One of this summer’s most anticipated concert tours is coming to Darling’s Waterfront Pavilion on July 5 – The Soundtrack of Summer Tour which features Styx, Foreigner and very special guest Don Felder. Felder is probably best known as a member of The Eagles for 27 years and equally renowned for his autobiography called “Heaven And Hell: My Life in The Eagles” which made the New York Times Best Seller list after publication in 2008 (seven years after he left the band). He’s also got a new band and it was about that topic as well as his new solo album, “Road To Forever,” that Felder shared in an interview conducted on March 27 … when he was off the road briefly and at home in California.

Q: I can’t believe you are finally coming to Bangor to perform!

Felder: I know — it’s delightful to be up in that part of the country, it’s beautiful. Especially in the fall and winter up there, I love it. I used to live in Boston and we’d go up to Maine and Vermont and ski in Vermont through Maine … and when the colors are all out it is just gorgeous — beautiful!

Q: Well, I’ve heard nothing but praise from acts who’ve played in the venue where the “SOS” tour will take you.

Felder: It sounds like it’s going to be a fun tour anyway. Tthat whole “Soundtrack of Summer Tour” should just be a lot of fun. There are so many great catalogs between the three bands — between Foreigner’s hit songs, the Styx’ hit songs and Eagles’ songs and my solo stuff — it’s just going to be a rocking four-hour show. We’re really excited about working together. Now I’ve done some shows with Styx in the past so sitting in with them as a band and working together with my band and their band … they’re just a delightful group of people. We were in the studio together with some of the guys from Styx and some guys from Foreigner working on some stuff — they’re just a good group of people. So it’s going to be a no-drama, fun-rocking summer tour.

Q: I imagine that you’re not out on this particular tour just yet, right?

Felder: Right, actually the first date of that tour is something like May 13 — I’m doing other shows, a lot of private shows, corporate shows: what I call “billionaire birthday parties” that are not publically advertised shows. I also do a lot of casinos, summer affairs, all that stuff, but this tour with Foreigner starts either May 13 or 14 in Wichita and we run until the end of July. A two-and-a-half-month run … so it’ll be a long run but a lot of fun. Great music, great guys and no drama — my kind of tour!

Q: Having interviewed Mick Jones and Tommy Shaw over the years I’m very impressed with their creativity and their work ethic, not to mention their great guitar chops, as well.

Felder: Tommy and I met probably 12 years ago or something like that and ended up playing together at a couple of Alice Cooper fundraiser benefits. Styx and my band did some shows together here in California — we just became friends, going to dinner together when he was in town … so when I was writing this last CD, “Road To Forever,” there were a couple of songs on there that I had written lyrics for and I kept saying to myself, “I think these could be better!” and I just took a shot in the dark to see if Tommy was in town … he was and came over for three days, we wrote and some two of the songs on that CD — “Wash Away” and “Heal Me.” And then we actually wrote a third song and recorded it and it sounded so much like Crosby, Stills & Nash that he was going to use it on his country CD, but it wasn’t really country enough so we may end up using it on my next record. It’s a great track, a great song, so we’ll see.

Q: Who is in the band you are bringing to Maine?

Felder: Oh, I’ve got this group of amazing players who have kind of five-star pedigrees. I have a guy playing bass with me named Shem von Schroeck who’s also an operatically-trained tenor … he’s been in my band for almost 10 years now. Back on keyboards I’ve got a guy named Timothy Drury who actually was one of the accompanying keyboard players on the “Hell Freezes Over” tour — he and I became great friends and when I left the band he left the band, too, and we started writing together. He’s co-writer on some of the songs on my record — he worked in a band called Whitesnake for a while and with Stevie Nicks for a while, too. Timothy’s just a spectacular keyboard player and an amazing singer, as well … a very talented guy. Then I have on drums a guy named Scott DeVours, he’s currently out with Crosby, Stills & Nash — when he gets off the road with them he’ll be joining me for this new tour. Oh, and I have a guitar player, Greg Suran … and that’s my touring band this summer.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to pass on to the readers of this article?

Felder: Yeah, you could put a plug in there about my autobiography—it just bounced back to No. 1 a couple of weeks ago on Amazon’s Kindle downloads…who would have ever thought that such a poor English student in high school would end up on the New York Times best seller list?! We’ve mentioned “The Soundtrack of Summer Tour” and probably I should mention, as well, the new extended version of “Road To Forever” with four new songs on it.

Lucky Clark has spent forty-five years writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.