Jim Connell Plays “Early Lessons”

Thursday, July 10 from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at Darvill’s Bookstore

— by Margie Doyle —

“Early Lessons” song collection by Jim Connell featured at Darvill’s this Thursday. Photo by Liz Nelson Liu

He’s co-founder and president of Institute for Research and Reform in Educational (IRRE),  an educational reform institute, an education and psychology professor, a dedicated 12-step fellowship participant and a former band member — and now Jim Connell is a musical recording artist. His compilation of songs, “Early Lessons,” will be performed at Darvill’s Bookstore this Thursday evening.

“Early Lessons” is truly a labor of love. All proceeds from the CD will go towards the Christine Chandler Memorial Fund in honor of Jim’s late wife. The Memorial Fund will support Early Childhood Education, Mental Health and addiction supports on Orcas Island.

Chris Chandler fought a long battle with cancer in recent years, and died in 2012. “When Chris passed away, I filled that space with music and recorded seven songs in the year and a half since her death,”  Jim says.

While “Early Lessons” may seem a misnomer — “I’m not little; I’m big and old on the outside” — Jim says that “starting over with music and life” revealed the young child he really is, “though outside, I’m old.”

Jim found Martin Lund as a teacher in 2007, at the One World Music Festival. After lessons in reading music, chord theory, music theory and structure, Jim says, his music changed dramatically.

His lessons included playing in recitals “just like the little kids. Nine-year-olds were playing much more complicated music than I was. It was very nerve-wracking. I was more nervous for that than at any other professional engagement in my life!”
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Then Jim began recording his own piano compositions, with Martin joining in on tenor sax. Other island musicians were brought into the recording sessions — Gene Nery, Steve Alboucq and Charlie Porter.

The songs are about loss and recovery. One song is dedicated to his first love, who also died of cancer; another “The Side of the Road” was sung by Jaz Lund at this year’s One World Music Festival. “La Bella” which has a Moroccan-Spanish-Hebrew feel to it, was written in honor of a young friend’s Bat Mitzvah. Jim is now writing words to another song on the CD, “Why Can’t I Just Tell You,” to express how difficult it can be to speak the truth, even with the person you love most in life.

Prior to his work with Martin, Jim had played piano by ear, and transferred that skill to guitar, which he picked up at 18. In college, he was writing poetry as a creative writing major, and he started putting the words and musical notes together for liturgical music. He formed a college band, Milkweed, and dropped out of college to play in the southeast for a couple of years. Jim wrote most of the songs, which he called, “soft folk rock.” When the group’s demo album fizzled, Jim says he “stopped playing for 40 years,” although he wrote a half-dozen songs in those years, to celebrate friends’ special occasions.

An exciting “coda” has been added to the debut of “Early Lessons.” Accompanying Jim at the Darvill’s event will be his former bandmate from the 1970s, Reid Spencer. Thanks to the internet efforts of Jim Nelson and You Tube, the old Milkweed bandmates have became reconnected.

Jim Connell says, “I found music again when I needed something to pin my emotions and challenges and fellowship to. It kept me afloat in the most difficult time of my life.

“And I’ve grown the most.”

Come see and hear the results of one Orcas man’s “Early Lessons.”