Thanks for that!
From the article:"Henley previewed eight tracks from
Cass County, and in that abbreviated list, the all-star guests included
Merle Haggard, Mick Jagger, Alison Krauss, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride,
Ashley Monroe, Dolly Parton, Lucinda Williams and Trisha Yearwood."
Awesome! The only one missing is Stevie Nicks.
Well, it's also too bad Reba and Kenny Rogers aren't included. Then again, he's already sung duets with all three of those people, so he might have thought "Been there, done that" (not that such a mentality kept him from including Trisha Yearwood, so who knows).
A long while ago, we heard Lee Ann Womack and Ronnie Dunn would be on the album, but they're not mentioned here. I wonder if their songs didn't make the cut, or simply didn't make the article? After all, Vince didn't get mentioned either.
You know, the inclusion of Merle Haggard reminds me of the lyrics from "They're Not Here, They're Not Coming" where Don Sings "The radio won't play George and Merle." Let's hope that's not the case when he sings with Don Henley!
It looks like this has morphed from an album of largely covers to an album with a couple covers. YES. The more new original work, the better.
Finally, I'm a bit surprised that he shied away from calling it a country album. I thought that was the whole idea. Maybe he's worried that calling it country will limit radio play to country stations so he wants to be more inclusive. It would surprise me if he went terribly far outside of country-esque tunes due to the themes of the album - I don't expect a song like "Workin' It" - but we'll see. The definition of "country" nowadays is rather amorphous anyway.