By Anastasia Avlon
“Wow this is such a deep question, I’m going to have to pause and think about it,” Professor Dan Sheehan began, leaning back with a pensive disposition as he reflected on the question, “What does creativity mean to you?” Having spent 18 years as a music professor here at Bergen Community College, and his entire adult life immersed in creating, writing, performing, and teaching music, this question seemed to touch on something commonplace in his life, yet something he has not often been asked to reflect upon.
“Well I think creativity means self expression and finding your own truth,” he stated. “That’s what it means to me, so in other words, I personally would never and wouldn’t recommend for my students to look at what’s trending right now, what’s popular right now, what’s selling right now, and then you try to emulate that. You’re not going to do that as well as the people that are already doing that; you’re going to do your own thing better than those people.”
His heartfelt notions revealed that this is the core of who he is as a person, reinforced as he discussed the array of endeavors he pursues — an anti-greed concept album fully self-authored, performances on and off campus, his in-progress album commentating on climate change and his involvement with BCC’s sustainability committee.
Sheehan grew up in Long Island and found excitement in music during his youth. “I’ve always liked music. I was a casual listener at first,” he recounted, reminiscing his earliest memories of being moved by music. Asking if I was familiar with the rock band The Who, he shared, “Well, I remember one of my older siblings had one of their greatest hits and was listening to it and I was stunned by the music — the songwriting and the passion and the playing. It was the first time I felt kind of shook by listening to music. I think we had a cheap guitar in our household and my mother nicely paid for me to take some lessons. It wasn’t too long before I got into songwriting.”
Guitar and vocals remain his two areas of expertise, as well as audio engineering components in creating and mixing sound. In his twenties, he began working odd jobs to support his music career on the side. Then, he began working as a teacher’s assistant at Emerson College, where he discovered his love for education. In a fateful crossing of stars, he stumbled upon a job board application for a full time teaching position at BCC. He ascertained that this would be the perfect career to nourish his musical spirit whilst cultivating it in his students. Alas, BCC has now had him as a part of the music program for just short of two decades. As I conducted the interview, Prof. Tim Blunk stuck his head into the office to add into evidence that Sheehan is “a consummate teacher and even better musician.”
Not only does Sheehan’s personal and educational philosophy hold steadfast to authenticity, but he also believes in the importance of building confidence within young creatives. “This morning I was talking at a high school in Newark, Barringer High School,” Sheehan says, “They were talking about seeing the students’ confidence improve when learning to perform or record and present their material and I feel that’s a lot of what we are doing in our program — instilling confidence.”
On such a diverse campus with students from all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, this mindset goes a long way. Whether the students do take a musical route in life or not, confidence is the foundation of success and self-growth. Clearly, making this type of lasting impact on students is important to Sheehan. Further, this isn’t one dimensional in practice, inclusivity of the arts also being a point that Sheehan touched upon: “One thing I really like about the program here is that whether you are a classical musician or a pop musician, or you know, we have a class in world music, jazz ensemble, pop rock ensemble…so, it’s really like we don’t draw these barriers and say this is worth studying and this isn’t.”
Despite being dedicated to his career as a professor, he has not abandoned his craft. Releasing an 11 track album entitled, “Tales From Earth Incorporated,” Sheehan uses his voice and artistry to delve into issues he feels passionate about. The last track, “Earth, Incorporated,” has the following lyrics: “How can we be comfortable owning a whole planet, when some people can’t even afford food?” and “If you’d like to buy some stock in Planet Earth, now’s a fantastic time to get in. Climate change won’t reach catastrophic levels for several more years.” This song and other works on the album reflect dissatisfaction with the economic, ethical, and environmental state of affairs existent today.
Creating music goes beyond just catchy beats and monetizable sounds for Sheehan; it is an extension of his principles. His writing reflects the advocatory nature displayed in the music of legends such as John Lenon, who is one of Sheehan’s inspirations.
I asked Sheehan to break down these lyrics from his song “Zero Tolerance (Kids For Cash)”: “Don’t care if you’re eleven, only thing it means to me, is that we’ve got to deal quite harshly with your criminal history”
Sheehan explained, “It’s about for-profit prisons, juvenile detention centers. I just happened to see a documentary about this. In Pennsylvania, our neighboring state, some judges closed down publicly funded juvenile detention centers so that private companies could start their own and make a profit. These judges would sentence these kids for ridiculously petty crimes to ridiculously long sentences in these shady places. The judges were receiving kickbacks and they ended up going to jail. It’s kind of like the environment to me, just the level of insanity in that — someone sentencing a young person to confinement to personally make money.”
It certainly takes a unique sort of literary talent and outspokenness to use social injustice as inspiration for a rock song.
Sheehan’s activism doesn’t stop at his music, though. As the new co-chair of BCC’s sustainability committee, he works alongside biology and environmental science professor Rob Dill to revitalize the committee which lost momentum over the pandemic years. Sheehan detailed their plans to bolster recycling initiatives on campus, starting with informing students about what exactly can be recycled. Correspondingly, increasing the volume of recycling bins on campus is on the to-do list. He also discussed his hopes to decrease the cafeteria’s plastic waste output, re-introduce a composting program, implement more electric vehicle charging stations, and utilize state level programs to increase funding towards the college’s sustainability. Entitled, “The Seas Are Rising,” Sheehan’s next album focuses on the theme of climate change, the same issue he is aiming to address on campus.
Our conversation came to an end as Sheehan was off to do the very thing we spent much time discussing: teaching a class. However, I was able to pose a more humorous question,
asking what he would choose between guitar and vocals in a hypothetical where he could only keep one for the rest of his life. He answered, “Wow. It is really tough. Maybe I would just say guitar would have to go, because vocally everyone has their own unique voice, so no one is going to sing like you but other people could probably play guitar like me.” While lighthearted in nature, this response echoed the impression I got throughout our conversation: that he values the irreplaceable quality of having and utilizing one’s unique voice, a core belief he aims to instill in his students each and every day.