J. D. Souther

“I think I've been influenced by everything I've ever heard. The first thing I ever heard was my grandma, who was an opera singer. The first song I ever learned was the 'Nessun Dorma' from Puccini's 'Turandot.' My father was a big band singer, so I used to hear him walking around the house singing standards all the time.”

“I love Massachusetts for a number of reasons. I once loved a magical girl who lived in a magnificently converted barn, a half-hour or so from Boston. I love your winters. I love the snow.”

“Dixie Chicks surprised me with a beautiful three-part harmony version of 'I'll Take Care of You.' And Don Henley's performance of 'The Heart of the Matter' still just slays me every time I hear it.”

“I had no idea what those cords were in the bridge of 'Prisoner In Disguise' when I wrote them. I had to go over to Don Gorman, the piano player, and ask what in the world I was playing.”

“If it hadn't worked out professionally, I would be teaching music theory and composition in a small college somewhere and playing drums in a jazz trio at the Holiday Inn on weekends, and I'd be happy there, too.”

“In the '80s, I got tired of the rat race. It was a terrible time for music. I wasn't part of that whole MTV craze. I did 'Go Ahead and Rain,' which was Madeleine Stowe's first bit, but felt no connection to it. I went many years where I didn't have to work.”

“I don't want to think that anything is off limits for me to write about, but I also don't want to intrude on anybody's life, which is why there's very little specificity or names in the songs I write.”

“I have a wonderful piano that I really love: a handmade Yamaha grand. Sometimes I'm sitting there, and it sounds so good that I find some little melody or a phrase that leads me into a song, but probably more often than not, I actually grab a notebook.”

“The power of network television is amazing. I've been performing for years but have been seen on only a few episodes of this show, and people spot me in public now all the time. They say, 'Hey, aren't you on 'Nashville'?' Most locals seem to really appreciate how authentic the show is.”

“I had a jazz trio, a rock n' roll band, and I played drums in junior high, high school, college, big bands, and I played timpani in the symphony. I am a drummer. It's the one instrument I actually play pretty well. It's just hard to carry on your back.”

“I always think that today is the best day that there's ever been. The song that I'm working on is always the best song I've ever written. The woman I'm looking at is the most incomprehensibly beautiful woman I've ever seen. These dogs that I have now are, by far, the best dogs I've ever had - although, so were the last pair of dogs I had.”

“My secret heroes were Joe Morello, Ray Charles - who is, in my opinion, the most dominant figure in musical history in the 21st century - and Frank Sinatra. Those are my heroes. And as a writer, when Bob Dylan came along, it was a miracle because he gave us all permission to say anything!”

“I didn't even respect singers until I heard Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong.”

“The more I go on in this career of making albums, writing songs and playing music, the more I think of each album as a movie. I really wanted to make a film, but making a film is much more expensive than making a record.”

“There's no musical landscape to poetry. It has somewhat of a higher standard than songs, I think.”

“When I lived in Los Angeles, I used to live in the Hollywood Hills, behind Grauman's Theater, and I'd always hit the matinees.”

“I don't think I ever thought of growing up to be anything other than a musician. There really wasn't a plan B. Well, a kind of a distant plan B was to be a Formula One driver, but there really wasn't an entry point.”

“I had given myself a sort of early retirement when I left the scene in 1985. All of the people in my family worked until they dropped, including my father. I decided to take a little time to enjoy life. I traveled, built my dream house, rescued a few dogs. My return to music, and acting, was deliberate, part of my musical arc.”

“I don't have any particular methodology, to tell you the truth. 'Silver Blue' took exactly the amount of time to write that it takes to sing it, and 'Prisoner in Disguise' took about a year and a half. So you just never know.”

“I never fully understand all the drama and machinations within the Eagles.”