‘Principal” is a title that conjures up images of an office in school that students do not want to find themselves in.

However, Jared Brown, a former teaching principal in the Monadnock region, has parlayed some tunes that former students may recognize into a recording career. Brown is one half of Allegash, a local band that recently released its fifth CD, “My life is a letter to you.”

After Allegash opened for Tom Rush over a decade ago, Brown said the blues-folk legend remarked, “They’re a great act to watch, but a tough act to follow.”

Brown’s education work included years in Greenfield, Lyndeborough, Wilton and New Ipswich, including teaching math in Lyndeborough and serving as a teaching principal there and in Greenfield. He concluded his education career with eight years at Boynton Middle School in New Ipswich.

Brown would work his music into the school day as opportunities allowed.

“By the end of some years, students would have a portfolio of 20 songs we’d done in class over the year,” he said.

Brown said he was also able to engage students in the classroom with his music.

“They’d have something to color specific to a song. There’d be the music, and I’d have them get up and move,” he said. “It may have only been around a classroom, but music can honestly move you to another place.”

Peterborough was once home to WSLE, a radio station where, after organizing his students into the Schoolhouse Singers, Brown had them perform on the air.

A native of Amherst who settled in Wilton, Brown and John Magoon of Milford founded Allegash over two decades ago. They know that the spelling differs from the river in Maine – the Allagash – where Brown has gone canoeing.

“It was misspelled once by someone, and it stuck – and Thoreau, who canoed there, spelled it our way as well,” he said.

As a teenager he was impressed with Magoon’s covering of Beatles songs.

“I couldn’t figure out the chords, so I wrote my own,” he said.

He continued writing music into his 20s and ran into Magoon years later at a wedding. They began collaborating on Tuesdays, getting the notion from the “Tuesdays with Morrie” book by Mitch Albom, a popular read at the time.

According to Brown, Allegash’s music might best be called folk-rock. Brown credited John McClure of Betsy’s Folly Studios in Lyndeborough for mixing the album.

“His work as engineer at the sound board makes it all possible,” said Brown.

They’ve also recorded at Clarkcreative in Amherst, where Magoon’s electric lead, acoustic guitar and bass were part of their first album “Blue Moon.”

Brown tapped his science background to explain the appeal of music.

“Parts of the brain respond specifically to music,” he said, referring specifically to its impact on the hippocampus and amygdala, which influences emotion. Brown said this has been documented scientifically.

“The creative process for one song can be as brief as 10 minutes or as long as six weeks,” said Brown. “Rewriting a work is the crucial part of the undertaking.”