Phoenix
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Phoenix
demo tape box and 4-track session master tape notes
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After Lavender
Hill Express disbanded, one of its founding members, guitarist
Leonard Arnold, formed Phoenix with Rodney Garrison (bass)
and Tom Harmon (drums; lead vocals). In early February 1971,
Sonobeat owner/producer Bill Josey Sr. recorded a demo of two
of the trio's original songs, Changes and I
Found Love.
Although the location of the sessions wasn't documented, it's
most likely Phoenix was recorded at Sonobeat's Western Hills
Drive studio in northwest Austin, which was just large enough
to comfortably accommodate a trio.
Although Bill Sr. kept recording session notes, those for Phoenix
don't shed any light on the group itself, although it demonstrates
how Bill intended to mix their tracks. The Sonobeat archives
provide no information about why Sonobeat never
released a single by the group. The sound bite we offer demonstrates
that Phoenix was a tight and talented rock group with great promise.
Leonard Arnold, along with former Lavender Hill Express bandmates
Rusty Wier, Layton DePenning, and Gary P. Nunn, went on to help
establish Austin's progressive country music movement that
began in the early '70s. There's just a hint of the beginnings
of progressive country in Phoenix's vocals.
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Genesee
session notes (left) and master tape box (note the reference
on the tape box to Phoenix)
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At about the same time as the Phoenix sessions in February 1971,
Sonobeat owner/producer Bill Josey Sr. recorded progressive rock
band Genesee at Sonobeat's Western Hills Drive studio in northwest
Austin. Genesee was a short-lived but popular band that frequently
played the Club Saracen and the Jade Room in downtown Austin.
Tommy Taylor, longtime drummer with Eric
Johnson and king of Austin '60s music geneology, recalls that Genesee
had two incarnations, the first featuring Layton Depenning (lead
guitars and vocals; formerly of Lavender
Hill Express), Chuck
Rogers (drums), Gary P. Nunn (keyboards and vocals; also formerly
of Lavender Hill Express), Jerry Potter (bass; brother of Bubble
Puppy guitarist Todd Potter), and Richard Dean (rhythm guitar).
However, it was the second incarnation of Genesee that Bill Sr.
recorded in 1971.
Genesee's second line-up featured John Inmon (guitar
and vocals; formerly of South
Canadian Overflow and Plymouth
Rock),
Layton DePenning, Chuck Rogers, and Gary P. Nunn (who switched
from keyboards to bass when Jerry Potter departed). Layton
recalls that the first group disbanded after about a year, and
the second Genesee was formed from the ashes. "This [second]
group also succumbed to financial deprivation after about a year,"
Layton reflects, and that it "was intended to be a hard
rock four piece [playing] some of The Who, Blue Cheer, the Rolling
Stones, etc. True to form, however, our folk, country, and country
rock roots caused us to write and perform all types of styles
prevalent at the time." Tommy recalls that Genesee's roadies
were Jack Borders and Danny Gibson, who drove a green
and
white Ford van.
The Genesee sessions were recorded on Sonobeat's half-inch 4-track
Scully 280. Bill Sr.'s session notes for the third track (see
image above) demonstrate how he bounced a 4-track mix down to
two tracks in order to open up two more tracks for vocal overdubs.
We haven't found any mono or stereo mix-downs of Genesee's recordings
in the Sonobeat archives, so we've taken the liberty of mixing
a sound bite of John Inmon's folk-rock ballad, Littlefield
Fountain. The song's title refers to Littlefield Memorial
Fountain, a University of Texas at Austin landmark on the 21st
Street entrance to the campus; the fountain and its massive bronze
sculpture mark the entrance to the long South Mall on the campus.
We forgot to ask the origin of the band's name, but Genesee,
a Native American word for pleasant valley, is the
name of several small towns across the U.S. and of a major river
flowing from Pennysylvania through New York to Lake Ontario.
Our thanks to Tommy Taylor, Layton DePenning, John Inmon, and
Ernie Gammage for
their recollections of Genesee, which Tommy declares to be "the
best progressive rock band
that ever played Austin."
In 1970 and '71, flutist Don "Skipper" Young headlined
a house band at Club Caravan at the Villa Capri Hotel on South
Congress Avenue in Austin; the band included former Sweetarts' bassist
Pat Whitefield, Austin guitar legend Jim Mings (a former
member of New
Atlantis), and drummer Jay Meade (also formerly of New Atlantis).
In February 1971, Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Sr. conducted
a recording session with Young's band
at Sonobeat's Western Hills Drive studio in northwest Austin.
The Sonobeat archives hold one 4-track half inch reel from the
session, but no session notes. The three cuts on the master are
different takes of the same unknown song. Only one track represents
a completed version including vocals. The session featured
Young on flute, Mings on guitar, Whitefield on bass, Meade on
drums, and Mings' sister, Martha, on keyboard. Mings sang lead
and his sister sang harmony on the one completed track.
There are no two-track mixes of Young's material in the Sonobeat
archives, so the sound bite we present below is a fresh mix-down
from the 4-track master.
Our thanks to Jim Mings for fleshing out information about Skipper
and the band.
Bill Miller Group (Cold
Sun)
Who and what was the mysterious musical collaboration that Sonobeat
owner/producer Bill Josey Sr. referred to as, simply, the "Bill
Miller Group"? Internet sources indicate Bill Miller's "group" was
called Amethyst before beginning the near-mythical 1971 Sonobeat
sessions, but, at some point during the sessions, the "group" changed
its name to The Daily Planet. The Sonobeat sessions produced
a highly programmatic album that was tentatively entitled Cold
Sun. Over the years, the group itself came to be
referred to as Cold Sun.
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Bill
Miller Group proposed single master tape box
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Sonobeat's archives list the following artists on the Cold
Sun sessions: Bill Miller (electric autoharp, harmonica,
slide guitar, electric guitar, and vocals), Tom McGarrigle
(electric guitar, bass, and vocals), Hugh Patton (drums and
percussion), and Mike Waugh (bass). Waugh had played bass on Jim
Chesnut's country-pop single for Sonobeat and on Herman
M. Nelson's second demo album for Sonosong Music. All songs
on the unreleased album were written by Bill Miller, except Fall,
co-written by Miller and Winston Taylor, and the album's epic
finale, Ra-Ma, based in part on Egyptian mythology,
which was written by Miller and McGarrigle with lyric contributions
by Herman Nelson.
Miller's electric autoharp, perhaps an analog to the 13th
Floor Elevators' amplified jug, added a significant contribution to
the distinctive sound of the Cold Sun tracks.
Recording the autoharp challenged Josey, and, after a variety
of miking techniques were tried and discarded, he opted for direct
injection, plugging the autoharp's pickups directly into the
mixing console.
Cold Sun album master
tape box
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Cold Sun, recorded over several months starting
at Sonobeat's Western Hills Drive studio in Northwest Austin
and finishing at the Sonobeat Studios on North Lamar in Austin,
was never released by Sonobeat, although producer Bill Josey
Sr. contemplated releasing a stereo single featuring See
What You Cause and Twisted Flower, but the reason
he eventually decided against the release is not documented in
the Sonobeat archives. In a shift from his customary practice,
Josey did not make a test pressing of the Cold Sun album.
Instead, he circulated inexpensive audiocassette dubs of the
album to the major record companies, hoping to license the masters
for a national release. Unfortunately, there were no takers for
the esoteric, psychedelic recordings. Although dubs of the master
tapes have circulated for 35 years, the album was not publicly
released until 1989 when specialty label Rockadelic issued a
limited edition of 300 copies under the artist name Cold Sun
and album title Dark Shadows, a title selected
by Miller as homage to the '60s cult TV series. Miller went on
from Cold Sun to perform with Roky Erickson and the Aliens and
performs today under the name Billy Angel.

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Synthesis
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Synthesis demo tape box
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In
mid-July 1971, Bill Josey Sr. recorded four songs with Columbus,
Ohio-based progressive rock band Synthesis, hoping to glean one
more stereo single release on the Sonobeat label for 1971, already
a marginal year for the company. Synthesis was the third group
Bill Sr. recorded at his new Sonobeat Studios in the KVET building
on North Lamar in Austin. The group's songs, all originals, included
vocals Parliamentary
Magistrates and Hocus Pocus and instrumentals Paroxysm and Horrible
Adventures of a Man From Nell (that's right, "Nell",
not "Hell").
The session tapes were mixed down from Sonobeat's Scully 280
half-inch 4-track machine to two tracks on Sonobeat's second
half-inch 4-track machine, a Stimco, so that two additional tracks
of overdubs could be added. Although the Sonobeat archives don't
list the personnel in the band or the reasons why a single was
never released, we recently learned that the trio was
composed of Daniel Warner (percussion),
Scott Steelman (keyboards), and
Thom Blum (electric bass and vocals). Synthesis' Sonobeat recordings
engagingly demonstrate how the jazz-rock fusion movement was advancing
in the early '70s.
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Jess DeMaine 4-track demo
tape reel
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Austin, Texas, country singer/songwriter Jess DeMaine (Fred
Frieling Jr.) recorded at the Sonobeat studios on North
Lamar in Austin beginning in November 1971 and continuing, off
and on, through 1973. The sessions, produced and engineered by
Sonobeat owner Bill Josey Sr., demonstrate Jess' impressive vocal
talents. Partially paralyzed in a motorcycle accident later in
the '70s, Jess overcame the disability and went on to write a
George Strait hit, Love
Comes from the Other Side of Town, as well as the children's
song Little Cowpoke, and presently serves
as director of the Hearts In Spirit band at Christ Lutheran
Church in Austin.
Although Jess's first Sonobeat sessions were in 1971, we feature
sound bites from four tracks he recorded at Sonobeat in 1972
and 1973. His minimalist performance -- just guitar and vocal
-- of the Jerry Foster/Bill Rice songs, Hand
of Hurt and Your
Kind of Man, certainly show off Jess' powerful and expressive
voice. In the second version of Hand of Hurt (recorded
with a band this time, probably Tommy
Hill and the Country Music Revue, with whom Jess recorded
at Sonobeat in 1972), Jess is coached
by a band member. Bill Sr. may have prepared mono or stereo
mixes of these songs, but none have been found in the Sonobeat
archives; therefore, these sound bites are freshly mixed
from the original 4-track half-inch master tapes.
Next: 1972
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