Meet Jim Sheridan

Guitarist For The Adults

This is the first in a series of articles about local artists who share their creativity through music.

Who: Newtown resident Jim Sheridan, a Wilton High School teacher, performs with The Adults, a classic rock band. He lives in town with his wife, Lisa, a Newtown High School teacher, his daughters Emma, 11, and Maggie 9, and their dog Lukey.

The Adults perform locally at a host of venues and events in Newtown and nearby communities.

Why music? “I was always hooked on listening,” Mr Sheridan said. “I am an enthusiast.” After a pause, he added, “And, I am sure that on some level it was to irritate my parents!”

He said, “My parents were not fans. They were bemused by my idolization of these wild-looking rock stars. They certainly did not understand the idea of anyone owning an extensive record collection or of having an expensive stereo system.”

Earning money from his work delivering newspapers, he saved money to purchase stereo equipment. When the receiver came in, he said, “It mystified them.”

Without speakers or other components, he was on his way to building a sound system, “but I couldn’t listen to it yet,” he said. “It had no tape player, no turntable, no speakers even. It could not make any noise. Still, I could turn it on and marvel at its lights and imagine how it would sound one day.”

Mr Sheridan spent a lot of time staring at that receiver, he said. After a few months he had earned enough to purchase speakers. “Then, the music began,” he said.

Why Guitar? He made some preliminary attempts to learn to play music, starting with piano. Lessons in second grade did not turn out for the best, however.

“I took lessons from the woman whose son was the school bully. That didn’t work,” he admitted. “Making music began rather painfully for me. In second and third grade, my parents had me take piano lessons. My four older siblings had already gone through it, so it was my turn.” Mr Sheridan would walk around the block to the teacher’s house, dreading the sight of her son Kenny, an older boy and a part of part “the local bullying crew.”

“I would have to slink past him with my piano books to take my lessons from his mom. Not cool.” Although he enjoyed the melodies, he did not keep up with the practice. “My piano career ended at the end of third grade.”

Several years later he signed up for guitar lessons. Remembering the instructor, he joked, “He wanted ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb,’ and I wanted Rock and Roll.’” Remembering his early lessons, he said, “I didn’t have discipline; I had to learn in steps.”

In the seventh grade at the time, he said, “The lessons I took involved a stiff acoustic guitar — No blazing licks erupted from my fingers. It was impossible.

“I retired from guitar lessons but grew more and more obsessive with listening to music, reading about music, talking about music, collecting music.”

He began to think that music was something amazing guitarists were born to do. Once he started high school, he thought: “Either you’re touched by God, or not; you could do it, or not.”

Trying another approach, he played the drums through college, but once he graduated and found his first apartment, Mr Sheridan arrived at a difficult realization. “[Drums] were too loud. Literally, I couldn’t use them.” Remembering his stereo receiver that he bought with money from his paper route, he said, “I could look, but there was no sound.”

He said, “My drum kit sat unused in my living room for weeks as I ached to make music. Finally, I went back to my parents’ house to claim my sister’s long-abandoned folk mass acoustic guitar from under her old bed and signed up for guitar lessons.”

Guitar lessons began again when he was 22, out of college and working for a relocation company.

“On lunch break I would take lessons and would bring the guitar to work and play in the conference room.” He was soon playing “obsessively. I always had a guitar in my hand,” he said.

When Mr Sheridan began teaching English at New Milford High School in 1994, he met Mark Iannucci, a fellow teacher and current band member. “He and I hit it off,” said Mr Sheridan.

Who Are The Adults? Mr Iannucci invited Mr Sheridan to play drums in a band called Blues Caffeine.

“Although I had been concentrating on guitar, the idea of playing in a band knocked me out. I joined.” After roughly two months, plans changed.

“Mark wanted to quit, and I followed.” The Sheridan-Iannucci team did not split up, however. The two played guitar every Friday afternoon after work. “After a long week of teaching screaming kids, we would say, ‘it’s time for the screaming adults!’”

The two built up a repertoire and began performing as an acoustic duo called The Screaming Adults. But the name was misleading.

“Reading the name in the paper frightened some potential listeners off, so we shortened it to The Adults.” Proud Mary’s, the lounge at The Inn at Newtown, was one of the first venues were they performed. The Adults remained an acoustic duo from about 1996 until 1999.

“It did not take long before we started writing our own material,” explained Mr Sheridan. “I found myself writing lyrics in the car, jotting phrases down on my notepad…If I had a good melody and needed to remember it, I would call my extension at work and sing the melody into my voicemail.”

As the two practiced together, more original material emerged.

“Some songs just came out of jam sessions at Mark’s house. The original material fit seamlessly into our sets, and in some ways it sounded even better,” Mr Sheridan said, adding, “It’s almost impossible to sound just like Led Zeppelin or just as good as the Allman Brothers. It is better by far to sound like ourselves.”

They have an acoustic disc called Homepsun, recorded in 2000. They later welcomed old college friends to turn the acoustic duo into a full electric band.

Today The Adults are Jim Sheridan on vocals and guitar, and Mark Iannucci on bass, along with Paul Simonetta on saxophone, Chris Grennan on drums, Pete Grennan on guitar, and Gene Tiernan on drums.

The band plays locally, including family events such as last summer’s Grapes of Wrath mountain bike race at McLaughlin Vineyards in Sandy Hook. They play regularly at The One-Eyed Pig and Proud Mary’s in Newtown, as well The Lumberyard Pub in West Redding, and The Redding Roadhouse in Redding.

The group has several CDs including Sounds of the Day (2003), Adult Swim (2006) and Smells Like Glue (2009), the latter of which the group’s website (TheAdults.homestead.com) describes as “an example of what music can sound like in the Obama era.” The group has new original songs that Mr Sheridan hopes to recorded over the spring and summer of this year.

A best moment? As a college student Mr Sheridan recalls, “A friend from college, he was so good. I never dreamed I would play with him.”

But as time, practice, and persistence added up, he said, “Years later, I realized that I could play with him too.”

Mr Sheridan has also reached for and grasped a dream. “I am such a huge fan of music. I never thought that I would be the person making it.”

As a young adult, he “spent every dime on music.” As he grew older, he encountered several moments of understanding that have shaped the musician he has become.

“Necessity being the mother of invention, I had to show people songs, and sounded pretty good … Necessity being the mother of invention again [The Adults] sounded better dong their own songs rather than trying to sound like someone else.”

Can you imagine your life without music? Saying, no, he added, “It’s hard to explain why …”

After a moment, he told a brief story about music, language, and memory.

“You encode memory in words,” he said. “Before that, it’s only sensation.” People use words to express emotions, he said, but music is more of a sensation. “It’s primal, you don’t think about it. It goes beyond logic that controls every other part of your day,” he said. “Words are never really going to describe music. Maybe that’s how it should be.”

Is it a freedom? He described music as a “pleasure, like sports or running is to someone.” Music can be “intense,” and bring friends together, he said. “It’s a great excuse to see each other!”

Upcoming dates for The Adults include February 11 at Greenwood’s in Bethel; February 17 at The One-Eyed Pig’s open mic night; February 25 at Proud Mary’s in Newtown; March 3, back at The One Eyed Pig’s open mic night; March 4 at The Cookhouse in New Milford; March 12 at The One Eyed Pig in Newtown (as a full band); and March 19 at The Lumberyard Pub in the Georgetown section of Redding.

Visit Newtown Bee’s online Features page this week for an audio link within this story. Additional information about the band can be found online at My Space, Facebook, and TheAdults.homestead.com.