Education Quote by Jeff Healey

Healey frames the brag as gratitude, and that modesty is doing real work. The line opens with “Not only... but also,” a classic one-two that widens the scene: yes, the glamorous cachet of “great international musicians,” but equally the grounded thrill of local heroism. It’s a musician’s way of saying the real education didn’t come solely from the big leagues; it came from the rooms, the sweat, the untelevised standards played with people who know the city’s musical grammar.

Name-dropping here isn’t vanity so much as cartography. By listing the Walsh Brothers, David Wilcox, Kim Mitchell, he’s pinning himself to a specifically Canadian ecosystem that often gets treated as a feeder lane to somewhere else. Healey’s subtext pushes back: Toronto isn’t just a stopover, it’s a crucible, full of “celebrities” whose fame is intimate and scene-based rather than global. “Jam” matters, too. It signals risk, listening, and equal footing - not a gig where hierarchy is fixed, but a conversation where you earn your place in real time.

The phrase “great learning experience” is deliberately plain, almost school-report language, and that’s the point. Healey is translating an insider truth for outsiders: artistry is accumulated through proximity, repetition, and community, not just through headline moments. Underneath the polite tone sits a quiet thesis about how musicians are made - by oscillating between the mythic and the local, and treating both as indispensable.