To The Moon and Back!
A Review and Interview with Jim Valley
September – 2021
If it’s raining out, or you’re down in the dumps, I recommend you listen to music by Jim Valley. Jim is like a ray of sunshine and a rainbow on a dark day and his folksy, laid-back sound never fails to lift my spirits. “Sit Upon The Moon,” Jim’s latest album, features gentle and lyrical vocals with insightful, whimsical words sprinkled with the fairy dust of tinkling piano, backed with rhythmic guitar and percussion and background vocals, is a fantastical voyage through nature and the world of imagination. It’s a delight for the young and young at heart. One can’t help feel like dancing to the Latin-inspired “As I Walk,” or humming along to the title track, “Sit Upon the Moon.” And Jim’s love of nature is evident in many of the songs; “Garden Bower” invites us to play among the flowers, “Silverly Silverly” begins with a few bird chirps and follows the moon over the tress; “Feather” describes singing to the flowers, watching a bumblebee, chipmunks and soaring swallows. Then there’s my personal favorite track, “Enchanted Lions,” which paints a delightfully imaginative picture of Lions climbing out of the sea to play and “wrestle like kittens.” So if you’re stuck inside on a rainy day, put this album on and soon you’ll find yourself dancing among the flowers, trees bumblebees, and lions, and feeling much lighter!
We are fortunate to have Jim perform his uplifting music on a regular basis at the Center for Spiritual Living in Tacoma. I talked briefly with Jim after the service last Sunday. It is one of his favorite places to sing because you can let your heart totally out. Spiritually, he describes himself as a universal person – all beautiful thought /mystical thought whether it be Hinduism, Sufism—he accepts it all, believing that God lives in all of us, whether we know it or not. And this has inspired his music, which reflects an ever-positive attitude and a love for all beings.
Jim learned to play trumpet in 4th grade and he comes from a musical family that sang in the car—music, and dance was always second nature in his household. In 9th grade, he had learned to play a few chords on the piano and wrote a song for a girlfriend (we went steady for at least a month!) His next-door neighbor said, “Hey, that’s a good song—I know a guy who just got a set of drums for Christmas, I know a guy who plays the saxophone really well, I know a guy who has a guitar at his house—he can’t play it but he has one. So they learned a few songs, but the guitar player just kind of beat on his guitar, never really learned it. Jim decided to buy a guitar and learned how to play it himself (this was in 1958). By the end of my sophomore year, his band was called the Viceroys; they played their first dance and got $50 – the band was on their way!
Jim’s greatest “claim to fame”, of course, was the year he spent performing with Paul Revere and the Raiders, which he describes as “five years rolled into one.” It was a very busy year! They appeared on “Where the Action Is” with Dick Clark, The Smothers Brothers, Milton Berle, and other shows, went on tours, did magazine interviews and photographs. They were not just music celebrities; they were also television celebrities, so they had mass love. It either made your head big or opened your heart and in Jim’s case, it opened his heart. You can see this in Jim’s warm, loving countenance and his openness to people and animals, and the world in general.
The Raiders were definitely a highlight of Jim’s career but he has been involved in many music groups and projects. In 1972, Jim founded a group called “Sweet Talkin Jones, and then in ’75 for a while, he was in “The Shoestring Orchestra” which is one of his favorite groups. Currently, he has a group called the Jim Valley Project with bassist Billy Odden, drummer David Lopez, and guitarist Russ Salton, all play gigs around the Gig Harbor and Tacoma area. With this group, Jim has a chance to do a lot of his original songs that he never worked out with performing groups, so that is a good opportunity, as well as a lot of fun.
Jim has also enjoyed traveling all over the world, from South America to India, and you can hear the world music influence in his music. He has an international school program called Rainbow Planet, where kids cooperate in the classroom to write a poem or song. One of the songs that Jim performs often at CSL, “Add Your Happiness,” comes from one of these Rainbow Planet Sessions. Jim has 7 or 8 albums from Rainbow Planet; they’re family albums, for kids of all ages. Jim loves working with kids and that contributes to his sunny attitude and keeps him young! COVID has put a pause on this work but Jim looks forward to working with children again. Meanwhile, Jim continues to delight listeners with music that carries on the spirit of peace and love that prevailed in the ’60s to people of every era.
You can learn more about Jim Valley and sample or purchase his albums on his website, jimvalley.com
Download or stream Jim’s music on Spotify, iTunes, Google Music, Amazon Music or subscribe to Jim’s YouTube Channel
