Jack Tempchin

Jack Tempchin first gained recognition for his songwriting work tied closely to the Eagles. Long before that band existed, he and Glenn Frey had already become close during their early days as aspiring performers in Southern California at the start of the 1970s. Once Frey achieved success by assembling the Eagles, he extended support to Tempchin by including the songwriter’s “Peaceful Easy Feeling” on the group’s initial release. The track became a chart success and marked the beginning of numerous Tempchin compositions that gained traction throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Several of these appeared on Eagles or Glenn Frey recordings, among them “Already Gone,” “You Belong to the City,” and “Smuggler’s Blues,” while another, “Slow Dancing,” reached the Top 40 for Johnny Rivers in 1977. That song had earlier appeared on the self-titled 1976 album by the Funky Kings, a band Tempchin formed with Jules Shear. The Funky Kings project served as Tempchin’s recording debut; he then began issuing solo material in 1978, though sustained focus on his own career arrived only during the 1990s, when he began releasing albums regularly and performing live using the catalog he had assembled.

Although both Tempchin and his longtime associate Frey had relocated from the Midwest to Southern California, Tempchin arrived in San Diego as an infant of nine months and therefore grew up entirely within the region’s relaxed atmosphere. During his teenage years he developed a passion for folk, blues, and rock, taking up the guitar around age 18. While enrolled at San Diego State University, where he also ran the campus venue known as the Backdoor, he began performing in local coffeehouses and encountered established figures such as Hoyt Axton along with emerging talents like Tom Waits; the pair later wrote “Tijuana” together.

Tempchin eventually moved north to Los Angeles and became a familiar presence at the Troubadour on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. At a moment when the city teemed with singer-songwriters, he formed connections with several, notably J.D. Souther and Glenn Frey of Longbranch Pennywhistle. Frey’s subsequent band the Eagles placed Tempchin’s “Peaceful Easy Feeling” on their 1972 debut album. Although the single peaked at number 22 on Billboard’s Hot 100, it endured as a standard and, more crucially, cleared the path for additional Tempchin songs to find recordings, such as “Already Gone,” which the Eagles cut in 1974.

Around that time Tempchin joined forces with Jules Shear to create the Funky Kings. After signing with Arista Records the group issued one self-titled album before disbanding in 1976, yet the record yielded the enduring Tempchin composition “Slow Dancing,” which Johnny Rivers turned into a hit the following year and which country artist Johnny Duncan soon covered as well. Tempchin issued his own self-titled solo album in 1978 and then stepped away from recording under his own name. Throughout the 1980s he developed a songwriting partnership with Frey, and several of their joint efforts became hits, including the Miami Vice-linked “You Belong to the City,” “Party Town,” and “The One You Love.”

Tempchin resumed his solo recording career in 1991 with Staying Home, which was followed in short order by After the Rain in 1993 and Lonely Midnight in 1995. Thereafter he maintained a schedule of live performances and issued a new studio or concert album every few years, among them the notable Live on Hwy 101 in 2000 and Songs in 2007. The 2010s brought heightened activity: in 2012 he embarked on the solo acoustic Peaceful Easy Feeling 40th Anniversary Tour and collaborated with South Coast Winery on two vintages both titled Peaceful Easy Feeling. He returned to the studio for Learning to Dance in 2015 and One More Song in 2016. In 2017 he released Peaceful Easy Feeling: The Songs of Jack Tempchin, a collection that also served as a tribute to Glenn Frey, who had died the previous year. Tempchin entered the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019.