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Technology and a 40-Year-Old Album Spark a Revived Musical Career in Connecticut

Trevor Snapp

Once in a while, your past catches up to you. That might not be a good thing if long ago, you were up to no good. But if, as a teenager, you had been part of a talented folk-rock band called Hand, and today you found out that a recording you made back then had become a collector’s item, and that your music was on iTunes, and that music lovers and record-producers were looking for you -- it just might make your day.

Marc Osborne, a Spanish teacher in Hamden, Connecticut, and Nick Zoullas, a financial consultant in New York City, were two members of that teenage band more than 40 years ago. You could call it a garage band, but in fact much of the music was made in the marble bathrooms of an international boarding school in Switzerland.

“I haven’t played music in about ten years, and I haven’t thought about our record in 20,” said Osborne, “and all of a sudden here’s someone referring to it as 'this seminal album is reaching its 40th year and our record company would like to re–release it in an exclusive, special edition, limited.' I thought it was a joke.”

It was no joke. How Osborne and Zoullas have come to be contemplating a revived musical career in company with high-school musicians, including the granddaughter of Dave Brubeck, is a story about timeless music preserved by a few fans, some record collectors, and modern media technology that connects people not just through space, but through time.

Listen below to the full story:

TRANSCRIPT:

WNPR's Lori Mack: Let's say you and some friends had a folk-rock band back in the '70s, when you were all students at an international boarding school -- in Switzerland. You wrote original songs, and a record company executive liked them, you made a record, and it sold out. The record executive wanted you to make more records, but you were on your way to college in the United States. You and your friends went your separate ways, leaving behind your music and an album with a story. 

Marc Osborne: It sold out quickly in the early stages. I don't know how many thousands of records were pressed, but I know it's in the thousands. And they sold fairly quickly, and then there were none. They didn't do a second pressing as far as I know.

Hand 1971

Mack: Fast forward four decades. Marc Osborne is now a Spanish teacher at Hamden Hall, a private day school in Connecticut. He's found out that original copies of his record are being collected in Europe and the U.S., and being talked about in blogs and on social media...and now another record company is looking for him.  

Osborne: This person, whoever it was, said, 'this important, seminal record from the 1970's. ' And to me, from my vantage point, I'm teaching at Hamden Hall, I haven't played music in a bout 10 years, and I haven't thought about our record in 20, and all of a sudden here's someone referring to it as, 'this seminal album is reaching its 40th year and our record company would like to re-release it in an exclusive, special edition, limited,' I thought it was a joke. 

Mack: Osborne, the singer-songwriter and driving force behind the folk-rock band called Hand, and Nick Zoullas, the band's harmonica player, are now in their early 60s. In 1972 they were part of a seven-member band, made up mostly of teenagers around 18 and 19, from different countries and backgrounds. They made one album, called Everybody's Own. It was folk-rock music with a psychedelic vibe and a touch of jazz. The record was released by a Swiss label, sold out, and went on to become a collectors' item among music-lovers of that era -- who may have heard something in Hand's music that was a little different, something that would sound just as valid in years to come....

Hand 1971

Nick Zoullas: It was very funny. There was a sort of cult thing. Someone found me and said, 'are you part of this band?' And then there were a few chats talking about this thing, which I forwarded on to Marc. On Everybody's Own, if you look at the back of the album it has everybody's name, so now in the technology age you can Google it and he probably found my email, so he was able to contact me that way.

Mack: It was a representative of Golden Pavilion recordswho contacted Zoullas, now a financial consultant dividing his time between Europe and New York. Golden Pavilion is a small independent label out of Portugal, dedicated to progressive, psychedelic, and acid-folk music from the late '60s and early '70s. And that email was only the beginning. What's followed has been a sort of mystical progression -- a bridging of two eras with the help of technology. Osborne, still trying to make sense of it all, recalls sharing the news, and part of his past, with his AP Spanish class. 

Osborne: One of my students said, 'Have you gone on iTunes?' And I just laughed and said, 'Why would I go on iTunes?' She said, 'Well, I don't know, can I?' I said sure. So, she came to my desk, and literally 30 seconds later Everybody's Own pops up on iTunes right next to Beyonce and Jay Z, and I'm going 'what is this?' And so I'm looking and I see all the songs listed—samples—you know you can buy them for 99 cents or whatever. So at this point I have 12 fascinated Spanish students standing around my computer going, 'Is this it?' So we clicked on the first song and there's The Load and we click on the second song and I hear my 18-year-old voice. And suddenly I was flooded with memories and with emotions at that very moment. It was powerful, let me tell you. And then I realized this is not a joke. This is something happening, but I don't know what it is yet. 

Nick Zoullas 1971

Mack: Everybody's Own was, in fact, re-released in 2012 by Golden Pavilion. They remastered and released 500 vinyl copies, distributed them in various locations in Europe and the U.S., and, to the delight of Antonio Barreiros, founder of Golden Pavilion, the album sold out—again—40 years later.

Antonio Barreiros: It's not normal. No. Not at all. Normally, the first records I did took over a year to sell out. So by comparison, Hand took two week, it's really odd that it happened. I don't know, maybe there were many people waiting for it. No. It's not normal. 

Mack: Antonio Barreiros discovered Hand's album in a record store in Holland after reading about it in a book about rare vinyl records, written by the famous collector Hans Pokora. He says what attracted him to their music was something much deeper than a particular sound or style. 

Barreiros: I would describe it as a very honest and very sincere album. Very melodic too. It touched me because it felt like very young people getting together and putting their artistic output into this album. When I find those elements in a band or in a musician, that's what I'm looking for. That's what I feel is relevant and important in the world.

Front cover of original album 1972

Mack: Hand was also on another music enthusiast's radar. Quentin Orlean, a 35-year-old music collector from Paris, said he searched several years for a copy of Everybody's Own. He even tried finding the musicians themselves, before finally landing an original album on ebay for $200. 

Quentin Orlean: It's an incredible LP, and when I listened to it the first time completely, I said to myself, I need to hear more. I'm sure they made some other tracks while recording, but I didn't hear anything about that. Everybody should, at least one time, try to listen to that album. I'm sure there will be a lot of people who will be hooked by it. It's a very raw album, but it's not difficult access. Anybody can listen to this, and should listen to that album. 

Hand 1971

Mack: After the album was completed and the group disbanded, most of the band's members remained lifelong friends from a distance. Aside from Osborne and Zoullas, three of the band members currently live in Europe, and two, sadly, have passed away. There was a reunion in Switzerland in celebration of the album's 40th anniversary reissue by Golden Pavilion.  And the story could've ended there, but that wasn't to be the last of Hand or the album, Everybody's Own. In the span of a few months, Osborne had received another another letter, this one from a music scout for documentary films. 

Osborne: He got in touch with me and he said he had heard this record by Hand called Everybody's Own—do I happen to be the same Marc Osborne? So I wrote him back and said yes and he said, 'Well, there's a film that would like to purchase the rights to the song, Everybody's Own, for the soundtrack to its documentary.' And it turned out, it's a 10-minute film. It's a short, which was short-listed for the Oscars in 2012, and it's called Paraíso. The film, I don't know what it's done since, but I do know it has won several festival awards for short documentary. It originated at Sundance. It's a film about three window washers in Chicago. 

Mack: The momentous twists and turns for Hand and their album Everybody's Own brought excitement, familiar faces, new connections, and renewed friendships. But what would ultimately spark new like in the band was the interest of a couple of Osborne's students, who suggested a live performance at Hamden Hall. It was eerily similar to how it all began—at a school performance 40 years earlier. 

Osborne: Mariel, who at the time was my student, and one faculty member who is a member of the band, Arnie Sabatelli... So, Arnie, Mariel and another wonderful student, Luis , all come to me in the span of a few hours on the same day and said, 'would you play with us?' And at that point I had not contemplated playing anything. It had been years since I'd done anything. And these guys were into this record. So, they learned a song from the record and they wanted me to play on it. And Luis specifically said, 'And that guy who plays that amazing harmonica—do you still know him? Like, is there any way he would come?' So I sent an email to Nick. And it was just a two-line email, and I said, 'Nick, I'm playing at coffee house at Hamden Hall two weeks from Thursday. do you want to come?' His answer came within 10 minutes, in bold letters, 'Yes,' and I thought it's the perfect moment.

I cannot tell you how weird this was. It should have been a disaster, because we had no time to rehearse; we hadn't played in decades. The kids didn't—well they knew the songs, but kind of. And we really had maybe 15 to 20 minutes to pull our act together in the hallway before stepping up on stage. They had all learned the song on their own, and then there were two other songs that they also learned on their own that were my songs. And we played these three songs—I still have the recording of it.

Mack: And It was on the basis of that recording that Antonio Barreiros of Golden Pavilion would decide to release his first album from a contemporary band. A few months later Hand would be reformed and working on a new album called The Other Side of the World, released in January of 2014.

Barreiros: ?I was very, very thrilled when I heard that Marc and Nick decided to come together and reform. That was really a very, very special moment and I don't think it's that common. And on top if it what they did, the work they delivered was fantastic. It kept in line with the original Hand music. And somehow it evolved and it feels fresh. It feels like it belongs to other contemporary bands of the same kind of music. So it makes sense. It's kind of a coincidence that it all came together again and it works.

Mack: The new Hand is now made up of eight members, Osborne and Zoullas—the two originals—one Hamden Hall faculty member, and five younger members, current and former Hamden Hall students, who are around the exact ages of the original band members. Despite the age difference, Osborne says when they're playing music together the musicians are all the same generation, all the same age—a feeling that's echoed by the band's classically trained, 18-year-old violinist, Libai Jordon.

Libai Jordan: I think Marc is right when he talks about how this age gap kind of disappears. Usually I try to get his approval about things that I do, but I think I see that more as getting approval from the lead singer, you know, from the writer, not from the adult. But generally I think the relationship between teenagers and adults, not very much a relationship between teenager and adult as musician to musician. 

Mack: Other band members include alternating keyboard players Klemens Gowin and Walon Chang, drummer Franklin Van Nes, Nate Hill on standup and electric bass, and Hamden Hall faculty member Arnie Sabatelli on guitar.

Hand 2014 (left to right in front) Libai Jordon: violin / Walon Chang: piano (standing) Nick Zoullas: harmonica / Nate Hill: bass / Arnie Sabatelli: guitar / Marc Osborne: vocals, guitar / Mariel Yaghsizian: vocals (in back) Franklin Van Nes: drums

One of the influences on the original Hand musicians back in the '70s was the cool jazz sound of the Dave Brubeck quartet...you can hear that in the song called Shifting Lead from the original album. 

...So maybe it's serendipitous—a twist of fate—that 19-year-old Mariel Yaghsizian is not only a singer in the band, but also Osborne's co-writer on many of Hand's new songs.

Mariel Yaghsizian: My mom's side of the family is the Brubeck family. My grandfather is Dave Brubeck, so I grew up with jazz being a huge part of my life, and music being—just in my DNA pretty much. I've been singing since I was a little girl and I've always been interested just in the arts in general. Like poetry and photography, dance—but music always stood out to me the most, and singing.

Credit Trevor Snapp
Hand 2014 (left to right) Arnie Sabatelli, Marc Osborne, Mariel Yaghsizian, NickZoullas recording their new album.

Mack: Yaghsizian says she liked the music on the album Everybody's Own immediately and felt at home with that musical style. And while the band's sound is evolving she's still very much in tune with the original Hand style.

Yaghsizian: That '70s vibe, that feeling, I've always really connected with it. It has changed, but I think that it carries that same feel, that same vibe to it. But you can also tell the difference. I mean just Marc's voice alone has changed a lot, and I think we've sort of infused a modern feel with that '70s vibe, and I think it's producing a pretty unique sound now. I've heard us compared to the Decemberists, and I really think we have a similar sound to them. Probably the harmonica is a huge factor in that. I would say the biggest difference now, maybe, is we've strayed a little bit away from the psychedelic aspect, which isn't a good or bad thing. It just kind of happened. But I myself really like that sound as well. 

Mack: The band's members come from different backgrounds, disciplines, and levels of musical experience, similar to the original band, which is part of what Zoullas feels makes the new members an integral part of the spirit of Hand.

Credit Trevor Snapp
Klemens Gowin

Nick Zoullas: They are the same element of creativity that we were 40 years ago.

The unexpected Hand revival has admittedly had a positive impact on Osborne and Zoullas, and as they look back at the opportunities and experiences they've had, they look ahead with insight and a bit of wonderment.

Marc Osborne: This is one of the best things I've ever done in my life for a couple of reasons. Not just because I'm happy with the music we're doing. But, I also think—and I know Nick shares this perspective with me—the ability to be able to involve these extraordinary people in something so unique and so fantastic in the way that we were brought in when we were their age—to me this is a dream. As a teacher this is what teaching is about, you give it back.

 

Hand 1971

Zoullas: Some friendships that have grown and other people layered on to it,—and then there's more layers. Nothing has happened by a conscious effort to make it happen. It has all grown by itself, from the very beginning, rehearsing in the marble bathrooms to get a better echo, to what we're doing today. None of it was planned. It just happened by itself.

Mack: Hand has just finished recording a new album, Little Heartaches. This will be the revived Hand's second album to be released by Golden Pavilion Records... due out, in all formats, in early 2015.

 

Lori Connecticut Public's Morning Edition host.

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