Lorain Hilton-Van Zandt – An Xperience Interview

Lorain Hilton-Van Zandt – An Xperience Interview – by Rob Smittix.

RRX: Lorain, you are the owner of Hilton Music Center, right?

LH: Yep. I’ve owned it since ‘81.

RRX: Hilton goes way back. It’s really like the heritage music store around here. Remind me how many years it has been. I know it’s a lot.

LH: Well, it’s funny. I’ve always kind of guessed, because I’m the youngest of eight, and no one ever gives me the story straight. But since my dad died, I found this little file box and I took it home. Because of you calling me up, I actually opened it and found dates. I got all these DBAs from his various schools and things that he started and the first one I found was from 1948.

He had a school at 91 North Pearl Street – Steuben and Troy Music Academy – in 1957 which he sold to Art in 1959. And then he actually opened up his first store on 52 Columbia Street in 1961. So, thanks for making me do that.

RRX: No kidding. That’s really neat. I know they had the Hilton store in Westgate. That was you guys too, right?

LH: Yep. As things got a little iffy around the Columbia Street area, he moved up to 346 and then Westgate and then actually moved up to Colonie Center for five years. And that’s where I started teaching. I was just a kid. I was 13. All of us kids taught, every one of us, and there’s eight of us. We all taught and that’s how … you know, we went to college.

RRX: I was just at this lunch thing at the Ale House in Troy, called the Troy Music Mafia. I found out that it all really stemmed from, and was based around, Hilton in Troy. And that’s how that whole thing started. So you’ve got that history there too. My own personal history was that I took guitar lessons when I was a kid at the Westgate location.

That was back when I wanted to be the next Eddie Van Halen. And we still need more Eddie Van Halens. You know?

LH: We definitely do. Do you remember who your teacher was?

RRX: Glenn Weiser. (Inserted when I remembered)

LH: It’s funny, my dad used to put his students on a station called WOKO.

RRX: I don’t know.

LH: That was probably way before your time. I mean, this is going back to when he was teaching. I was young. I didn’t even know any of this stuff existed, but the Troy thing was interesting to me. You know what? Mark Galeo actually taught for me as well. So cool to have him teaching for Hilton’s again. He just came in one day. He’s like, “Lorain, do you think Art would actually come to this?” I’m like, totally. So it was so great to see that article. I also wanted to mention some well-known guys who taught for me over the years and some still do: Matt Smith, Dave Malachowski, Art Bernstein , Mike Campese, Jim Plumadore, (Eastwall) Doug Reynolds and the Erotics. Also, as a kid, I took flute lessons with Nick Brignola, only to have him sit in with my band Himalaya decades later at places like the Elbo Room, Justin’s, and Chambers.

RRX: There’s quite a bit of history there.

LH: I’m the last of the eight; Art is actually 20 years older than me. And people always argue with me that he was my dad. I was like, no, my dad, our dad … we go back even further than Art and they’re like, what? But it’s funny, even to this day people come in and they talk about our dad … crazy stories. And one guy showed me this old pic. I’ve got to show you this old pic and it’s got our phone number from back in the ‘50s. It was like six digits with letters. I’m like, oh, my goodness, that’s old.

RRX: You’ve got a great location now in the mall and still doing the lessons. Still got all the stellar equipment in there too.

LH: Now we’re carrying brands that I didn’t carry before; we’ve got the Fender franchise, Yamaha, Epiphone, and all sorts of recording gear. Our studios are all brand new and beautiful. We’ve got one of the largest schools around and I’ve got great teachers.

RRX: I’ve seen that. Yes, you do.

LH: Being in the mall allows us to get people in that normally wouldn’t do lessons. We’re getting the older crowd as well as the young kids. We actually have a recital coming up too, on November 9. We do a big show twice a year in the mall with all our students. And that’s pretty exciting.

RRX: So that’s November 9?

LH: Yeah, I’ve got a big stage, a beautiful grand piano, and lots of bands. It’s loud and it’s fun.

RRX: Excellent. And you obviously have been playing for a while yourself.

LH: Oh, yeah. I played flute. My brother John – we were very close, actually our whole family is ridiculously close. But he got me playing jazz, like, in grade five. Later on when I got back from school I got in a band with them called Himalaya, and we played for like, 10 years around the Capital Region. But I was always very dissatisfied with the way the flute sounded. I kinda needed more growl or something. So I had a paddle board with all kinds of stuff and it was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed that.

RRX: It all comes full circle now.

LH: And my store up in Colonie really started in 2008. I called my brother Bob. We found this beautiful store in Colonie Center and that’s kind of where we put our stores together again. Which is great. We moved upstairs by Macy’s; that’s our new location. Now I’m in business side-by-side with Hilton Piano, which was operated by my brother Bob and passed to his son, Bob Jr. So we’re actually two stores in one up there.

RRX: I have to ask. What is the deal with not being able to play “Stairway to Heaven” in a music store?

LH: Oh, that goes back to what, the ‘70s? We actually allow it now. It’s been that long. It’s welcome. It’s so funny, in a music store, there’s always that guy who’s serenading his girlfriend and that was the song for many years. People just got tired of it. But we did enforce that for a while but we lifted the ban on “Stairway to Heaven.”

RRX: I always wondered about that.

LH: I think the biggest compliment we’ve been getting in our store is that people say, wow, every guitar is in tune and they’re clean and play great. Well, thanks to our tech Joel.

RRX: Anything else you’d want the people to know about Hilton Music Center?

LH: I think our biggest claim to fame with customers right now is that we offer lifetime service on our guitars. We do full setups for free, but I do wanna say, Floyd Rose and the Fender Vintera where you have to take the necks off to do an adjustment are excluded. But every other guitar, we take care of them because, often, those are our students and they might come out of their lesson room with their teacher, “Hey, can you fix this?” And we just take care of it, which is really a great thing. And we also give people a free lesson with their purchases, which is really nice.

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