Arts-Entertainment
By James Fly
Jimmy Conley picked up his guitar and started playing and singing Gene Autrey’s “Back in the Saddle Again.” A professional guitar teacher for many years, Jimmy admits he can’t saddle a horse, but he did hitch up with Nan, a flute-playing horsewoman in 2005, and they’ve been playing and teaching music together ever since.
Jimmy and Nan own Conley’s Books and Music located on the second floor of The Shane Lalani Center for the Arts. In the store’s studio they teach and inspire over 40 local students ranging from elementary school- to retirement-age.
Jimmy instructs students in ukulele, acoustic, bass and electric guitar, piano and percussion, while Nan teaches traditional and Native American flute.
Three times a year the Conleys host live gigs during which their students perform classic tunes, covers and original pieces before an audience of enthusiastic family members and friends. Their annual holiday gig will take place in The Shane Center's Dulcie Theatre on Monday, December 15th at 7 pm. Everyone is welcome to this free performance.
The second marriage for both, Jimmy and Nan’s union has brought melody, harmony and rhythm not only to their students but also to listeners in the many venues in which they have played and continue to play.
The story of Conley’s began in April 2002, when Jimmy partnered with the late bookseller, Tim Gable, in a book and music store located in what is now Wolf’s Mercantile on Main Street in downtown Livingston. Five years later, Jimmy and Nan, who married in 2006, bought out the ailing Mr. Gable.
In 2017, The Shane Center invited them to move their store and studio to the center’s second floor. “We’re actually in the former third-grade classroom and I’ve taught students who went to school here in the 50s and 60s,” says Jimmy, his bright Irish blue eyes smiling.
The Conley’s built their studio with scrap lumber and 14” sound proofing, which has resulted in no noise complaints from the center’s other tenants.
Jimmy grew up in Chico, California, and came to teaching naturally since his father, uncle and aunts were all teachers or school administrators. In the electrified air of 60s San Francisco Bay with bands like Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service playing, it was a no-brainer for Jimmy to start a band with his friends as a sophomore in high school.
He went on to study drama and music at Chico State College and paid for his education playing area gigs. His agent eventually signed him up to play as a guitarist for a band playing several gigs in Montana. Passing through Livingston on July 2nd for the annual Independence Day Parade and Rodeo, Jimmy went to a couple bars and was invited to go fishing on the Yellowstone River.
Like a rainbow trout lured by a well-tied fly, Jimmy was hooked and never released from the historic railroad town. “I said to myself, ‘If I ever settle down, I want to settle down in this town,’” Jimmy says.
Eight years later, he fulfilled that promise to himself. Between 1993 and 1998, he furthered his musical studies at both Montana State University and the University of Montana, serving a graduate teaching assistantship at the latter.
A native of Noblesville, Indiana, Hoosier Nany remembers taking trips with her parents to both Rocky Mountain and Yellowstone National Parks, trips that acquainted her with the vastness of the West. Awarded a scholarship to Butler University in Indianapolis, Nan studied music at the school for two years before quitting college and going to work for the Indiana Highway Department, moving up from flag person to heavy equipment operator.
After developing an allergy to asphalt fumes, Nan was compelled to move to Newport Beach, California, to join her uncle who worked for the police department there. She started out in parking enforcement and retired as a senior community service officer.
During that time, she had two horses, a relationship that comforted her when her first husband passed away.
“The horse community in Newport Beach was my salvation,” notes Nan. After visiting a friend who resided in Livingston, Nan decided to move here with her two daughters and has never looked back.
Today, she and Jimmy, who have two sons, live on a 90-acre ranch located up Cokedale Road with five horses, three llamas, three dogs and cats and an assortment of chickens and ducks. There’s no “partridge in a pear tree,” though.
But if you come to the Conley’s holiday gig, you just might see and hear some drummers drumming, pipers piping and guitarists strumming!
James Fly is a co-editor of the Silver Tip, the newsletter of the Park County Senior Center