Growing Up

Jim was born in the 1950's in Northern New Jersey. During his high school years he was more interested in drawing and painting and pickup games of basketball, football and baseball than music, but spent plenty of time listening to the Beatles, Santana, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Crosby, Stills & Nash, the Byrds, The Band, Jefferson Airplane and many others. The sound of his music was shaped by the soundtrack of those turbulent, wonderful times, and continues to evolve.

College

Jim went to college in Maine, studying English Lit and East Asian Culture, and spent a year studying at Oxford and another year in graduate school in Philadelphia. After dropping out of grad school, he moved to Chicago. Broke and without a clue about what to do with his liberal arts degree, it seemed like a good place to figure things out. He found that he liked the city of big shoulders, especially the summer, with ball games at Wrigley Field, the Lakefront, and the music scene.

Guitar

His mother gave him a guitar for Christmas in 1976 and, shortly after, he started to hang around the Old Town School of Folk Music. There were concerts at the Old Town School and he became acquainted with the likes of John Prine, Steve Goodman, Michael Smith, Tom Paxton, Bob Gibson, Jim Post and many others. He also became aware of a new generation of local songwriters like Thom Bishop and Marty Pieffer. He would frequent the folk clubs and coffeehouses to hear these new artists. He particularly liked to go to a club like Somebody Else's Troubles and sit near the front to watch performers play guitar, picking up ideas for his own playing and sometimes learning a few of their songs. He started hanging out with his new friends, discussing the finer points of rock and roll and playing the open stages after calming the nerves with a couple of beers. Bruce Cockburn and Loudon Wainwright are among the many influences that you may detect in Jim’s music.

He started playing professionally in the early 80's. Around the same time, he met Laura and they fell in love and got married. She was the inspiration for many of the love songs in his repertoire. After living in Chicago for 11 years, they packed up the car and the cats and moved to Austin in search of warm weather and a vibrant music scene.

Austin and Beyond

In Austin, he became acquainted with a whole new set of musicians like Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, Jimmie LaFave, David Rodriguez and too many others to mention. He co-hosted the open stage at the legendary acoustic venue, Chicago House, with Jimmy LaFave and Betty Elders, played at SXSW several times in the early years, and was a finalist at the Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk Competition in 1990 and 1993 and performed live a number of times on the KUT Folkways show. Over the years he has performed either solo or with a rotating cast of fantastic musicians and singers, most of whom pop up on his releases.

Jim moved on to the DC area in 1996 and continues to perform regularly.

Discography

Old Jalopy (2007 CD & Digital)

Wings of Time (1997 CD & Digital)

Defenders of the Forest (1992 cassette)

This Ain't a World Where it Pays to be Meek (1989 cassette)

Standing on the Great Wall of China (1988 cassette)

Send E-mail to Jim Heald

Comments and Suggestions welcome. Thanks for your support.

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