JD Souther

[ticky]

Awe gawrsh, Thanks Mikey!

Here's his latest interview he posted on twitter
The Newtown Bee- Click on Features

there's also an audio interview!

[Prettymaid]

Ticky, I still say he's just after your cousin!

[Koala]

Today I found this article

Rocker is right back on song after all these years

http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/...hese_years.php

He hasn't made an album for a quarter of a century and, like a schoolboy desperately trying to account for his tardy homework, he's toying with a variety of explanations. "I'm making up different answers for everybody," says J D Souther, whose last record was the somewhat overcooked Home by Dawn, released in 1984. "I think it was probably a psychotic break from the reality of being a recording artist." Really? "I don't know, it sounds as good as any reason."
Well, just how do you explain an absence of 25 years? A protracted move from Los Angeles to Nashville and a smattering of acting and soundtrack work doesn't quite fill in the gaps. Largely, it's been a matter of professional priorities. With only five solo albums to his name, Souther has always been a songwriter first and a recording artist second. Not only has he written with and for Warren Zevon, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt et al, he also composed songs such as New Kid in Town, Best of My Love and Heartache Tonight with the Eagles, while turning down a place in the band.
"My report cards from school always said, Does not work well with others'," he laughs. "I don't want to hang on to anybody's coat-tails." His subsequent spell in country-rock "supergroup", the Souther- Hillman-Furay Band, also proved unsatisfactory. He describes the experience as "six guys going in different directions. You couldn't have had more disparate personalities. We were set up, like an arranged marriage, and I was a hothead. I didn't know how to be in a band."
Clearly not one of life's joiners, Souther will nevertheless forever be associated with the astonishingly febrile southern California scene that sprang up in the early 1970s, spawning not only the Eagles but also the likes of Joni Mitchell, Browne and Taylor. Despite gently mocking their collective output as "precious, oh-my-God-my-sensitive-heart s***", Souther seems content enough to have been an integral part of it all.
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"They're great writers and friends, and it's a time I've really not seen repeated by any group," he says. "I can't say that life was hard for us, but work was hard because we were all obsessed with doing it better than anyone else. There was a very competitive edge."
Souther was able to immerse himself in the mainstream (as well as the Eagles, he wrote, recorded and duetted with Ronstadt throughout the seventies, when she, too, was selling millions of records), and yet instinctively he seems to gravitate towards the margins. He formed an intense alliance with cult singer-songwriter Judee Sill, who wrote her classic song Jesus Was a Cross Maker after Souther left her - "She came around, played it to me and said, It's about you, you ******!'" - and then later died from a drug overdose.
"We were a couple of odd ducks," he says. "We were madly in love, but I thought she was more highly evolved as a songwriter than any of us, by far."
He's still in contact with many of his peers. "I see Glenn Frey hardly ever, but Don Henley and I e-mail, and I was with Jackson Browne recently in Norway at Bergenfest," but, at 63, Souther is living very much in the present.
His new record, If the World Was You, is a considerable achievement. Although nothing on it suggests he's spent the past quarter-century radically rehoning his country-rock modus operandi, the addition of horns adds a breath of Gil Evans's cool jazz to the conventional band format, while elsewhere there are Cuban rhythms, wah-wah trumpets, blues riffs, tales of bruised love and several songs that already sound like standards. And he's still moving forward, describing the semi-improvised "word jazz" of the 13-minute closer, The Secret Handshake of Fate, as "the favourite of all my songs - it's where I'm going next".
The album is the sound of one of America's most accomplished yet understated songwriters once again hitting his stride. His voice, too, has never sounded better. With hindsight, Souther felt Home by Dawn was muddied by the production values of the era, and this time he was determined to make an ensemble record that didn't rely on technical trickery. "I'm happy with this album, I like what it does," he says. "I really wanted to make a record where we go into the studio and play it the way we wanted to hear it. I just wanted to give everybody a chance to have some input. It has dynamics. It doesn't come at you all at once like a rock'n'roll record."
Part of the reason the album took so long is that the writing process has always involved a lot of time spent "in a room just groping around". Some of the songs date back to a visit to Cuba in the late 1990s where Souther wrote the song, Rain, which became a springboard for planning a new album. But it was slow work.
"I have so many pieces lying about waiting for the next thread to fall into place, and now and again I get on a roll, look up and see the pattern," he says. "Then I can whittle out the rest of the piece. It's always in the back of my mind that I need to get it finished, but at what cost to the song?
"It's meandering in a sort of pleasurable way, like walking at night."
It's obvious that Souther isn't a typical ageing rocker. He's "addicted to papers and books"; while in the UK his idea of a perfect day out is to visit the British Museum and gaze longingly at the Bach manuscripts. "They're works of art, and the music is fabulous. It's inspiring to see what can be done with just a pen, a piece of paper and a harpsichord."
A classicist by nature, his high water-line for what can be achieved as a songwriter has remained constant for nearly four decades. "Before I made this album I was listening to exactly the same music I was listening to before I made my first album in 1971: Miles Davis, Hank Williams and George Jones. Just for clarity."
Clarity isn't something he lacks. A question about the state of the music industry gets short shrift - "what industry?" - and he can be entertainingly irascible. Like many Americans, however, Scotland is his soft spot. His mother's family are Finlays from Invercauld, and he has "happy memories of Kippen and Fintry. At Loch Lomond, I dropped to my knees and wept".
It may be the closest he has ever felt to truly belonging. Born in Detroit but raised in Texas, Souther relocated to Los Angeles in the late 1960s but eventually found he was "beat to death with the traffic". Home is currently a farm outside Nashville, but he doesn't seem to be settled, contemplating another move to the wide, open spaces of northern California or Montana. Even now, it seems, he has little desire to follow the herd. "I always feel I'm homesick for a place I've never seen," he sighs. "There's some gipsy in me that I can't quite shake."
Sounds like the cue for a song.

If The World was You (Rhino) is released today.

[ticky]

hehehe PM.. I wouldnt doubt it *G* THATS why he keeps asking me "Where's Susan?"

*G* this was on twitter today.. nice live interview video
NBC San Diego.com Interview with J.D. Souther it's a pretty good interview.

[sodascouts]

Another interesting article:

JD Souther Goes It Alone in O.C.
Writer of several of Eagles' big hits plays solo acoustic show.

[Troubadour]

Thanks for that, Soda. I would so love to see JD live. The last couple of sentences made me wistful!

[sodascouts]

Somehow missed this article from the Daily Sound:

J.D. Souther interview

By STEVE LIBOWITZ — June 12, 2009

J.D. Souther’s last solo album before “If the World Was You,” which was released last winter, came out 25 years ago. But such pedestrian things as time and money don’t hold the same level of import for the Texas-raised singer-songwriter who helped fashion the El Lay country-rock sound back in the early 1970s.

Souther, who plays Soho on Sunday night in a double-bill with quirky, topical singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, hobnobbed with the likes of future Eagle Glenn Frey (they shared an apartment together in Echo Park) and Jackson Browne (who lived downstairs), eventually collaborating on some of the Eagles’ biggest hits, including “Best of My Love,” “Victim of Love," "Heartache Tonight," and "New Kid in Town."

But he turned down joining the supergroup in order to pursue the Souther-Hillman-Furay band (with former Byrd Chris Hillman and Poco’s Richie Furay) as well as a solo career.

Now back on the road for a second leg of a national tour promoting the “If the World Was You,” Souther talked about he new record and his career over the telephone earlier this week.


Q. OK, you know I have to ask: why 25 years between albums? How does somebody go that long without needing to make a record?

A. Oh, I played music during that time. I just didn’t make any studio albums. I made a lot of music. But let’s ask the question I’d be willing to answer, since you’re not a trained professional psychiatrist: Why now? And the answer is, because the material is there. I started writing in earnest along these lines in 1998 on a trip to Cuba and the end result is this album.


Q. So is there a thematic link for you?

A. Mechanically I tend to write song in sets of three, like novellas. But I couldn’t tell you what prompts them. It takes that many songs in one vein to get what I want out of it, to get the subject covered. Like on my first solo album, that was true, there were groups of three songs that were related to each other. And on “Black Rose” period, there was “Faithless Love” and “Doors Swing Open” and “Prisoner of Love” – which Linda (ronstadt) and I did on her album – were a sort of gloomy novella.


Q. But you were a lot more prolific back in the early days.

A. No I never was. You’ve probably heard most of the songs I’ve finished. I have hundreds of songs in pieces on legal pads and scratched on score paper, or in the computer or old cassettes. There are always things sitting unfinished on the piano. I’ve got more yellow legal pads than staples.


Q. Why didn’t you finish them?

A. I can’t really say. It’s like when you have a big studio of canvasses. Some you walk away from right away, others at different times, when you think the timing is right. Some times you’re tapped on shoulder and just know it’s done. Other times you abandon it, it’s just not there. With any work of art, it’s never really finished, it’s just abandoned.


Q. does it feel different with the new songs under your belt?

A. It’s always different. But I’m not a particularly nostalgic person. I always like what I’m doing at the moment best… This part of the tour was supposed to be with a trio, but the timing was off. But it turned out better, just me and a bunch of Gibson guitars and grand piano. Just doing it alone makes it more audience friendly. They don’t have to have any doubts that they’re going to hear songs from throughout your career.


Q. Do you still enjoy playing your old songs?

A. Usually yes. With very rare exceptions. Except the fast songs, which are harder to play. I don’t play them all the same every night, anyway. I’ve always like the way Bob Dylan runs his tours, and Van Morrison’s the same – you’re never sure what you’re going to hear. It’s just what that artist is going to do that night. There’s a little risk involved. I like that element. It works for me. I think people are delighted to see things that are happening spontaneously. For me it needs to be fresh every night. I’m just trying to do the best I can do with each song.


Q. Do you still like to sing your classic songs people know from the Eagles? I mean, do you have to take yourself back to relate to what you were thinking and feeling when you wrote them?

A. Look, I’m a lifer. I’ve been playing music since I was 9. I grew up in the school orchestra. And English lit classes. It’s not mechanical, but it’s what I do. I can’t fake it. If I feel like singing something that night, there are all sorts of reason. I like the chemistry of what happens when you put yourself into it. A little bit of anxiety before you go on is good. And being present in the middle of each song is the key….. There’s a million ways to get pulled off the cushion, but only one way to stay on it.


Q. You’re described as one of the architects of California country-rock. Does that seem accurate to you? How did the scene develop?

A. There were some powerful musicians who also happened to be working in similar circumstances at same place and same time and we had enormous effects on each other. Particularly with my writing, it was (the late singer-songwriter) Judee Sill and Jackson Browne. Although I would not be as good a writer as I am without having spent hours and hours thrashing things over with Henley & Frey. We just spent so much time working things out together.


Q. Did you guys have any idea at the time that what you were creating would be as influential and popular as it was?

A. I’m going to tell you what Thelonius Monk was said to an interviewer who was asking him about his influence on pianists: We were just trying to make it sound good. You can get a sense a song has resonance, and that people might relate. I think we did know about “New Kid in Town” and “Best of My Love” after they were done. But it really was just about trying to make good music. It didn’t really matter to me who was gong to sing them. It was just about trying to write songs that would last.


Q. Of course the Eagles got filthy rich and hugely popular. You turned down joining the band. Why? Any regrets?

A. I just didn’t want to do it. The day that I told David Geffen that I didn’t want to be an Eagle, I think they were more relieved than I was. They had a perfect band with those four guys and Don and Glen had a vision for that band from Day One which was different from the vision of what I wanted to do to.


Q. Does it mean something special for you now when you tour through Southern California?

A. I love it here. You can take the guy out of LA but you can’t take LA out of the guy. The first thing I always want to do when I get here is get my feet into the ocean. There’s nothing like the big Pacific.


Q. So will it be another 25 years before we have the next new JD Souther album?

A. No. The songs are all done, and I’m already working on the one after that.

[Troubadour]

Thanks for posting, Soda. I always love reading these interviews.

[MikeA]

JULY 7, 2009


Here's a copy of the eMail I received this morning. I'll be in a meeting unfortunately, but some of you may be able to listen in!

Greetings Friends and Fans,

Tune Nashville's WPLN (90.1) Live In Studio C this Tuesday 7/7 (11am/cst) to hear a special in-studio performance from JD Souther, featuring special guest Chris Walters.

For those of you who are not in the middle Tennessee area, you can listen online by clicking here. Also, visit the Live In Studio C website prior to the broadcast to stream or see pictures from the performance.

Pictures and streaming will only be available for the week following the broadcast.

Thanks for your support,
Team Souther

Project Daybreak P.O. Box 68424 | Nashville, TN 37206
JD Souther.net is maintained and operated by Project Daybreak

[Troubadour]

No fresh news, just some shameless gawking. I came across this while I was searching for... er, JD Souther... and can I just say - yum! Something very Don-ish about this, don't you think?