The Long Run

Dew glistens in the sunlight breaking over the horizon on an unseasonably cool morning in early July. A solitary figure bends and stretches in the parking lot at the Wilbeth Road trailhead of the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath prior to embarking on a 15-mile training run. By a runner’s reckoning, the Akron Marathon—only 12 weeks away—was fast approaching, and putting the miles in is crucial to the training process.

This year’s race marked the 21st time Jim Ballard laced-up his running shoes and hit the pavement to compete in a marathon. Running is a passion Ballard embraced long after he embraced another passion he has pursued with the dedication of a marathon runner: music.

The Long and Winding Road

Although music is inherent in his DNA—Ballard’s mother sang in a Carter Family-style group on the radio in the 1930s—Ballard’s musical passion was first stirred by the arrival of the Beatles in America. Following their 1964 appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, 13-year-old Ballard ordered his first guitar from a catalog and began his musical journey.

Throughout his high school years, first at Hoban and then at Garfield, Ballard performed in bands covering hit records by popular groups of the day ranging from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones, The Kinks, the Animals and the Who. After graduating in 1968, Ballard spent several freewheeling, adventurous months hitchhiking around the country with a friend. In the spring of 1969, he received a draft notice. By the fall, Ballard was on an aircraft carrier, becoming a technician and flier in the U.S. Navy. An encounter with a horrific storm in the Bay of Biscay in 1972 was later immortalized in the song “Red Sky Suite,” which appears on Ballard’s 2011 release, “Wood and Wire.”

Upon discharge from the Navy in 1973, Ballard had no plans to pursue a musical career. Instead, he went to work for a local publishing company. The persistent entreaties of legendary local musician, “Jammin’ Paul” Hively, finally convinced Ballard to pick up his guitar and join Hively’s band to play cover tunes in local bars. During this time, Ballard began to write his own songs and, recognizing a cover-tune-playing-bar-band was not the appropriate showcase for his craft, decided to go solo. In early 1975, Ballard acquired an acoustic guitar and began building a musical career as a singer/songwriter.

He released his first album, “South Side Days,” in 1976 followed by “Thunderhead” in 1979. By 1982, Ballard had formed a band that released a trio of albums over the next six years: “Into the Heartbeat,” “Speed Demons,” and the live gem “In the Wings.” In 1988 Ballard came within inches of achieving the dream chased by so many musicians: A couple of major record labels expressed interest in signing Ballard and the band to a recording contract. At that crucial juncture, two longtime band-members quit. Faced with finding and grooming new band-members, which was akin to starting over, Ballard opted to go in a new direction—he built a recording studio in his Kenmore home and began writing and demoing songs for music publishers.

From 1989 to the present, Ballard’s Skylyne Studios has recorded numerous local bands, solo performers and ensembles, often with Ballard acting in a combined role of recording engineer and producer. In the late ‘90s, through various contacts in the industry, Ballard began composing soundtrack music for independent films, as well as a variety of industrial videos and infomercials for clients ranging from Goodyear, Timken, Nationwide and Apple to the University of Akron. A commercial for the latter, aired during Super Bowl XL in 2006, featured Ballard’s music.

A commission to compose music for a massage therapy business inspired Ballard to release the resulting compositions in the collection “Wexford Lane” in 2010.

Then Ballard began re-visiting songs from his back catalog, intrigued with the idea of how his 60-year-old self would produce songs written by his 30-year-old self. The resulting album, 2011’s “Wood and Wire,” marked his return to the singer/songwriter genre and features Ballard’s multi-instrumentalist talents on tracks ranging stylistically from classic rock and roll to folk, blues and Americana roots music. A fresh, new batch of original songs followed on his 2012 release, “Human Harvest,” including “Save Me a Place”— a loving tribute to Ballard’s late mentor and friend, John Bassette, sung with another of Bassette’s protégés, Alex Bevan.

The most recent path taken by Ballard on his musical trek began in 2014. In keeping with his instinct for social commentary and social justice—and heeding the precept that a creative person’s task is to “travel to where the map says ‘here be dragons’ and report back”—he conceived fourteen songs. When the time came to record these new songs, Ballard repaired to his studio and began the process of bringing the compositions to life. Not unlike the planning Ballard undertakes to prepare for a marathon, his approach to recording music follows a meticulous methodology: decide on instrumentation, create arrangements, lay down “sketches” of tracks, then fill in the details.

Ballard describes his typical line-up as drums, bass, a couple of guitars and a Hammond organ. But as he wrote parts for his new songs, he found himself sketching out alternative arrangements for each song, emphasizing acoustic instruments. “I was going for a ‘rootsy-er’ feeling,” he says, “experimenting with traditional flavors, more organic.”

As a result, in addition to his blues and rock arrangements, he crafted versions featuring gospel, Celtic and Americana overtones. He presented these demos to a select group of northeast Ohio’s finest musicians—Tim Longfellow, Tommy Dobeck, Jon Mosey, Morgan Phelps, Bill Watson, Joe Lang, Cathy Miller-Grady and others—and asked them to enhance his parts based on their own creative responses and talents. Thus, a project initially conceived as a one-disc collection of fourteen songs turned into a two-disc collection of fourteen songs done in two distinct styles or flavors, entitled “Ask John Steinbeck.”

Ballard’s personal favorites include the title track, “Seven Trains”; “The Center Holds,” a tribute to his wife Georgann; and his achingly beautiful remembrance of childhood days, “Bells of St. Mary’s.” Also, in keeping with his passion for running, the set includes “I’m Gonna Run,” an anthem Ballard wrote in response to the deadly bombing incident at the 2013 Boston Marathon. A video of the song, featuring more than a hundred volunteers and filmed in downtown Akron, can be viewed on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqGKFwFNxVo.

The 2017 release of “Ask John Steinbeck” finds Ballard already at work on his next batch of songs for a future release, indicating that, like a marathon, Ballard is committed to his music career for the long run.