Back on tracks after hiatus

Most musicians, even country-leaning ones, know more about horsepower than the power of one horse.

But on a recent visit from his Nashville, Tennessee, home, J.D. Souther — who helped lay the foundation for the Southern California country rock sound nearly four decades ago as part of the musical community that included Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt and future members of the Eagles — took an afternoon off and rented a horse for an impromptu ride into the hills of Griffith Park.

He said it felt good to be back in the stamping ground where he co-wrote New Kid in Town, Heartache Tonight and The Best of My Love for the Eagles, Faithless Love for Ronstadt, his own Top 10 hit, You're Only Lonely, and many more recorded by Raitt, James Taylor, Crosby, Stills & Nash and the Dixie Chicks.

It had been a while since he had been in the saddle, yet Souther wasn't hurrying to hop aboard his palomino quarter horse. “A lot of people walk right up to the horse's face, then try to jump on and ride. You need to take some time, just hang out and let him get to know you.''

He took an equally judicious approach climbing back into the musical saddle. It has been 24 years since he last put out an album. His latest, If the World Was You, is now in stores. Why did it take so long?

Lost and found craze

“I quit making records because I thought making records was making me crazy,'' said Souther, 62. “Turns out I was crazy anyway. So I thought I might as well start making records again.''

Twenty-four years is an eternity in today's music business but Souther's voice is uncannily youthful on the new album.

In I'll Be Here at Closing Time, In My Arms Tonight and Come On Up, he sounds right at home with the gently reassuring country-rock amalgam he and his cohorts brought to the pop world in the early 1970s.

But there is also the New Orleans funk of One More Night and lots of Cuban- and Latin-influenced jazz from his six-piece band.

Despite his history with Glenn Frey — before the Eagles took off, he and Frey were in the Los Angeles folk-country group Longbranch Pennywhistle — Souther never joined the Eagles, although he often functioned as an adjunct member. “I suppose it will take me another record or two to stop having to deal with that,'' he said. [Asylum Records founder] David Geffen asked me to be in the band.

I considered it and we rehearsed a set and played it for David, [managers] Elliot Roberts and Ron Stone at the Troubadour and it took all of a minute to say the band was exceptional as it was and I was happy to stay home and write. I think they were relieved, as well.''

He did form a band in the mid-1970s with country-rock pioneers Chris Hillman and Richie Furay in the short-lived Souther-Hillman-Furay Band.

He remains close with Frey and Don Henley and it was a song he wrote in 1972, How Long, that the Eagles chose as the first single from their first new studio album in 28 years, Long Road Out of Eden, which has sold 3.1 million copies.

Today, when discussing sources of creative passion, Souther is likely to invoke the names of his favourite writers — John Steinbeck, Philip Roth and Jim Harrison, his novelist friend — than those of fellow musicians.

Still he does drop names of the ones he most admires: Ray Charles, Miles Davis, Hank Williams, George Jones. “Language is my meat,'' Souther said. “I agree with Jim Harrison: Forget sending me someone with an interesting experience; send me someone drunk on words. It would be a better book.''

To some extent Souther's return to the recording studio sprang out of his experience in Hollywood.

He appeared on and off in ABC's Thirtysomething, landed his first role as a singer in Steven Spielberg's 1989 romantic fantasy Always and went on to appear in a handful of other films.

He thought acting might be less emotionally demanding than music. “But I found if I didn't do the same thing, my acting wasn't very good. I figured I better get over my vanity and get on with it. It worked.

Especially things I learnt in acting class, which not only applied to the writing but also to the production of this album.''

Many of the new songs were written, or completed, in Nashville, although he said Southern California still beckons. He has also toyed with moving to Montana because he has friends there.

A loner at heart

But Souther prefers the craggy side roads of a solitary life. “I'm pretty much a loner,'' he said. “... I don't mind, I've adjusted to it.''

Of course, freedom comes at a cost — in his case the higher profile he might have established with a more conventional mindset.

But fame has its own price, one that so many pop stars pay playing the same songs decade after decade.

Still, California has one thing that Souther can't find in Nashville, or Montana. “I miss the ocean,'' he said. “... I would love to have been a good surfer and I'm just not. ... I learnt to windsurf in Kauai ... and I was so overwhelmed.

“I asked my friend [songwriter] Kenny Edwards, who's a good surfer ... ‘I feel like I'm so old. All these guys I know have been doing it since before they were in school. ... I barely know how to read the water; are you sure I can surf?' He says: ‘Oh sure.'
“I said: ‘Can I be good?' He said: ‘Ohhhh, no. It's much too late for that.' But he said, ‘You can still have fun.'''