Nov/Dec 2013
Your scribe wrote this column while listening to Bill Owens’s “Round and Round” track on his Wildflower Bouquet CD with Missile Records. Here is his music life story from the website https://www.musicpage.com/billowens: “Singer-songwriter and guitarist for over 59 years, I have signed a record contract with Missile Records, and have just released “Round And Round,” the new single from my first album, Wildflower Bouquet, which I recorded at Merit Studios on Music Row in Nashville, Tennessee. I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and by age 12 was playing for pay in bands and folk trios all around Buckhead and north Atlanta. I was in the Atlanta Boys Choir, and at 14 appeared with my trio on WSB-TV’s Today in Georgia.
“I graduated from Yale in 1970, then returned to Atlanta to start my music career in earnest. I headlined in Bermuda at the Cock & Feather Pub two summers running, at Banks & Shane’s in north Atlanta, at Callaway Gardens, the Great Southeast Music Hall, the Atlanta High Museum as artist in residence, Sea Pines Plantation on Hilton Head, Sea Palms on Saint Simons Island, and The Cloister on Sea Island.
“Television station WETV Channel 30 in Atlanta tapped me in 1975 to star in two half-hour performance broadcasts, Bill Owens and Bill Owens and Friends. In 1980 I worked as creative director for Taylor-Owens Advertising in Atlanta, where I created, wrote, performed, and voiced a hit radio campaign for Stihl Chain Saws (featuring ‘Sonny & Bubba’), which saw Stihl’s market share in Georgia rise from 8 percent to 46 percent in a span of six months.
“Currently a solo performer and lead guitarist for St. Simons’ popular band, The Stringrays, I was half the wildly popular duo Ziggy Mahoney, which wowed southeastern and coastal audiences for over 20 years. I have appeared on television, in clubs, and on concert stages for most of my adult life, opening for Jerry Clower, Danny Davis & The Nashville Brass, and the Kingston Trio, among others.”
Bill passed away peacefully on June 21, 2013, at home, with his family. “Bill will be remembered for his music, his wit and intelligence, his passion for knowledge and good causes, his complete inability to get anywhere on time, and his devotion to his wife Elizabeth” (from the Atlanta Journal Constitution). I recommend going to his website and listening to his song.
Mike Harrington (charrington@velaw.com): “I’m not sure it qualifies as ‘news,’ but after 40 years I’m still toiling in the vineyards of the Houston office of Vinson & Elkins LLP, practicing mostly in the area of corporate high-yield debt—familiarly known as ‘junk’ bonds. My partners have persuaded me to remain a full partner for each of the past couple of years running, but retirement looms in the not-too-distant future. My wife, Jody, and I are fortunate to live within walking distance of both of our daughters. Our older daughter, Averill Harrington Conn TD’03, has presented us with two exemplary grandsons, Graham Kirk Conn and James Michael Conn, ages 2-½ and five months, respectively. Jody and I dote on our grandsons, and we’re thankful we have the opportunity to spend considerable time with them.”
Andrew Schnier: (schnierlaw@aol.com) “If memory serves me, and it does so increasingly less-well these days, when I wrote about my aspirations for our 25th reunion publication I spent a considerable amount of time writing about my hopes/plans to do some long-range sailboat cruising. Those hopes/plans remained unfilled for the past 22 years, but they are finally coming to fruition. I know from speaking with some of you at past reunions that you beat me to it, but ‘better late than never.’
“I am currently semi-retired as a lawyer. I ceased litigating a few years ago, but continue to represent a few clients in real estate development and other commercial pursuits. My wife Kryss and I have recently purchased a cruising sailboat that is undergoing a major refit, and we will be leaving terra firma this summer to see how far our sailboat (named Duet) will carry us, and how far our sea legs will support us.
“Fully cognizant that ‘the best laid schemes of mice and men go often awry,’ I won’t write about our intended destinations at this point (we’re not so sure of them ourselves), but we have set up a website entitled SailingDuet.com, at which those of you (if any) who wish, can follow our travels or travails, as the case may be, once we get started. Lest I be accused of emphasizing the insignificant over the important, our two daughters are doing great. Susan continues to churn up the powder at Squaw Valley, dazzle with her web development activities, and has made us grandparents. Samantha is a second-year law student at NYU this fall. As the fellow from Maine who is supervising Duet’s refit likes to say, ‘It’s all good.’”
John G. O’Leary (businesslessonsfromrock@gmail.com) e-writes: “I’m in the final stages of my opus, tentatively titled Business Lessons From Rock—also the name of my blog. (It combines what I’ve learned in my two careers, as a rock musician and as a management consultant.) Once I complete more revisions that my persnickety literary agent has requested, she can begin shopping the book to publishers. Of course, in this age of self-publishing, if I don’t get the deal I want I have lots of other options. I’m still living in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts—with nine wonderful plants. Looking forward to seeing everybody at the 45th!”
Said reunion is fast approaching.
“I do not think of old age as an ever grimmer time that one must somehow endure and make the best of, but as a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together.”—Oliver Sacks (age 80), 7/7/2013 in the NYT.