'The den mother of the Boston rock scene'

KEITH PIERCE/METRO BOSTONJeanne Connolly helped launch the careers of many Boston bands in the '80s and '90s. (KEITH PIERCE/METRO BOSTON)

When Jeanne Connolly said she felt "overwhelmed" a little over a year ago, she wasn't talking about the brutal bouts of chemotherapy she was undergoing to beat back the cancer doctors had told her was inoperable. Instead, the veteran bartender and onetime music booking agent at T.T. the Bear's Place was referring to the series of benefit shows being organized by the club to help defray her medical expenses.

The show of support by the scores of local musicians whose lives and dreams Connolly touched over the years - with a sparkling mix of unabashed enthusiasm and tough-love encouragement - had in turn touched her, and deeply.

"I'm used to putting benefits on for people," she told me at the time. "I never thought I'd be on this end of it." Connolly, who died at age 51 Monday morning, booked - and in some cases, helped break to wider acclaim - the cream of the Boston rock scene of the 1980s and early '90s: The Peasants. Scruffy the Cat. The Outlets. Bullet LaVolta. The Neighborhoods. Talking to Animals. Buffalo Tom. The Turbines. Heretix. Letters to Cleo.

Jeanne Connolly booked, and loved, them all.

"She was the den mother of the Boston rock scene," recalled musician Roger Fisk, whose bands the Allstonians, Popgun Seven, and Duck and Cover played T.T.'s dozens of times. "She was very supportive, but she was also critical. It was the full definition of caring - not only in helping bands move forward, but also in having standards. She would let you know if she thought your draw wasn't enough or you phoned it in onstage. . . . There would be a conversation waiting for you at the end of the show - and a free beer."

Just ask her close friend Kay Hanley. Although Connolly proudly told me she was the first person to book both of Hanley's bands, Rebbecca Lula and later, Letters to Cleo (the latter of which would go on to national fame and fortune), meeting Jeanne's criteria could be tough.

"T.T.'s was critical in the development of our careers, and Jeanne didn't go easy on us either," Hanley said with a fond laugh. But she always had Hanley's back. Connolly and T.T.'s owner Bonnie Bouley even bailed the singer out of jail in 1993 after a dust-up with Cambridge police outside the club.

In a highly competitive make-it-or-break-it business not known for its warm-and-fuzzy disposition, a kind word or extended hand can do wonders for a struggling musician striving to be heard. Connolly always lent her ear, and in doing so, helped solidify T.T.'s reputation as a favorite destination for bands that, inevitably, came away from a gig at T.T.'s feeling stronger.

"When you're a local band, there are some nights you wish didn't happen," said local singer-songwriter Michael Hayes, whose bands, Lemonpeeler and Vinyl Skyway, have both played T.T.s. On one such occasion, he said, "It wasn't a great show, not many people showed up, and we were dejected. But afterward, Jeanne said we were her favorite local band and wanted to buy our CD. She insisted we take the $10. I've never had somebody at a club be so nice to us."

During her last weeks in hospice care, Connolly was surrounded by family (she grew up in Winchester, the sixth of nine siblings) and friends. In addition to frequent visits, she was flooded by more than 200 e-mails from friends, bands, and T.T.'s patrons who marveled at her spirit as she rallied back, time and again, to defy the odds.

"It's awful to lose somebody so young, but for the past five years, she was in a really good place," said her younger brother, David Sheehy, 43, with whom she lived in Cambridge during her chemotherapy treatments. "She bought a house at the Cape and had a garden, a pet rabbit, and even some ducks. She was a happy soul with a great heart. She was unlike anyone I'll ever meet again."

"She was never just a bartender," recalled T.T.'s music booker Randi Millman, who succeeded Connolly booking shows in the mid-'90s. "Jeanne was T.T.'s. She knew everybody and was a wonderfully sweet person. When I started, she embraced me the minute I walked in and was nothing but helpful."

Even Connolly's illness did not dim her determination. She insisted on working at T.T.'s as often as she could, squeezing in weekly shifts between grueling chemotherapy treatments at Massachusetts General Hospital. As late as October, she was still putting in 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. shifts.

"That place was her life," Hanley said, her voice breaking. "She loved her customers, she loved the bands, she loved all of us, and we'll never forget her. When you live a happy, good life and you treat people well, people miss you."

A funeral Mass for Jeanne Connolly will be said at 10 a.m. today in St. Mary's Church in Winchester.