At Don's shows, you'll easily spot those who have yet to hear his songs; upon first experiencing them, the listener is often moved to laughter or tears, sometimes both at the same time! And everyone leaves humming, because Don Henry songs stay with you.
Billboard's Ken Schlager chose Don's debut album "Wild In The Backyard" as one of 1991's Top Ten records. So did Larry McClain of BAM magazine. Rolling Stone liked it enough to profile Don in their "New Faces" column. Enthusiastic reviews also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Stereo Review, the Gavin Report, and several major daily newspapers.
Don moved from the bay area to Nashville in 1979 and after a couple years of odd jobs he landed a gig as the tape copy/librarian for Tree Publishing Company. After a four-year education of cataloging some of the best songs by some of the best songwriters in Nashville, Don's own songs started getting recorded and he landed a job as a full-time staff songwriter for Tree. Ray Charles, Conway Twitty, the Oak Ridge Boys, T.G. Sheppard, John Conlee and Kathy Mattea are just a few who recorded Don's songs during this period.
Then in 1990, Don and Jon Vezner received song of the year awards for co-writing Mattea's critically acclaimed hit, "Where've You Been". They won the Grammy, as well as awards from the Academy of Country Music, the Country Music Association, and the Nashville Songwriters Association International. In fact, "Where've You Been" was the first song ever to be so honored by all four organizations.
He left Tree in 1996 and spent the next four years working on a new album and writing for Madonna's Maverick Music where his songs where recorded by Lonestar, Rosie Flores, The Thompson Brothers Band, Bryan White and Kathy Mattea (she recorded crowd favorite "B.F.D.").
Don has recently produced the long-awaited follow-up to "Wild in the Backyard" entitled "Flowers and Rockets", with help from good friends like Ray Kennedy, Bill Lloyd, Angela Kaset, Pat Buchanan, Marshall Chapman, Gary Nicholson, Jim Hoke, and Kim Richey among others."
The discerning listener will hear traces of other songwriters and music makers that Don admires like Jimmy Webb, Bacharach and David, Harry Nillsson, Bobby Braddock, and John Hiatt.
But the music is uniquely Don Henry, a man who prefers the walk of life in a rainbow of Chuck Taylor All-Stars rather than cowboy boots. His songs are funny, whimsical, wry, bittersweet, and poignant--all at the appropriate times. Many of them play like little movies in the listener's mind. Don's songs also have a strong yet subtle social consciousness. Sometimes it lurks beneath a mask of comedy other times it's purely observational.
The stunning "Beautiful Fool" sincerely ponders the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King:
"To fight a fight without a fist, all human instinct puzzles this How dare you threaten our existence Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus Christ, history repeats itself so nice Consistently we are resistant to love."
Don's unique perspective is expressed in instantly memorable melodies and equally smart arrangements that appeal to listeners across musical borders, and across the nation.
As Dirty Linen observed:
"The crowd was won over by this guy and his guitar. Long may he write."
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