Don Heffington Tribute Album to Feature Jackson Browne, Fiona Apple

Don Heffington, a beloved L.A. musician who died of leukemia in 2021, will be the subject of a charity tribute album coming out this fall, with featured artists including Jackson Browne, Fiona Apple, Buddy Miller, John C. Reilly, Dave Alvin and Watkins Family Hour. The album, “Tonight I’ll Go Down Swingin’: A Tribute to Don Heffington,” arrives Oct. 18, and is preceded by a teaser track from Browne that’s out now, “Everywhere I Look” (see below).

Heffington was one of the most beloved of all musicians on the L.A. scene over the last several decades, especially among figures associated with either the Largo or roots-rock scenes, with a renown that well outlasted his tenure as the drummer for Lone Justice in the mid-1980s. His influence as both a sideman and a singer-songwriter in his own right is apparent from the illustrious guest list signed up by producers Sheldon Gomberg (Ben Harper, Rickie Lee Jones) and Sebastian Steinberg (Fiona Apple, Iron & Wine) for this project, which was already in the works when he died three years ago.

Other artists contributing tracks to the album include a fellow former Lone Justice member, Marvin Etizoni, along with Peter Case, Willie Watson (of Old Crow Medicine Show fame), Inara George, Victoria Williams, Eleni Mandell, Tony Gilkyson, Momo featuring Jim Keltner, Tom Brousseau, the Boltcutters, and Sarah Kramer with Jorge Calderón and Van Dyke Parks. Not surprisingly, the cast includes a good number of musicians associated with the scene at L.A.’s Largo, where Heffington was a frequent presence.

Heffington was a member of Lone Justice for most of its influential mid-1980s reign, including that group’s first album, but he spent most of his career sitting in or recording with other musicians of renown, including Alvin, Bob Dylan, Sam Phillips, the Wallflowers and Dwight Yoakam. (Read his 2021 Variety obituary here.)

Browne shared his reasons for recording a track for the album. “I knew Don from Largo, playing with the Watkins Family Hour. His drumming was so amazingly solid and assured, and he had the combined strength and sensitivity to make that quiet stage and all those acoustic instruments work,” he said.
 
“Sometimes I would see him at the guitar-pulls at Benmont Tench’s house, sitting there with a snare drum between his knees, adding his rhythm and feel to the songwriters who were playing various guitars, with Benmont on piano. I didn’t realize that he wrote songs until I heard Gloryland, and I was so taken by his originality. Eventually I got to hear him do his own show at Largo in the Little Room, and again, was just knocked out by the songs, and that Bakersfield Beatnik persona. There’s no accounting for why somebody becomes a songwriter. It’s such a mystery. But I think of him as inhabiting the same Los Angeles as Warren Zevon, Lowell George and Tom Waits.”

Added Browne, “The breadth and depth of his songwriting are on display here in this loving tribute by his friends. He asked me to sing ‘Everywhere I Look.’ The arrangement is based closely on the demo he gave me, with Sebastian Steinberg playing bass. For the guitar, I called on Greg Leisz, who played with Don and Sebastian in the Watkins Family Hour… Lots of people knew Don longer and better than I did. I’m so grateful for the times I got to play with him. I really miss him. He is, and always will be, an inspiration.”

The title track is performed by Heffington himself, and is a cover of a Porter Wagoner tune. Heffington and his daughter Laura also close out the set with the song “Irish Heartbeat.” Most of the songs are Heffington originals, including songs he co-wrote with Tom Waits (“Seeds on Hard Ground,” sung here by Gilkyson) and Allen Ginsberg (“Put a Kiss and a Tear in Yr. Letter,” performed on the album by Inara George, of Bird and the Bee fame).

The set will be released via Nine Mile Records and Clover Music Group, with preorders here. Proceeds will benefit the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund.

Heffington first became visible to many country-rock fans as a member of Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band, appearing on albums including 1979’s “Blue Kentucky Girl” and 1983’s “White Shoes.” He joined Lone Justice for that band’s 1985 debut album on Geffen before the lineup splintered, then appeared on subsequent solo or offshoot projects by the other three core members, Etzioni, Maria McKee and Ryan Hedgecock.

Alvin paid testimony to Heffington at the time of his death, writing on social media, “To say Don was a great drummer/musician just doesn’t cut it, I’ve known Don for 40 years and he was always (and I stress always) an inspiration to me. Don was always the coolest guy in the room. He had been a teenage jazz prodigy who saw John Coltrane playing on West Adams as well as hanging out at the Ash Grove soaking in the blues. A few years later, Don worked as the house drummer at Art Laboe’s Oldies But Goodies club on Sunset, backing up every doo-wop group, one-hit wonder and rock ‘n’ roll legend that stepped on its stage. Somewhere along the line he also became a rock-solid country drummer that could swing a country shuffle with the best Nashville had to offer.”

But Alvin was eager to point out Heffington’s songwriter side as well as his sideman fame. “Don was also a songwriter/poet who wrote amazing, quirky songs that defy easy descriptions,” Alvin added. “He was always pushing ahead artistically/philosophically, whether it was producing albums or searching for the right rhythms and always reaching for something that no one had played before. Playing with Don was always exciting, educational and a flat-out gas. With his all knowing hipster smile, he gently pushed you into performances that you didn’t know you had in you.”

Heffington recorded as a singer-songwriter on just three albums in his lifetime, a 1995 collaboration with Tammy Rogers called “In the Red,” and two solo releases in the 2010s, 2014’s “Gloryland” and “Contemporary Abstractions in Folk Song and Dance.”

McKee, his bandmate in Lone Justice, wrote an appreciation of Heffington for Variety when he passed three years ago; read it here. More of Heffington’s work with the band will be heard this fall when the first new Lone Justice album since the 1980s, “Viva Lone Justice,” is released, comprised of tracks that were begun during the band’s original tenure and in some cases finished recently.

The full “Tonight I’ll Go Down Swingin’: A Tribute to Don Heffington” tracklist: