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Jim Ballard
Jim Ballard has been on the Northeast
Ohio music scene since the 1970s, having met John Bassette and Alex
Bevan within weeks of one another in 1974. Starting out as a solo
performer in coffee houses and campus concerts, he quickly caught
the eye and ear of one John Bassette on whose record label,
Tinker-Too, he recorded his first album, SouthSide Days. In a
"simple twist of fate," the producer of that record was John
Bassette. Ballard gradually added more musicians to his sound,
eventually recording the albums, Thunderhead, Into The
Heartbeat, Speed Demons, and his live concert offering,
In The Wings. Along the way, Ballard and his music have been
associated with Tom Paxton, Gordon Lightfoot, Odetta, Poco, Michael
Stanley, Phoebe Snow and Kenny Loggins, to name a few.
Ending his active performance career in
the early 90's, Ballard turned his energy to running his own Skylyne
Studios in Akron, and to producing other artists. "I record a punk
band one day and literally the next day, I'm recording a symphony
orchestra and 70 voice choir. It gets interesting." Ballard has
produced and recorded CD projects for Charlie Wiener, Jon Mosey,
Evan Davis, Drop Gun, Jimmy Ulmer, and "a bunch of others." He is
overall producer of this John Bassette CD.
These days, he is composing film scores
for a variety of different films, most recently for award-winning
director Peter John Ross's "Horrors of War" -
www.horrorsofwarmovie.com
- and new young film maker, Matt Pallotta's "Imperfections." -
www.redduckpictures.com
- Ballard is presently working on a new film for StoneKap
Productions, "Nora Falls," which is slated to be shown at the
Sundance Film Festival.
"I picked one of John's lesser known
songs, 'Black Limousine,' because I remember when I was first
getting started and John was helping me a lot. He was the first
singer/songwriter I'd known who actually had worked with famous
people. I knew that his take on stardom had come from something he'd
actually been around. He never got that way himself. Like the guy in
the limousine, I mean."
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