- December 6, 2025
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Bird Key resident Jim Stanard was happy in his career as an actuary, calculating risk for financial organizations, yet throughout that time, he was still listening to music.
When he retired in New Jersey, he found himself thinking about what he was going to do next, and he picked up his guitar again.
That led to what he calls an obsession, “in a good way,” with the process of songwriting, and a realization that it was something he could do—although he didn’t expect his later success.
Stanard's latest album, “Magical,” released in January of this year, repeatedly achieved the number one slot on the Roots Music Report Country and Country Americana charts, while his singles “Lookin' Back” and “The Minotaur” reached number one and number two on those charts.
From the time he was young, Stanard enjoyed activities that involved calculating risk and probabilities.
However, he also had an interest in music, including bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and folk music including artists like Bob Dylan, although he says his biggest influence is Warren Zevon because of his dark humor, irony, and historical fiction songs.
“The earlier hit music, really was not lyric heavy, from the 50s and early 60s, although it sounded great, so the lyrics becoming important was something and… I love the simplicity of folk and the simple, clean structure,” he said.
Stanard says while he respects forms of music like jazz with more spontaneity, his favorite music is “structured and intricate.” That is the reason his favorite composer in the classical genre, which he also enjoys, is Bach.
At about age 15, Stanard began playing guitar, and from his home in the western suburbs of Philadelphia, had the chance to see performers like Tom Rush and Tom Paxton at The Main Point in Bryn Mawr, and Bob Dylan at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia.
However, Stanard ultimately graduated from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania as a math major, a choice he doesn’t regret.
“I think it was a good decision, because music is a tough business,” he said.
He says his career in the actuarial field “very interesting and very good to me.”
While he became busy with his career, also attending graduate school to earn a Ph.D. in finance at New York University, he stepped away from guitar, before he was drawn to it again in what he says was probably 2008 or 2009, a few years after his retirement.
“I decided I would try to see if I could get back into playing music, and see how far I could go, and it was an experiment,” he said.
The first step for Stanard was to seek out mentors who could help him build on what knowledge he already had.
He became connected with guitarist Jon Skibic, a member of the band The Afghan Whigs, who lived near him in New Jersey, and then, through a friend in the music industry, Kip Winger of the rock band Winger, for a set of six vocal lessons.
Both musicians have continued to be involved with his albums.
After he moved to Sarasota at the end of 2015, Stanard was impressed with the local music scene, and gave his first performance at Elixir Tea House's open mic session.
"It's a great place to play for a first time, and they get some really good performers too," he said.
He says although he was nervous during that initial performance, he continued practicing and taking lessons before Winger suggested he start writing songs.
Stanard sought out songwriting teachers, attended seminars, and did other activities to learn the craft.
Later, Winger suggested they make an album, so they collaborated on Stanard’s first album, “Bucket List,” released in 2018, with Winger continuing to produce his albums.
Stanard says he spends so much time on a song, that each one probably takes as long as writing five songs.
“My writing process is very slow, because I just keep going back, and back, and back and changing and changing and I never can get it perfect, but … I want to try to get everything as as good as I can make it,” he said.
Stanard keeps a hook book in which he writes down ideas that come to mind at random times, perhaps from a comment someone makes; he tends to write the lyrics to songs first.
“If I have a little musical idea, I'll go down the hook book and sort of try to come up with something that fits with that musical idea, or if I want to write a happy song or a sad song, I'll go through and just sort of see what grabs me,” he said.
Stanard says a quality he’s always searching for is irony.
“Not always, but usually, you want something that has irony or a double meaning, or you come up with something that has an unusual meaning,” he said. “The other thing I like is alliteration… which is having the words start with the same letter.”
Stanard often writes historical songs, like one ballad on his new album titled “When the West Was Won,” which tells about the displacement of Native Americans in the United States along the Trail of Tears.
He says when writing from the perspective of one of the displaced people, he tried to keep in mind that a song is always about the audience, and ensure the story wasn't exclusive to him but expressed feelings others could relate to.
Despite the support of other notable musicians he's had along the way, however, one friendship he describes as a close one, didn't start with music at all.
He says when he met Peter Yarrow of the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, it was at an event by former president Jimmy Carter at The Carter Center.
Stanard, who says he would describe himself as center-right, and Yarrow, who was an activist for liberal causes, bonded over their belief in the need for dialogue between political aisles, Stanard said.
Yarrow was a member of Braver Angels, which centers on that goal, and he drew Stanard into the organization as well.
“He liked a lot of my music, not all of it, but he wanted to play on it,” Stanard said.
Yarrow and his daughter Bethany Yarrow performed on Stanard’s album “Color Outside the Lines,” including on the song “Home,” which Stanard noted is about the country being a nation of immigrants, and also the song “Arkansas.”
Yarrow, who died in January of this year after a battle with bladder cancer, was set to play on “Magical” as well, although those plans did not come through.
“He was magnetic… He was such a charming, funny guy. He was just delightful to hang out with,” Stanard said.
Stanard says polarization is the theme of his song “You Turned Red and That Made Me Blue," and says when that song debuted, it hadn't crossed his mind that he would see online comments criticizing it as anti-Republican.
“It was simply that that worked," he said. "You turned red and that made me blue' made sense. If I said 'you turned blue and that made me red,' it wouldn't make any sense. But as I was writing the song, it was entirely just poking fun at the polarization, and writing the song as a double entendre (that) could be interpreted as a political song or a relationship song... It was like, 'Oh my gosh. I didn't even realize it could be taken that way. But anyway, it is what it is."
Stanard says he's glad for the success and calls his time in music “very gratifying.”
“This has gone much further than I expected, and it really never would have happened without Kip Winger encouraging me and helping me put put these albums together… so I'm just very, very happy that I've had the success that I have had with this album," he said.
However, just like any endeavor, the results don't come without hard work. He says a musician has to keep working, even when they're not in the mood, and even when the music doesn't work out.
The other key for him, however, was enthusiasm.
"I got just fascinated by the process of songwriting, and just sort of fascinated by the 'Hey, I can do this. I never knew I could do it. Let's try it," he said.
