and drummer) can do about that, but he's playing an active role in restoring the town center, including what he says is the oldest operating courthouse in Texas and some nearby buildings.

"I'm going to restore them to their original condition," he says. "I'd say these buildings average around 85 or 90 years old, some of them, and we're going to restore those and see if we can get some viable businesses in there."

He'll need to monitor the restoration from afar starting in August, when the Eagles begin a three-month trip through California as part of the band's ongoing farewell tour.

"This may be the final stage of it," he says. "This may be the final stage, period, of the whole thing. Some people in the group are talking about retirement."

Talking about it doesn't necessarily mean it will happen.

"It's just a big dance, and I've danced it," Henley says. "It's specific to that strange and rare species called the rock band. There's nothing like it."

The band might record a new album, which would likely stave off retirement for a bit longer. Henley isn't sure.

"I could spend July working on the elusive Eagles album." If he gets indications in the next few weeks that that won't happen, he'll work on his own album.

Henley says he hopes his preservation work and musical interests intersect someday on an album of regional and historical songs.

"There's a lot of history down there to be unearthed and uncovered."