How to go
Who: J.D. Souther
Where: Victoria Theatre, 138 N. Main St., Dayton
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 10
Cost: $30-$50
More info: 937-228-3630 or www.ticketcenterstage.com
Artist info: www.jdsouther.net
J.D. Souther was behind plenty of hits in the 1970s, penning successful songs for Linda Ronstadt, the Eagles and other top acts of the day. However he quietly left music in the mid-’80s.
Souther, who performs at Victoria Theatre on Friday, didn’t re-emerge until two decades later. However when he did, he returned rejuvenated and ready to work.
“I stopped recording, not so much deliberately,” Souther said in a recent phone interview. “I just refused to go back into the studio for a long time. I wasn’t a big fan of the MTV era. It just seemed to my ears that a lot of people were making music thinking more about how the video was being shot or perceived. They had all that digital effects stuff to play with, and that just wasn’t my favorite music.
“I also hadn’t taken a break for a while,” he said. “I had just built my dream house in the Hollywood Hills, so I went and stayed there for 15 years. I did a lot of traveling but purely for fun.”
In 2009, Souther released his first solo album in more than 20 years. Unlike the country rock he was associated with in his early days, this album and subsequent releases have been vocal jazz albums inspired by his earliest musical memories.
“When I got back to do it, somehow it was the influences of all the music I ever heard from the time I was 5 years old,” Souther said. “It was a lot of opera and a lot of what is the so called American Songbook, like Cole Porter and Gershwin. The stuff my father grew up on was always playing in our house, and it found its way in there, too.
“The first song I ever learned was the aria ‘Nessun Dorma’ from ‘Turandot’ by Puccini, which my grandma sang to me,” he said. “She was an opera singer, and what she played in her house was opera. My dad was a big-band singer, so he was a crooner, and I heard a lot of that. It probably reflects every influence I’ve ever had.”
In addition to music, Souther is an actor. He appeared on a handful of episodes of “Thirtysomething” in 1989 and 1990. Souther had a recurring role on the first two seasons of the current ABC drama “Nashville,” but he doesn’t know if he’ll be in the third season, which began airing in late September.
“It’s entirely up to the show’s writers,” Souther said. “I know they’ve done three or four episodes that I wasn’t in. There is one unresolved plot point, but whether they’ll do it this year or not I don’t know. I’m here for another six weeks, but come January it’s going to be all about my new record.”
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