JD Souther Looks Forward to Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction

JD Souther has penned some of music's most iconic hits spanning the last several decades, including 'Heartache Tonight' and 'Best of My Love' by the Eagles, and Linda Ronstadt's 'Faithless Love.' Now the 67-year-old is being acknowledged for his musical contributions with an induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and he couldn't be happier with the high honor.

"It's like the Oscar for my business," he tells CMT Edge. "It's a very small group. Somebody told me while doing the research on this that there are four times as many Oscars as there are Songwriter Hall of Fame statuettes. You have to be in the club to vote. It's gonna be great. I'll look out and see my friends like Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb and Paul Williams in the audience going, 'Yeah, you deserve this.'"

The tunesmith has penned hundreds of songs, but he admits he still has plenty to learn about the craft of songwriting. "The near impossibility of it intrigues me," he acknowledges. "It's difficult to do. It's just a combination of hard work, experience, talent and plain good luck to write a really good -- a really rare -- song. They just don't come along every day."

The Michigan native's latest offering, 'Midnight in Tokyo,' is a six-song live EP that is unlike anything he has released in the past. The project, which was recorded at an intimate show in Tokyo, was not originally intended to become a live album, which is why he says it is one of his favorite offerings.

"It's so real and natural," he notes. "It was a very relaxed set with long solos. It was like playing the Blue Note or the Vanguard in New York in the '60s. It felt very organic. The audience was right with us every note, but their mics were off for some reason, so it sounded like there were even fewer people there. We just hear the audience through the stage mics, but I said, 'Let's just do it.' And I asked the record label, and they said, 'Absolutely. Let's go.'"

JD Souther will join Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry and Foreigner's Mick Jones and Lou Gramm, along with British songwriter Tony Hatch at the Songwriter Hall of Fame induction ceremony, which will be held on June 13 in New York City.

Purchase Midnight in Tokyo here.