Photo by Jeremy Cowart
One of the architects of the famed California country-rock sound, writing hits for the Eagles, James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt and old squeeze Linda Ronstadt, among others, J.D. Souther is at his home outside of Nashville, where he's lived for more than a decade, offering to send me his most recent CD, "Tenderness," so I'm all caught up.
"People don't know it, but Nashville has some incredibly strong jazz musicians," he says. "We went in and played it old-style, live, and I was in the same room as the band with the vocals. So everyone is really listening to each other, which is totally different from what I'm used to."
Slated to appear for a sold-out show at The Tin Pan on Jan. 14, the 74-year-old Souther, a Songwriters Hall of Fame member and occasional TV actor ("Thirtysomething," "Nashville"), talked with us about his days of flying with the Eagles, how he keeps it fresh onstage, his return to jazz and why it took four people to compose "Heartache Tonight."
Richmond magazine: You say you didn't grow up listening to country music.
J.D. Souther: My father was a big band singer, and my mother was an opera singer, so that's the music I listened to and played up to high school: classical and jazz. There was no country music around the house. Then, later, I was hypnotized by Hank Williams. Everyone who hears that voice falls under its spell. But I really didn't know much about country music until I met Linda Ronstadt. She has quite an incredible musical vocabulary.
RM: How is she doing these days?
Souther: Probably, if you asked her how she's doing [since her diagnosis with a rare brain condition], she'd say, 'Medium.' She's very upbeat. I was out there last year, and she made me lunch. I think she's doing very well.
RM: Do you have a regular schedule for writing songs?
Souther: I don't really have any methodology that I follow. There are times when I'll get up in the morning and write before sunrise, but it's not a regular thing. I do think that the more you write, the better you'll be. If you already have the gift, it's always better to use it. Usually I'm sitting at the piano, writing in a journal, watching the sun come up with my stack of legal tablets.
RM: What's the secret to collaborating with others?
Souther: When Glenn Frey and Don Henley [of the Eagles] and I first began to write. It was just throwing some things around until it sounded good to the other two guys. The value of having good co-conspirators is that they won't react well to your bad ideas and will to your good ones.
RM: Do you listen back to your albums, like your 1972 debut, and wish you'd done things differently?
Souther: I don't listen to my old records. But I like that first one. It's kind of harsh, deliberately pure and clean. There aren't very many instruments on it. I think it did what I wanted it to do. I've never made the same album twice.
RM: You weren't unhappy that it didn't sell?
Souther: No, I was thrilled. [Laughs] Of course, I wasn't happy. But the song "How Long" did become a hit 40 years later for the Eagles.
RM: How did that happen?
Souther: They used to perform "How Long" in their set way back when they were first touring. And they'd been in the studio for a long time cutting the "Long Way to Eden" album, and they needed something that sounded like a single. Glenn's kids were watching old YouTubes of the Eagles live and heard them perform that song. They asked Glenn about the song, and he called Don and said, "Do you remember that old song by John David?" and then the next thing I knew they were recording a video for it. That's how I knew it was a single.
RM: Of all of the cover versions of your songs, which do you like?
Souther: I don't think anyone has sung my songs better than Linda Ronstadt. But I've heard some interesting ones by others. I mean, the Dixie Chicks made a great record of "I'll Take Care of You."
RM: I've always been curious about "Heartache Tonight" and how four people came up with that.
Souther: Well, they didn't. Two people, Glenn and I, started it, took it to a third person, Don, and it sat around for a while. And then Glenn sang it to Bob Seger over the phone and said, 'We need a chorus,' and Seger wrote a chorus. But it started with me and Glenn around my swimming pool, no guitars, listening to Sam Cooke records. We thought we should write a shuffle, so we were just clapping our hands and singing, no guitars. And that's the way the record was made, too, with mostly just drums and vocals.
RM: Do you do a lot of touring these days?
Souther: I don't have a normal schedule. But sometimes I go out for a few weeks. I pace myself, I love being home, and my life is very much wrapped up around my dogs. I'm an advocate for adoption and rescue. I've never had a dog that wasn't a rescue. I worked since the '90s with the Best Friends Animal Society. It's the biggest dog rescue sanctuary in the world, they're the ones instituting these no-kill shelter programs. All of my albums have a Best Friends logo on them.
RM: With all of your songs, how hard is it to make a set list that keeps you, and the audience, happy?
Souther: It's not the same set every night. I'll going to hit three or four of the high points. I know that people buy tickets to see an artist perform and there's some expectation that they'll do certain songs. I don't want people to go away and say, "He didn't play that," and I also don't want someone to leave thinking, "He just did his greatest hits."
RM: But you know you have to do "You're Only Lonely" [his biggest solo hit]?
Souther: Well, let's just say I probably will do it. There aren't that many nights when I don't do three or four of the really big ones. It depends. Some nights I do 30 minutes on the piano, and some nights I barely play it. It doesn't have to be rigid. There are some nights when I'll say, "Oh, really? I've got to play 'Best of My Love' one more time,' but that will be the night when I find some little tweak in it that I didn't think of before, Maybe I'll play it slightly slower, or maybe I do the little pause between the bridge and the last verse a little differently. I don't know. If I make it interesting for me, it'll be interesting to the audience.
RM: What made you want to return to your childhood music, jazz?
Souther: New town, new people, new players. I don't know. II was interested in doing something different. I started meeting some incredible jazz players. I was surrounded by them, and I went through my boxes of unfinished songs and lyrics and finished some of the songs for this sextet, and that inspired a couple new songs, and then a few more, and all of a sudden we had an album's worth of songs.
RM: Have you experienced any blowback from people who wonder where the country rock is?
Souther: I really don't have to please anybody. My only obligation is to make the best music I can. I think I'm sort of beyond blowback.
