Owen Hand - biographical information?

Subject: RE: Owen Hand - biographical information?
From: GUEST,Louise
Date: 19 Jun 13 - 07:44 AM

His son also named Owen is still living in Edinburgh , his eldest daughter in Canada and son in Dubai but Owen can be found on face book Try Oj Hand or Seth Hand, they might be able to put you intouch with their mother.

Subject: RE: Owen Hand - biographical information?
From: GUEST,David E.
Date: 10 Jun 11 - 11:25 PM

I have a cd on Pier Records (Pier 502) which contains both "Something New" and "I Loved A Lass" and has liner notes from Owen dated 1998. One of my prized cds. Owen passed away in February of 2003. I'm not good with blue clicky things, but here's a nice piece from the Scotsman:

http://news.scotsman.com/obituaries/Owen-Hand.2405184.jp


David E.

Subject: RE: Owen Hand - biographical information?
From: GUEST,Michael
Date: 10 Jun 11 - 09:31 PM

Owen's family was already living in Edinburgh when he was born. My late mother Agnes was his sister.

Subject: RE: Owen Hand - biographical information?
From: GUEST, Sminky
Date: 13 Jan 10 - 04:53 AM

Owen was actually born in Ireland, his family moved to Scotland when he was very young.

He ran away from home at 16 and took various jobs including miner, a spell in the army, whaler, hotdog seller and fairground barker.

He was unofficial 'minder' for some of the younger folkies around at the time. There was one particularly nasty gentleman (surname Field if I remember correctly) who had been dating Anne Briggs and giving her a hard time. He had beaten her up and was looking for Bert Jansch, armed with a knife. Owen 'sorted it'.

Subject: RE: Owen Hand - biographical information?
From: sheila
Date: 12 Jan 10 - 01:54 PM

Some of the Bruce Eder timeline seems a little off. I knew Owen and Ruth (who became his second wife), in Edinburgh in the mid-sixties, and I'm sure I remember him reminiscing about the kibbutz then. I left Edinburgh in early 1967, and when I met Owen again in 1970, he was running a small delivery service - "Hand Transport", or something similar, was its name.
In 1993, he earned an MA with Honours in Scottish Ethnology. His thesis was 'The political influences behind the folk song revival in Britain, c 1950s-1960s'. He was with the European Ethnological Research Council for a while.

Subject: RE: Owen Hand - biographical information?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 12 Jan 10 - 12:57 PM

Here's the biography from allmusic.com:

by Bruce Eder
Owen Hand's career in music was relatively brief -- he was active as a performer for just over four years, and left behind only two complete albums, but through that small output and short career he became a much-loved figure on the English folk scene. He was born in Scotland at the end of the 1930s, and while he may have had an interest in music as a boy, it had to compete with a lot of responsibilities and necessary distractions. Hand's mother passed away when he was 13 and he was forced to leave school and take a job as a mine worker. Hand didn't learn to play guitar until he was in the army in his late teens, but he soon got good enough to pursue a career. He made his public debut in Edinburgh in 1962, and founded the Three City Four a year later with Leon Rosselson, Ralph Trainer, and Marian McKenzie. He remained with the quartet for a year before choosing to embark on a solo career -- he was succeeded in the group, incidentally, by no less a figure than Martin Carthy. Hand made an initial solo appearance on record with the Decca release Edinburgh Folk Festival, Vol. 1 (Decca LK 4546) recorded in 1963, on which he performed "One Dime Blues." In 1964, he recorded his first album, Something New, for Transatlantic Records, which was a surprisingly ambitious mix of traditional and original material, and was well-received within the folk community. His second album, I Loved a Lass (1966), was even more successful, but he never had a chance to build upon it. His marriage broke up around the time of the album's release, and Hand later left England. He emigrated to Israel for a time, lived on a kibbutz for much of the next year, and then returned to Edinburgh, where he abandoned music permanently in favor of running a retail store. He never returned to performing for the remainder of his life, but his recordings remain among the most beloved parts of the mid-'60s Transatlantic catalog. Additionally, his friend Bert Jansch still performs Hand's "My Donal" as part of his repertory.

Subject: RE: Owen Hand
From: GUEST, Sminky
Date: 12 Jan 10 - 12:29 PM

Tough lad, Owen Hand (though he was a lovely man). Whaler, miner, prize-fighter - he did the lot.

I recollect he gave up performing about 1969 and moved to an Israeli kibbutz for a time, though he eventually returned to Edinburgh.

There's a more detailed bio of him in Colin Harper's Dazzling Stranger: Bert Jansch and the British Folk and Blues Revival which I don't have to hand right now. Bert and Owen were good friends.

I'll dig out more info later unless someone beats me to it.

Subject: Owen Hand
From: GUEST,David
Date: 12 Jan 10 - 11:52 AM

Just been listening to Dick Gaughan singing the Owen Hand song 'My Donald'. Its a stunning performance of an immensely moving song. Does anyone know anything about Owen Hand? He appears to have shone brightly for a short period at the end of the 60s and then vanished

'My Donald' is a song about the men who hunted whales - and I read somewhere, that Hand, as a young man, was a member of one of the last whaling fleets to operate out of Scotland. Don't know if that is correct. Anyone know any thing more about Owen Hand??
Thanks

Subject: RE: Owen Hand
From: zanderfish3 (inactive)
Date: 03 Jul 03 - 02:39 PM

This is an excellent book, a must read for anyone interested in the Britsh folk revival of the 60s.
Dave

Subject: Owen Hand
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 03 Jul 03 - 02:33 PM

There's been a few threads relating to Owen Hand recently, but none seem to have mentioned the Bert Jansch biog. " Dazzling Stranger" which has lots of references to Owen including lots of direct quotes and a photo.