Don Felder‘s “The Vault: Fifty Years Of Music” hits the streets on May 23rd, 2025. We recently caught up with Don via Zoom to discuss the album, his summer tour and more. We started with the part of the title that says, “Fifty Years Of Music.” Don wrote the song “Move On” in 1974. In fact, as he explained to me, it was the first song he wrote for The Eagles. Don told me how he wrote it using a 4-track tape machine and, lacking a drum machine, he played the drum beat on a cardboard box. On top of that he layered a bass track, rhythm guitar track and slide guitar track.

Don hadn’t thought of the song in decades, that is until he moved out of Malibu in 2000. That is when he put all his recording gear in storage. Then about five years ago, not knowing what was in the storage unit, he decided to take a look. He discovered all these tapes of varying sizes containing a multitude of songs he had written for various projects. Because of how fragile tape is, Don and his engineer began to digitize what they had. Doing that he had the thought, “That’s a great idea. I should finish that idea. And one of them became ‘Move On’.”

I mentioned to Don how when we had spoken in August 2024 and I asked about new music, he expressed that he had about ten songs and was looking to tour in May 2025 and possibly release an album and here he is, sticking to the plan.

Don wove a pretty interesting, detailed story that began on the “Dirt roads of Gainesville,” to New York, Boston and ultimately being lured out to California by his friend and future Eagles Band mate Bernie Leadon. The capper on the story was being woken up on his first morning in California by an earthquake. The story lead into Don explaining how music is a labor of love for him. Don’s love for music is very much still alive, and that is easy to see. It was appropriate enough for Don to be explaining his travels since the music on this album covers fifty years of his journey.

Don also explained about finding a recording of an electric piano track in his storage unit. “Me playing the piano, my nickname is ‘The Claw’.” But he did feel the piece was a beautiful progression. Once Don had gotten friends to add other instrumentation to the track, he wrote lyrics and got his daughter Leah to sing on it with him. “It was really a gift to my daughter for us to sing and write that song about being together forever.”

The first single from “The Vault” is the track “Free At Last.” Don has said about the single “This song is a heartfelt tribute to the freedom that awaits us beyond this life. It’s about shedding the burdens of this world, and finding peace in the promise that, one day, we will all be Free At Last.” Don was visibly surprised when I mentioned to him that I felt his vocal on that track was reminiscent of Robbie Robertson’s vocal work on some of his solo releases.

Don pointed out something interesting once we began to talk about the track “Hollywood Victim.” The song starts out as a sort of mellow piano track, then a few harmonic notes are played on bass and then you get smacked with the guitar. “It’s not what you thought it was going to be is exactly what that song is about.” Don spoke about everybody out in Hollywood is there to be a movie star or a musician or a rock star. “Quite frequently it turns out to not be what you thought it was going to be.” That is when Don mentioned people being victimized in Hollywood. His goal was for that song to lure you in with a sweet feel before it hit you what the song was.

There is an updated version of his 1981 hit “Heavy Metal (Takin’ a Ride)”. Don felt the song sounded sonically dated. “It sounded analog and old.” The song was a musical idea that Don had submitted for The Eagles album “The Long Run.” The Eagles even recorded the basic tracks for the song with the idea of Don and Joe Walsh doing harmony guitar lines on it. Unfortunately, they ran out of time in the studio and were scheduled to hit the road, so the song was never finished. Don said when listening to the original recording it lacked a certain punch. He feels that the rerecord “Is a bit stronger in my opinion.”

Don certainly sounds as if he finds himself at home in the studio. He was even speaking to me from in front of the board at his studio. Don had already spoken about working in studios across the country and working in different formats from various size tapes to digital. When I asked about that Don even turned his camera so we could get a look at some of the outboard racks in the studio. Don was explaining some of the vintage equipment found in those racks. He went into some detail about how that was the best sounds from analog equipment being fed into digital being converted at “96K the highest frequency conversion you can get”. He continued, saying “That’s the way I kinda combine the digital world and the analog world to sound really great.”

Part of our conversation also included guests on the album. I pointed out that earlier Don had mentioned that David played on the album. I brought up the fact that he was referring to David Paich of Toto. Guitarist Steve Lukather from Toto also plays on the album, the entire Toto band seems to be on the album. Plus, legendary drummer Jim Keltner and Styx drummer Todd Sucherman make appearances as well.

With the mention of Styx, we got into The Brotherhood of Rock tour that Don will be a part of this year. The tour is Don along with Styx and Kevin Cronin of REO Speedwagon fame. “It’s gonna be four hours of nothing but hits.” I asked Don if there would be some jamming between the acts and he assured me that they usually do work something like that into the performances. He also told me at least one tune from “The Vault” should make it into the show.

Don and I have spoken in the past about his early influences being BB King and Elvis Presley. I was surprised with those kinds of influences that he would create orchestrated songs the likes of “Hotel California” and more. Don credited that to his time in the band Flow. Don described the group as a jazz fusion, rock band. “I learned how to improvise just being thrown out in the world.” It was here that Don explained how he composed the acoustic intro to the version of “Hotel California” that The Eagles played on the “Hell Freezes” over album.

After his description of all the recordings Don went back and found in his storage unit, I had to ask him if “The Vault 2” was on the horizon. Although he wants to keep making music, he said he wasn’t sure if he would do a project like this again but “I love making records, I hope this is not going to be my last album. I’ll do it, my theory is I’m gonna rock til I drop.”

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