Jon Conley knew exactly what he wanted for his birthday: the Sears Model 1244 Acoustic Guitar that was hanging at the back of Jay's Music on the town square in Kennett, Mo.
Conley was 6 or 7 years old (c'mon, this was more than four decades ago; the exact year is kinda fuzzy now) and he'd spent a lot of time at the store admiring the three-quarter-sized instrument with its red sunburst color and white pickguard. He couldn't wait to get his hands on that guitar and figure out how to make it sing.
Finally his birthday came, but as he opened the presents from his parents after school that day it began to dawn on him that the guitar wasn't there.
"I didn't want to be a brat, but I was kind of fighting back tears," the 51-year-old Conley says. "They got me some nice things, but I really wanted that guitar."
It was a tradition for the Conleys to go out to eat on birthdays, and Jon had chosen Kennett's newly opened Pizza Hut as the spot for his birthday supper. Before leaving, one of his parents told him to go to his room and try on some of his new clothes. Propped against the headboard of his bed, with a card slipped between its strings, was the Model 1244.
"It was so cool," Conley says. "That changed everything."
He took to his new instrument quickly and was a bit of a prodigy. By the age of 10 Conley, who was born in Jonesboro, had a gig with a local country music show and was soon playing in bands and on recording sessions. After graduating from Greene County Tech High School in Paragould in 1990, where he also played basketball, he left for Branson, honing his chops by performing hundreds of shows a year with various acts.
From Branson, he moved to Nashville, Tenn., and was hired to play guitar in Wynonna Judd's band. He has picked and recorded with fellow Arkies Glen Campbell and Johnny Cash; was LeAnn Rimes' musical director and guitarist; recorded with country star Luke Combs and jammed with Sammy Hagar, Joe Walsh and many others. For the past 13 years he has played guitar, fiddle and other instruments in the six-piece touring band of Kenny Chesney, the high-energy performer who has had more than 30 No. 1 country hits.
On Saturday night, Conley will be onstage with Chesney as the singer's "I Go Back" tour comes to Simmons Bank Arena in North Little Rock. It's the latest stop on an adventure that began with that little Sears guitar.
A GOD THING
It's midmorning on March 9 and Conley, who performed a one-off show with Chesney the night before in Indiana, is on the phone from his home in Kingston Springs, Tenn. He and his wife, Katie, have lived there since 1997.
"It's a little bit like Eureka Springs," Conley says. "There's this mix of people who have lived here forever and then there are the creative types that have migrated in. It's awesome."
The couple first met at a talent show in Little Rock, where Katie was singing in a trio with her sisters; years later they reconnected at an audition in Branson. They will celebrate their 30th anniversary this year and have two daughters, 26-year-old Savannah and 16-year-old Polly Kate. Rounding out the household is Schmidt, their 68-pound standard poodle.
Conley spent the first few years of his life in Paragould, where his parents, who are retired, still live (and yes, they still have his first guitar). His dad, Chuck, was a pharmacist; his mom, Donna, taught fourth grade. Conley's brother, Joel, is five years older and is a high school civics teacher living in Germantown, Tenn. The family moved to Kennett for a few years, and moved back to Paragould when Conley was 9.
There weren't any musicians in his household, but music struck a chord with Conley early.
"My parents didn't play; my brother didn't play; my grandparents, uncles, aunts, nobody played. But there are pictures of me when I was really little that I don't even have memories of and I'm dragging around a little toy guitar. I really feel like music chose me more than I chose it. I think it's a God thing."
Still, as a child, he figured everyone was as obsessed with this stuff as he was.
"When you're a little kid you just kind of assume that everybody has the same thoughts or interests that you do. As you get older, you realize, wait a second, I'm a little weird," he says with a chuckle. "I would hear something, but other people wouldn't understand what I was being moved by."
He took guitar lessons in Kennett from a man named Hoyt Wooten who lived one street over.
"He was my hero," says Conley, who apparently made an impression on his teacher.
"Mr. Wooten didn't take children until they were in the third grade," Donna says. "But he saw that Jon had potential and took him a year early."
When the Conleys returned to Paragould, Donna would drive him back to Kennett every Wednesday afternoon to continue his instructions, a half-hour trip each way that wasn't the easiest thing to manage on a teacher's schedule and also on a church night.
"I had to push to make myself stay awake after teaching all day, but I was more than glad to do it and I'd do it all again," she says.
OUTPLAYED BY A FIFTH-GRADER
Conley's first gig came on the weekly "Country Music Makers Show" at the Greene County Fairgrounds in Paragould. He was brought on by Wendell Eubanks, who was the show's emcee and attended services at the Church of Christ with the Conleys.
"I was a featured artist, Grand Ol' Opry style," Conley says. "I learned all these different songs and every week I'd do a different song. Man, I look back and think I was so lucky and so fortunate. When you're in a small town and these guys are putting on this country music show -- a lot of them were good enough to be stars -- it was such a great place for me."
Gary Cupp was a student at Crowley's Ridge College in Paragould when he started playing rhythm guitar in a band with Conley, who played lead guitar.
"Here I am, 18 years old and I'm supposed to be this cool musician and this fifth-grader can outplay me," Cupp says with a laugh.
Besides being a hotshot shredder, the young Conley was also loquacious and loved to chat with his bandmates as they drove to practice.
"Jon was a talker," Cupp says. "We would drive from Paragould to Blytheville to practice, and we would put John in the back seat. The whole way to Blytheville and the whole way back, Jon has his head stuck up between the front seats just talking up a blue streak. He would say, 'OK, if you could pick your favorite member of the Eagles, who would it be?'"
Cupp was in another band with Conley a few years later and remembers that not only was his young friend gifted, he also had a serious work ethic. This was, after all, a kid who would spend eight hours a day or more practicing his guitar and trying to emulate Eddie Van Halen.
"You could see the raw, natural talent that he had early on," Cupp says. "But the other thing I saw was his commitment. Take that talent and put it together with his work ethic, and I was certain Jon was going places."
UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS
After high school, Conley was introduced to musician Wyatt Beard. Beard was playing in Branson with a group of young musicians called the Texas Gold Minors and hired Conley to join the band. The two friends also worked with country legends Jeanne Pruett and Buck Trent.
"Right out of the gate, me and Jon were working two shows together at 18 years old," Beard says. "There were great lessons to be learned. Jon was really good at going out to all the little places where music was played and sitting in with those guys."
Beard, who would become Chesney's keyboardist and bandleader, would play a role in getting Conley into that group. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
For Conley, Branson offered steady work and the chance to learn from music business veterans. It was like college, in a way, and he studied under some of the best.
"I call it the University of Hard Knocks," he says. "My professors were Glen Campbell, [legendary steel guitarist] Tom Brumley, Buck Trent, Jimmy Tittle."
The latter played bass for Merle Haggard's band The Strangers and in Johnny Cash's group (he was also Cash's son-in-law). Conley performed with Tittle in France and played on "Blistered," an uptempo 1993 Tittle song that Cash sang on along with Marty Stuart.
"I've gotten to do some great things, but it's never gotten cooler than that," Conley says. "I'm a huge Johnny Cash fan. I feel like he's even bigger than music. Meeting him, I felt comfortable and scared at the same time."
After four years in Branson, Conley and Katie finally made the move to Nashville in 1995. He eventually got an audition for bassist Willie Weeks, who was Judd's bandleader. Conley was playing a gig in Cleveland when Katie called to tell him Weeks was looking for him.
He contacted Weeks, who was in San Antonio, and they agreed to talk when they were both back in Nashville and Conley ended up getting the job after playing the Judd hit "Rock Bottom" for Weeks on acoustic guitar over the phone.
"I called him and he said: 'Hey, do you have a guitar there? Play a little bit of 'Rock Bottom.' I played it for him and he said he wanted me to get together with the other guys."
OVERCOMING DEPRESSION
Landing a spot in the band of one of country music's biggest stars was a huge accomplishment but Conley, who was 24, began to spiral. For most of his life, he says, he has dealt with depression and obsessive compulsive disorder; things were getting worse during a summer tour break.
"I've always been an insecure person [who] kind of hid behind music," he says. "During that summer it just all hit me and I went into a depression. I had all these people telling me, 'you've made it,' but I had driven myself with a lot of negative energy. I was really hard on myself, and I was pushing myself so hard. We were getting ready to have a baby and it freaked me out, but I got help. I realized that something was the matter with me."
It was Joel who encouraged him to seek therapy.
"Somehow I was able to hide it from everyone but my brother. I was out on tour with Wynonna in Atlanta and he said: 'Man, I think you're depressed.'"
Getting help, Conley says, "was an important thing to happen at such a young age. It's easy to get caught up in things and make that your identity. But there is more to what makes a person who they are; it's so much more than what we do. We're complex, and I think I had to realize that I had to be driven more by love and passion rather than fear."
After entering therapy, returning to the stage "bit by bit became more liberating," Conley says.
He spent five years with Wynonna, and still sounds awed when speaking of performing with her.
"Until you can be in a small room with her with no microphones and just an acoustic guitar, you don't realize what an unbelievable instrument she has in her voice. It's a God-given thing that she has. On a nightly basis I'd be playing with her and I'd feel chills come up my arm while she sang."
Conley was bandleader and guitarist for singer LeAnn Rimes for a while and worked on many recording sessions with other artists. Beard has played with Chesney since 1997 and reached out to Conley at one point to sign on with the group, but Conley was focusing on session work. By 2010, he was ready.
"He had to come audition, but everything fell into place," Beard says.
Asked about what Conley brings to the band, Beard says: "Jon's unselfishness is what makes him so great. Jon doesn't think: 'What's best for me?' He only cares about what's best for the song and the artist. I think that's what makes him one of the most underrated players in town."
Kenny Greenberg is a guitarist in Chesney's band and has known Conley for about a decade.
"He's the most solid guy," Greenberg says, "in a lot of ways he's the most valuable guy in the band. I play a lot of the solos, but Jon is the utility guy that plays banjo, mandolin, fiddle, electric guitar, acoustic guitar and sings background. He's the guy you really need. If I wasn't at the gig, someone else could play the solos. If Jon wasn't there, they would be hurting."
Conley says Chesney gives the band a lot of freedom, as long as the vibe is right.
"He's big on energy. He is a really gifted person when it comes to riding a wave in a live experience. ... They need to put a pedometer on him to see how many miles he puts in when he's onstage."
LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER
Conley's parents watched as he navigated his way through the music business, and now he's in a similar role. His daughter Savannah is an indie-pop singer-songwriter whose latest single is "More Than Fine" and who has worked with Grammy-winning producer Dave Cobb. Her debut LP, "Playing the Part of You Is Me," will be released in May and she will open for The Brook & the Bluff on Wednesday at the Rev Room in Little Rock.
"I'm so proud of her," says Conley, who produced her early recordings when she was a teenager. "She tours for a living and gets out and does the work. She is so committed to her craft and is just a pure songwriter. I can't wait for the world to hear her new record."
A few days after Savannah plays in Little Rock, Conley will roll into North Little Rock. Saturday's Chesney show will be the first time Conley has played Central Arkansas in more than 10 years.
Life on a major tour is "a little bit of escapism," he says. "I love waking up and getting a coffee at a shop in the town we're playing in and then doing soundcheck. I like to take a nap in the afternoon and then hit the show. I used to do that when I played basketball and it works for me. And I'm not gonna lie, being onstage is a rush."
Conley's faith is a subject that is hinted at a few times in a nearly two-hour conversation, and it's something he relies on increasingly.
"The older I get, the more I want to get out of my own way and let God do what He's going to do," he says. "I really believe music is evidence of that, the magic that happens when a song is written, or when you see a performer, it's all connected. I see God in all of this. None of this would be without Him."