A Los Angeles home customized to suit a singer-songwriting icon — complete with a music studio alongside a vineyard — has hit the market for $5.9 million.
The late J.D. Souther — the mind behind hits including “Best of My Love” and “James Dean” for the Eagles — first renovated the 1941-era residence at 2424 Nichols Canyon Road in 1991. Roughly 11 years later, he needed a bit more from the space that fostered and fed his musical creativity.
He tasked the late Stephen Kanner, a prolific L.A. architect, with expanding the hillside residence that sits on almost 1 acre in Nichols Canyon.
The architect, known for a breadth of projects that include a 1997-built In-N-Out burger inspired by the atomic era, reconfigured the home’s second story with the addition of three bedrooms. Today, the five-bedroom, six-bath structure combines Los Angeles luxuries — a pool, several fireplaces, a wine cellar and vineyards — with more unique features tailored to creative pursuits — a screening room and a separate music studio.
A collection of butterfly roofs tops the 6,068-square-foot residence, which borrows amply from the simple forms and open plans of midcentury design. The project also leans heavily on natural materials, its honey-toned exterior cladding melding easily with its lush surroundings. Kanner brought the wood indoors, an effect that blurs the oftentimes harsh boundaries between the interior and exterior.
“It’s particularly interesting because the frames of all the windows are wood,” pointed out listing agent George Penner. “It’s almost like you’re in a treehouse as you open [the windows] up to the surrounding vegetation.”
Souther sold the home before his passing in 2024. The residence’s current owners are looking to downsize.
The three-story listing is getting the usual interest from its desirable location, Penner said, as it’s “only a stone’s throw away” from Hollywood and West Hollywood. At the same time, the property’s canyon perch isn’t for everyone.
“It’s also a canyon road, and sometimes people don’t necessarily want that,” Penner said of the curving approach. “But we are very lucky to find a large pool of people that have really gravitated to the architectural pedigree and emotion that it projects.”
Part of that emotion is a pervasive sense of familiarity.
“Everyone that comes through the property said it is reminiscent of another place that they love,” Penner recalled. With visitors reminded of the nearby — such as Mill Valley — to far-flung Aspen, Colorado, and Connecticut, Penner sees connective tissues in the serenity people feel.
“People feel almost transported to another part of the country that they … go to often on vacation,” Penner said. “People do want, sort of, calmness in today’s market, and I think this house achieves that.”