In 1985, after countless hit records, Grammy nominations, American Music Awards, and gold and platinum albums, J.D. Souther [ tickets ]--one of the principal architects of Southern California country-rock--decided to walk away from his solo career, saying, "I wanted to be a better musician and songwriter. I wanted to just stay home, practice, read and write."

And write he did. Relocating to Nashville, Souther wrote for and with artists as diverse as India.Arie, Brooks & Dunn, Jimmy Buffett, Glen Campbell, Joe Cocker, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Diamond Rio, the Dixie Chicks, Don Henley, Raul Malo, One Flew South, Roy Orbison, Bernadette Peters, Bonnie Raitt, George Strait, Brian Wilson, Trisha Yearwood, Warren Zevon and, most recently, the newly re-formed Eagles, who chose a Souther protest song, "How Long," as the debut single from their first studio album in 28 years.

Souther may be as well known for his solo career as for co-writing Eagles hits like "Heartache Tonight," "Victim of Love," "New Kid In Town" and "Best of My Love," as well as collaborating with Linda Ronstadt on her classics "Faithless Love," "Simple Man, Simple Dream" and "Prisoner in Disguise."

He previously released four critically acclaimed albums of his own: "John David Souther" in 1972 (on which "How Long" first appeared), "Black Rose" in '76, "You're Only Lonely" in '79, and "Home By Dawn" in 1984. And he contributed to a pair of albums as a member of The Souther Hillman Furay Band, the supergroup that united Souther with Poco's Richie Furay and the Byrds' Chris Hillman.

With a quarter century of practice time in the rearview mirror, Souther returned with a new studio album earlier this year: "If The World Was You," recorded live in the studio with a five-piece ensemble: two horns, piano, bass and drums. He took a stab at a couple of his new songs during a solo at the City Winery in New York's SoHo district in May.

Over the course of nearly two hours that evening, Souther was affable and forthcoming, treating about 200 fans to a songbook of material spanning his entire career, including a few of the aforementioned hits he penned with his "buddies from the Eagles." Switching back and forth between guitar and piano, Souther wove songs and stories together with his crystal-clear tenor hitting all the high notes with ease.

Since that late spring tour, Souther has been busy. In October he released several of those new songs along with a few old favorites including, "You're Only Lonely", "House of Pride" and "New Kid in Town" on "Rain ," a digital-only download on iTunes, and Souther's first-ever live offering. The live concert, recorded at the historic Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, includes both solo performances and many of the great artists that helped create the sound for 'If The World Was You'.

A few days after the release of "Rain," Jackson Browne presented his old friend and room mate with the prestigious ASCAP Golden Note Award during the 47th annual ASCAP Country Music Awards at Nashville's legendary Ryman Auditorium. The ASCAP Golden Note Award is presented to songwriters, composers and artists who have achieved extraordinary career milestones.

Souther also was among the artists asked to perform Nov. 19 in a musical tribute to the late, great Les Paul who passed away this past August at the age of 94. Like Les Paul, Souther was a jazz musician who took his jazz background and moved into the pop music world as a hitmaker. The star-studded tribute to the famous inventor/raconteur/hitmaker/guitar legend also took place at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.

According to his agent, Souther is planning a spring/summer 2010 tour, with a possible stop at South by Southwest in Austin, TX. A short round of dates in the Northeast is set for early 2010; the itinerary is to the right.

As he was in the final stages of mixing "Rain," Souther took a break and spent a few minutes talking with LiveDaily about his illustrious associations, the art of songwriting, and his first new package of studio material in more than two decades.

LiveDaily: Focusing on "If The World Was You," that title really conjures up a powerful sentiment. I respect the fact that you shy away from talking about relationships, but can you discuss the person who represents the "you" in the title?

J.D. Souther: Everyone. It's a very generalized "you." In fact, sometimes I think I should have called it "If the World Was You (And It Is)." You know, that's one line in a song called "The Secret Handshake of Faith," which is the culmination of the album at the end. And my piano player just couldn't shake that phrase. He just kept saying, "Man, that just says something I never heard said before.' And, I said, "I agree it's never been said before, but does it have any emotional resonance for you?' And he says, "Yeah, it makes me cry -- it's so cool." Now that's an awful lot of pluses, so I told him that's what we're gonna call the album. It's a little bit like "Home By Dawn," everything is bleeding into everything. "If the World Was You" was cut in one room including the singer.

LiveDaily: We have to go back to "Home By Dawn" in '84 to find your last collection of original material. You've said that you designed to make that a hit record, but for several reasons, both externally and internally, it was not. In the years since then, has that experience served you as far as relaxing and letting things just come out organically whenever or wherever the muse may strike?

Well, you've just reminded me that things are best served by a steady, organic process. I supposed that record was designed to be a hit. I remember at the time the producer or the engineer--one of the guys who was hanging around the studio a lot said, 'J.D., I think you've got an album full of singles here.' Which would have been surprising for me since I rarely have singles; my songs are usually too long or too off-center for that. But I think I probably got sucked into believing it. And also, that was the third time I had cut those songs. I cut all those songs one time in my living room with Waddy Wachtel and Kenny Edwards and Kootch [Danny Kortchmar]. And, thinking that wasn't enough when it actually sounded really good, I went into the studio in LA and I cut them again with Jeff Purcaro and a different set of musicians. Then, I think what happened--although I'm unclear about those times because it was a period of excess for me in a number of ways--and I think I got into a fight with a guy at Columbia Records, probably over something slight. So they moved me to Warner Brothers, where they sent me down to Nashville to cut the whole thing again with David Malloy, who produced a lot of country hits and a lot of rock-and-roll sounding country hits.

But I think the record was overcooked; it's got too many effects on it. It's a good little record. In fact, I think maybe at some point David and I will go back in and strip a lot of the excess echo and overdubs off of it and put it out as a re-do.

What about that version with Waddy and Kootch? I'd line up to buy that one.

That's something I'd consider. There's only two tracks, so there's not much fixing what's there. You can work magic [digitally in studio] but it's pretty rough. It's cool music; the cool factor is pretty high. But it simply is what it is, recorded in the living room of my house up in the Hollywood Hills with all the French doors open and the music wafting out over Sunset Boulevard pissing off the neighbors. I was actually playing drums and singing on every song--I just had a microphone hanging off the chandelier over the drum kit. I played drums on every song on "Home By Dawn."

You still have a pretty potent tie to the Eagles as a result of them recording "How Long" just last year despite the fact that that number has a 30-year history. Has it changed much in its construction, or its lyrical content, since you first sang it on your first solo album in '72?

It changed a little in the first year I was playing it. It started off as a shuffle, and became a little bluesier--a little darker. It's not the happiest song in the world. It's about a guy who goes off to war and doesn't come back. And I wasn't performing it for a lot of years, but as their manager said to me about a year ago, "An Eagles hit is always a beautiful thing." And it is--so I started doing it in my set again.

You know, the Eagles record is a lot like mine. When I started touring with a band in '72, I changed it from a shuffle into that kind of straight 8-beat that it is now. And they were doing it on stage then during their first tour. And as often happened with us, if I recorded something, usually they didn't; and if they recorded something we wrote, then I didn't. That one, since I wrote it myself and the record was already out, they just passed on recording it. Frankly, it was a total surprise and delight to me that they did it last year.

There is kind of a club of so-called California rock or country rock artists that sprang from the LA scene of the '70s and '80s that still seems to be going strong--with your former tenant Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt who recorded your "Run Like a Thief," James Taylor, and a long and rich collaboration with Linda Ronstadt. Have these relationships helped you and all of them stay in business?

Well, let's hope it goes on for another 30 years. You know, I ran into Tony Bennett a couple of summers ago in LaGuardia and we were gettin' our shoes shined. And we're up there chattin' and he asked if I was doing any dates. So I said I hadn't been for awhile but I got a new record and he says, "I heard--it's kind of a jazz thing." So I said, "I'll be out touring [behind it]. How about you? Are you doing any dates?" And he goes "No, we're cutting down to about 60 a year"!

Sixty dates a year! (laughing) He's a hero to me in a hundred different ways. I've been listening to his music since I was a little kid. And, God willing, I'll be out doing the same thing when I'm 81 and having as much fun as he is. I'm a lifer. I've been playing music since I was 11 and I don't see any reason to quit.

It's been said if the Eagles, and a lot of those artists you've worked with, came out today, they would be pegged into a country music format. But at the time, they were classified as rock, and even pop or Top 40 acts. Can you talk about being in the boat as that California rock sound of the '70s and early '80s became reclassified into what would surely be country material today?

At the time, I thought that was the way things were leaning--this sort of Southern California country rock. These are not my labels, by the way; that is what people were calling the music that we made when it was all lumped together. I thought that was moving towards what has since emerged as that urbanized sort of country radio format, and it turned out my instincts were right. The problem with bein' in the middle of the boat, though, is when you're in the midst of any kind of phenomenon that affects a lot of the public, is that you're still sailing the boat. You're watching the weather, you're bailing out the boat, you're trying to steer the thing right. And there's always something going down, metaphorically: your compass; a rudder is broken; some of your lines are crossed. So you're always workin' it from the inside out, so where the ripples go is so completely out of our control. I mean, it is why we have managers, PR guys, it's why we do interviews, and it's the reason why MTV was so successful.

It had the support of everyone from the composer to the consumer--insofar as you had a bigger window. You could not only hear the music, you could see the people and get off on this cinematic dimension. But I don't think there's a clear view of what's happening on the shore when you're out in the middle of a storm trying to make the boat go true. I'll say this: we all wrote these songs to last. And everyone is aware that in this business, your presence could be a very transitory one. I read a lot of interviews with McCartney and Lennon where they said, "If we get a couple of years out of this it will be amazing." Here we are 50 years later and nobody that picks up an acoustic guitar doesn't try to play "Blackbird."