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Qualla singer-songwriter credits CD to divine inspiration
By Lynn Hotaling
A Qualla grandmother who wrote her first song a year ago says the credit for her new CD rests squarely with the Lord.
“God handed me some songs,” said Janet McConnell, who works at Smokey Mountain Elementary School as a one-on-one tutor.
The first song – “Those Streets of Purest Gold” – came to her while she was cleaning her bathroom, but she initially didn’t realize it was an original even though it kept spinning around in her head while she finished her chore.
“I kept trying to think of where I’d heard it before – I thought it was an Inspirations song that had gotten stuck in my head,” she said, referring to the nationally-known Bryson City gospel group founded by Cullowhee’s Martin Cook.
Qualla singer/songwriter Janet McConnell, who wrote her first song almost one year ago, holds her new gospel CD, “Leaning on the Rock,” that features 11 original songs. McConnell, a grandmother who has spent 23 years helping children learn at Smokey Moutain and Fairview elementary schools, does not play a musical instrument and never sang publicly until recently, she said. – Herald photo by Ginger Roberson
Gradually it dawned on McConnell that the words were new to her, though she could see them in her mind as plainly as if they were written on a notebook, she said.
“Then a little voice came to me and said ‘Janet, the words are in your head if you’d just write them down,’” McConnell said. “I heard it three more times ... ‘write it down, write it down, write it down’ ... so I wrote it down.”
Once she had the song’s words, McConnell said she called a friend of four decades, musician Steve Whiddon, and asked him what she should do next. Since McConnell doesn’t know musical notation, Whiddon advised her to sing the song into a tape player while the melody was fresh in her mind and he’d come over and listen in a few days, she said.
After he heard it a few days later, Whiddon advised McConnell that the next step, in his opinion, was have the song recorded. When she asked who would sing it, he said that she would.
“I can’t,” McConnell said.
“You will,” Whiddon told her.
Up to that point, the only singing McConnell had done was occasional spots with her nephew Jim Plemmons Jr.’s band, the Smoky Mountain Drifters, who play country music most Saturdays at either Pop’s Grocery in Whitter or the Barkers Creek Community Center. According to McConnell, she had been hesitant to let others hear her sing since an incident that happened when she was in fourth grade at the old Log Cabin Elementary School, which was consolidated with Qualla Elementary to form SMES in 1980.
“We were learning a song for a program, and the teacher said someone was singing off-key,” McConnell said. “So she walked up and down, listening to everyone, and then she said, ‘why Janet Plemmons, it’s you!’ I was so mortified that I quit singing and started pretending (to sing).”
A party at her twin brother’s (Jim Plemmons Sr.) house a couple of years ago helped change her mind. According to McConnell, someone had brought a karaoke machine and everyone was joining in and having a good time. Another party-goer overheard McConnell singing and handed her the microphone, telling everyone else to be quiet and listen.
“I turned red as a beet, but everyone was really nice and applauded when I finished,” she said. That success led to occasional requests for her to sing with Jim Jr.’s band, she said.
McConnell said she had no choice musically but to dive right in.
“I don’t read music, and I never took any lessons,” she said. “I have to learn by doing – I just jump in and do it.
Both Whiddon and her nephew Jim Plemmons Jr. are part of McConnell’s CD, which was recorded at Dave Magill’s studio in Webster. Magill, who produced the tracks, also adds piano and harmony vocals. Plemmons and Whiddon provide additional accompaniment, and Whiddon and Angie Toomey supply backing vocals.
After she wrote that first song on Sept. 12, 2005, McConnell said more tunes and lyrics followed. The second arrived Sept. 16, the third appeared Oct. 4 and she wrote two more in November.
“I always get the chorus first,” McConnell said. “Sometimes the words come real fast – like a bucket of water – and the melodies come with them.”
McConnell said the genesis of her songs is varied. Occasionally, she gets ideas from signs or posters she sees and cerain words “jump out at her,” she said.
“I saw the words ‘no matter what,’ and I thought ‘God loves us no matter what,’” she said of the origin of her CD’s closing number.
Other songs are inspired by her observations, she said. McConnell said “I’m So Glad You Know” came about after McConnell sat on her porch as a baby bird attempted to fly.
“I was watching a little bird try to fly, and it fell down,” McConnell said. “I was worried my cat might bother it, so I put it back in the dogwood tree. All the while I was thinking that only God knew if that little bird would fly just like only God knows what will happen to each child that’s born.”
That gave McConnell the opening lines “When a baby bird is born, you know if it will fly/When a little child is born, you know if it will die” that she turned into the CD’s eighth song.
“Go! Devil Go!” surfaced while McConnell was suffering from a migraine headache that left her weak and nauseated.
“Oh Lord, you’ve got to help me,” McConnell said she prayed. “The devil doesn’t want me to sing for you.”
Right then the words to the song came to her, and McConnell got out of bed to write them down.
At that point, McConnell said she was feeling overwhelmed and asked the Lord to lighten her load.
That request ushered in five months – from November until April – when she didn’t write a single song, McConnell said.
By April the songs were coming fast again, and she wrote eight in just two months, she said.
“It’s been the most awesome thing that’s ever happened to me,” McConnell said of her experience with writing and singing gospel music. She’s been singing at area churches, including Whittier Methodist, where Whiddon’s mother once directed the choir, but she said it’s still hard for her to sing in front of others.
“I have to force myself to get up and sing,” she said. “The size of the crowd doesn’t matter – whether it’s two people or 200, I still get nervous. I always pray ‘Lord, you have to help me; I can’t do it by myself.’ I’m queasy until the music starts – then I think, ‘not my song, our song.’”
According to McConnell, singing songs she has written is easier than performing those composed by others.
“The Lord gave them to me in my key,” she said.
For her part, McConnell is quick to acknowledge the source of her newfound musical success.
“I try not to let it go to my head, because I know where the songs come from,” she said. “I give God the credit and the glory – He chose to use me.”
Copies of McConnell’s CD are available locally at Elders Superette and Pop’s Grocery in the Whittier area and at Heaven’s Railway in Dillsboro.
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