A REINVENTION
John Orr recently left his
Astoria law practice to pursue
recycling work and music
I
It seems unlikely that an attorney
would give up a successful practice of
25 years for a life of music and recy-
cling. But that’s just what John Orr did.
Yes, you’ll occasionally see his name in
the paper as a Municipal Court Judge,
but not often. You’re more likely to see
his face in the paper as a member of the
global music group Acústica or of his
new jazz quartet.
Orr explains that he became inter-
ested in the law, “because of one of my
boyhood heroes, Robert F. Kennedy.”
Orr once saw Kennedy when he came to
Orr’s hometown of Kalamazoo, Mich-
igan. “I was enamored of his idealism
and personal charisma,” Orr says. “His
assassination was my introduction to
mortality.”
Orr decided to either go into politics
or to become a legal crusader. “It didn’t
quite work out that way,” he says. He
became a lawyer, but not a crusader: a
small town lawyer in private practice in
family law and criminal defense.
Still, the idealism never left Orr, nor
did his love of music, which predated his
interest in the law. As a youth, he says, “I
had competing parts of myself. I had to
please my mother by establishing that I
had middle class respectability, but I had
a bohemian side, too.” It was this bohe-
mian side that brought Orr from Kalam-
azoo to Oregon via Arizona and Califor-
nia. “I had wanderlust in my youth,” Orr
recounts. “I traveled in search of musical
experience, and I fell in love with the
wide American West.”
Along the way, Orr took college
courses in jazz and played in various
groups, including jazz bands and a coun-
try rock and Western swing band. Even-
tually he quit music as he concentrated
on the law.
It’s not uncommon, in midlife, to look
Coastal Life
Story and photos by DWIGHT CASWELL
4 | March 17, 2016 | coastweekend.com
back on the decisions one has made, and
to wonder what might have been. What
is unusual is returning to that youthful
idealism and use it as a basis to reinvent
one’s life. John Orr closed his legal prac-
tice, returned to music, and took a job
with Trails End Recovery, a material re-
covery and recycling facility in Warren-
ton.
“I like the transition from law to recy-
cling,” Orr says. “It was hard on my heart
to do that kind of work so long, and recy-
cling is so much less adversarial. It com-
ports with what I thought I’d be doing
when I had a law degree. Environmental
law would have been more congruent
with what I wanted to do with my life.”
Now he has a lot more time for play-
ing music, too, and for songwriting, and
he has written music for Acústica. He
plays guitar, pedal steel guitar, Dobro
and À ute. “I’ve dabbled with alto sax and
harmonica,” he adds.
In addition to playing with Acústica,
Orr is on the board of the Astoria Music
Festival and is forming a jazz quartet,
which he jokingly calls the “Trio Quar-
tet.” Now that they’ve found a bass play-
er, though, the group is an actual quartet
and may soon be playing local gigs.
The quartet plays the bop and cool
jazz of the 1950s and ’60s, “and it is
forcing me to raise my game,” Orr says.
“Jazz is in¿ nitely more intellectually and
aesthetically challenging. You can’t just
do it, you have to express with homage to
the original melody and rhythm.”
Orr’s interests go beyond music and
recycling. His bookshelves are lined with
thick tomes that reÀ ect his interest in his-
tory (he’s currently working on a book
about World War II and original ¿ ne art
hangs on the walls. His major interest,
though, is his ¿ ancp, Teresa Brownlie,
who has resolutely supported Orr as he
reinvents his life.
John Orr is a contented man, with no
signs of a midlife crisis. “I’m as happy as
I’ve ever been,” he says, “due in no small
part to Teresa. My happiness is equal
parts being done with the law and having
found Teresa.”
Teresa Brownlie has supported her i ance, John Orr, as he made a career change from being an attorney to working in recycling.
John Orr plays guitar, pedal steel guitar, Dobro and fl ute, and he has dabbled in alto sax and harmonica.