CMT Blog: Archive

Linden, Texas, isn't generally thought of as a music Mecca, but one of its native sons -- Don Henley -- went out of his way this past Sunday (Aug. 3) to catch Merle Haggard's appearance at the Music City Texas Theater. Henley's trip is detailed in a story that ran in the Dallas Morning News, but the gist of it is that he spent Saturday night in Canada, caught a flight in Boston early Sunday morning, flew to Dallas and then drove 150 miles to Linden.

Major music acts seldom play in a 450-seat venue that's located in a town with a population of 2,300, but Richard Bowden manages to gently coerce a lot of people to Linden. Henley and Bowden grew up together there and formed a band named Shiloh that headed to the West Coast to seek the sort of career that many small-town musicians dream of. The band broke up, and Henley's story is well known. As for Bowden, he recorded and toured with Linda Ronstadt, Roger McGuinn and several others before teaming with songwriter Sandy Pinkard to form Pinkard & Bowden, a successful musical comedy act that released several albums for Warner Bros.

When Bowden moved back to Linden from Nashville a few years ago, he became involved with Music City Texas and began booking talent for the venue's weekly shows. Since opening in 2003, the theater has presented country acts such as Pat Green and Marty Stuart, singer-songwriters such as Robert Earl Keen and Mac McAnally and an array of rock and blues musicians, including Jackson Browne and, not surprisingly, Henley.

Linden is off the beaten path, but it continue to attracts big-name performers and, occasionally, big-name audience members. According to the newspaper, Henley didn't give a second thought to the lengthy and complicated route he had to take to see one of his heroes. "That's how much I wanted to see Merle Haggard," he said.