Plain and Fancy: 10/28/25

Tuesday, October 28, 2025

Hands - The Early Years (1974-76 us, fine experimental prog rock, 2000 release)

When I arrived at High School in 1971, I was the only person I knew at the time that ever listened to Lizard by King Crimson, Spirit and Beethoven in one sitting. I met a girl named Dianne Barreyre who had heard of Crimson. We became friends and she introduced me to her older brother Michael Barreyre. He was into all sorts of strange music that I had not heard, and was also studying the guitar in a serious way. After a time Michael and I decided to form a band and play some of the music we'd been listening to. He had a friend, David Carlisle, who had a Rickenbacker bass and was into Yes, the Moody Blues and Crimson.

We used to hang out together with some of my friends from high school (Michael and David were older and long out of high school) and formed a sort of artist clique, you might say. We called ourselves the Crimson Cult after King Crimson. We were very much into Abstract Jazz like early Herbie Hancock, Weather Report, and progressive bands such as Yes, KC and the like. The one album that we held up as a milestone and played the grooves off was Close to the Edge. One night at a party we were fortunate enough to hear Three Friends by Gentle Giant. That had an immediate effect on our cult and it swayed us more in the direction of tight, composed rock rather that the loose, abstracted jazz we were so fond of. Classical music was also a big part of our listening experiences those days. Michael was very knowledgeable about classical as was I and those standards were our guide in terms of discipline and dedication. So there was always a lot of respect and admiration for schooled, trained musicians.

I had met guitarist Ernie Myers at a mutual friend's party. He had been playing with John Rousseau, a drummer, and some others above a drive-in movie theatre projection room. They had also been playing outdoor gigs at East Hill, a popular place at the lake for kids to get stoned and what not. So Michael Barreyre, David Carlisle, John Rousseau and myself decided to get a band together. I asked my good friend Sonny Solell to play sax in the band and that was the beginning of the decade of progressive music.

We called ourselves Ibis after "Flight of the Ibis" by Ian McDonald and Michael Giles. We played one or two gigs, I think, and after the second gig which was at a place called Deb's Danceland, we decided that Carlisle wasn't going to cut it. In the meantime, Dianne Barreyre, who had introduced me to her brother Michael, was dating a very talented guitarist and singer named Steve Parker. He came and sat in at the last gig of Ibis and when we got rid of David he agreed to come on as the bassist. He was not really a bassist but had a great voice and learned the bass very quickly. We changed our name to Prism shortly after that. Prism had a few original tunes but mostly we did covers. John Rousseau searched through the paper and found Paul Bunker, an ex SMU violinist. Paul played viola mostly and he read music very well. We had a few jams at John Rousseau's house and afterwards Paul joined permanently.

The band played several club gigs and did very well with our strange set list of Zappa, Mahavishnu Orchestra, King Crimson, and Jethro Tull, as well as Johnny Winter, Allman Brothers, ZZ Top etc. Tensions at this point between Michael Barreyre and the rest of the band reached an unworkable stage. While all this was happening, Ernie Myers had moved to Los Angeles, California, where he met Skip Durbin, excellent woodwind player, at a party thrown by some of the Eagles. They hit it off and Ernie convinced Skip to move to Texas saying that they would eventually be part of Prism. Not long after Ernie's return to Texas Michael Barreyre left the band, and we subsequently replaced him with Ernie. Long before Michael left, Sonny Solell had decided to leave the group but he still let us rehearse at his place. He remained an ally of the band for years to come. The band added Skip on woodwinds and Prism was complete. We played several gigs and slowly the cover tunes faded and originals took over.

After moving rehearsal venues two more times we then heard of the Canadian band Prism, who were going to release their debut soon. Since we didn't have a deal at that point, and being afraid of reprisals by their label Arista, we decided to change our name. After what seemed like an eternity we decided upon Hands. We were playing all original music by that time and had done a couple of high profile gigs, sow e changed our name roughly around the time that we were finishing up the first recordings for what would become the first CD, Hands. Later on we added Tom Reid on vocals and became a seven- piece. After a while, in 1979, I decided to leave the band. Paul Bunker left some time after that and Hands then hired Mark Menikos on violin and Shannon Day on keyboards. The band recorded several of the tunes we'd worked on while PauI, Skip and I were still part of the band. The songs they recorded are many of the tunes that make up Palm Mystery. Hands finally disbanded in late 1980.

Michael Clay interview on Pete Pardo at Sea of Tranquility