You might not have heard Jack Conners. But if you’ve ever attended a live show at Northwestern Michigan College or Glen Arbor’s Manitou Music Festival, if you’ve listened to Interlochen Public Radio or albums by the likes of Peter Erskine or Jeff Haas, you’ve heard his work.

In a perfect world, Conners today would be happy, healthy, and enjoying his retirement while working the control panel at his private home studio, Perfect World Studios. He would be ready to record music by any number of musician friends, play bass, and teach students the ins and outs of both digital and analog recording. Unfortunately, the world outside his control panel isn’t perfect. While he continues to play and share his expertise with students and professionals alike, Conners also continues to battle cancer.

“I was diagnosed in 2019 with stage 4 lung cancer,” he says. “That was tough.” What’s more, it had already spread throughout his body. “It was complicated — tumors in the brain, the gut, bones, virtually everywhere.” He went through a series of treatments, including surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. They helped. “I felt [the cancer] in my hip and couldn’t walk. Radiation brought almost instant relief,” he says of one part of this journey. But it wasn’t until he qualified for an immunotherapy treatment that doctors were really able to arrest the growth of the cancer cells.

“My doctor said he’s never seen anybody who it worked better on. So now I’m maintaining the immunotherapy. I’ll take it,” he says. 

In this week's Northern Express, sister publication of The Ticker, Conners shares his story from a teenager learning to play the guitar at age 12 to eventually moving into a career working in sound studios from Nashville to California, mixing consoles at studios such as Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and Disney. Cancer also hasn't stopped him from continuing to do what he loves today. Read more about Conners' inspiring story in this week's Northern Express, available to read online and at nearly 700 spots in 14 counties across northern Michigan.