A BIT ABOUT ME, JEFF HELLYER

A longtime Chicago resident, I also have roots in Santa Bárbara d'Oeste, SP, Brazil through my amazing wife, life partner, business partner, music partner, and all-'round soul mate, Leny.

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I started playing a ukelele when I was 7, because my hands then were too small for a guitar. With my neighbor Cliff, we wrote about 20 songs before the second grade. With sister Vickie we became the Miniature Sour Grapes for a while. Then classmate Paul and I gave concerts to our school in 4th grade and 5th grade, with many original songs and lots of Beatles and Monkees, too.

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Junior High brought forth being the lead in "Familiar Stranger" and being in the Jordan 6 Band, named for the brand of MikeG's wa-wa pedal. We played The Who, and I also still remember our version of "Shaft," ha, wa-wa! High School brought Springsteen covers (The Boss!), Leonard Cohen (what poetry!), Simon&Garfunkel (love those harmonies!), and so on...until—

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One day I forgot about making music, for many years actually, instead playing sports, studying English Lit and Labor Econ at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, and working two jobs to get through college. One of those jobs was bartending and the other was making videos for the College of Education—and voilà!, video production became my career. Out of college I started my own production company.

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I love video production, especially the editing part. Still, during all those earlier years of school and work I plucked and strummed a bit and wrote the occasional song, just really to simply relax. But all in all my music faded away...

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Flash forward many years, to when Leny entered my life (now more than 20 years ago, wow, like yesterday), and she brought me back to my passion for music. And to this day she is my muse! And almost every day we also work together in our video production and postproduction company, Edit House Chicago.