SOARING: The heads of the Don Henley-founded...

SOARING: The heads of the Don Henley-founded Walden Woods Foundation are ecstatic over the initial sales of the “Common Threads” album featuring 13 country musicians, including Vince Gill, Clint Black and Trisha Yearwood, doing Eagles songs to benefit the organization.

“Not in our wildest dreams did we think it would sell so much so quickly,” says foundation director Kathy Anderson of the album, which after two weeks in release is already past the 1-million mark in orders from retailers and could sell more than 3 million copies, some insiders are predicting. If so, it would give the foundation more than $4 million for its effort to preserve the Walden Woods, former home to Henry David Thoreau, and the seat of the U.S. environmental movement.

But there’s been some grumbling in the Nashville music community, where some executives of record companies whose artists participated in the album have complained that they were misled into thinking that Giant Records, which released the album, would turn over all the proceeds to Walden. In fact, only Henley’s songwriting royalties and some artists’ royalties will go to the cause.

Doug Mark, Giant’s head of business affairs, says there was some initial misunderstanding, but it was all resolved before the album was finished. “They all knew exactly what the deal was before we finished the record,” he says. “Some of them started playing brinksmanship. I said they could take their artist off the record if they wanted, but they all said to go ahead.”