Adobie Flatz

Adobie Flatz came to the Sonobeat studios on North Lamar in Austin, Texas, in January 1973 and cut three songs with Sonobeat owner/producer Bill Josey Sr.: Trust (by Phil Livingston, who may have been a member of the group), Wrong Time, and an untitled blues tune.

Instrumentation on the session was drums, bass, rhythm guitar, and lead guitar, and lead vocals were enhanced with harmony parts. The recordings were mixed down from 4-track session tapes recorded on Sonobeat's Scully 240 half-inch machine to a monaural demo tape, but there's nothing else in the Sonobeat archives about the group, its members, when and where the group was formed, how it came to the attention of Bill Sr., and where it may have performed in the Austin area. We'd love to know more about Adobie Flatz, including the origin and odd spelling of its name.

We present a sound bitefrom Trust. This blues-rock piece was recorded at Sonobeat's studio in the KVET building on North Lamar in Austin.

Gary York & Evelyn

Almost nothing is known about the January 1973 session Sonobeat conducted with Gary York & Evelyn. The entire output of the session, recorded at the Sonobeat studios on North Lamar in Austin, was a monaural demo of the original song People. Even Gary himself remembers little about the session or even writing the song. However, he does recall spending a lot of time around the Sonobeat studios, assisting owner/producer Bill Josey Sr. with mike set-ups and "learning the ropes".

Personnel on the demo include then 21-year-old Gary (acoustic guitar), Evelyn (vocal), Russ (electric guitar), Ken (bass), and Rex (organ). Gary recalls that at the time the recording was made, Evelyn was a divinity student at Concordia College in Austin. He also recalls that Russ, Ken, and Rex (whose last names are not in the Sonobeat archives) were members of an Austin-based blues band called Rocking Horse. Today Gary owns and operates Mellow Morning Music in Tyler, Texas.

There's nothing more in the Sonobeat archives about the mysterious session or what producer Bill Sr. did with the demo. It seems clear, however, that he didn't intend to release a single by the group, since only one song was recorded.

Joyce Spence

The Sonobeat archives hold no information about country singer Joyce Spence beyond the fact that in February 1973 she recorded two songs at the Sonobeat studios on North Lamar in Austin, Texas. Comparing Joyce's Sonobeat tracks to those of Johnny and Janet Lyon (see entry below), we've concluded that Johnny's band, the Country Nu-Notes, provided the backing instrumentals for Joyce.

Both (I've Got) a Head on My Shoulders and Don't Make Me Cry were Joyce's original compositions. Sonobeat owner/producer Bill Josey Sr. mixed down a monaural demo tape from the 4-track half-inch session tapes, but there are no surviving documents indicating what he then did with the demo. Instrumentation included drums, bass, rhythm guitar, and lead guitar, but the names of the musicians in the Country Nu-Notes, who backed Joyce on this session, are not listed in the Sonobeat archives.

For the sound bites offered below, we've remixed both songs from the original 4-track master because the original mono mixes lacked clarity and, well, weren't in stereo.

Vita

	Vita master tape box front and back

In February 1973, Bill Josey Sr. recorded Vita at the Sonobeat studios in the KVET building on North Lamar in Austin. Josey submitted a demo tape of the band to national record labels, describing his desire to record the group in a quadraphonic/stereo/monaural-compatible format. Bill had previously experimented with quad recording with Base, but those recordings had not been made for commercial release. Vita appears to be the first group Bill recorded in quad with commercial exploitation as the primary goal. Vita recorded four songs for Sonobeat, all originals: Think What You Want, Santa Ana Freeway, Song for Jericho, and The Parasite. The sound bites we present below demonstrate the diversity of the band's material.

Bill submitted a demo dub of all four Vita songs to his friend Ron Bledsoe at Columbia Records with a note indicating Vita had enough original material to record two albums. The Sonobeat archives don't indicate whether Bill submitted the demo to any other labels, but apparently Columbia passed on the opportunity to release Vita's material. It appears Bill abandoned plans to complete an album with the group, since there is no other Vita material in the Sonobeat archives.

Vita's personnel are not named in the Sonobeat archives, but the master tape box lists the following instrumentation for the sessions: drums and percussion, electric bass, acoustic guitar, organ, electric piano, lead guitar, and hand drum. Like many other artists who recorded at Sonobeat, there's no indication in the Sonobeat archives of the reason none of the songs was released on the Sonobeat label itself.

Johnny and Janet Lyon

Performing down-home Texas country, Johnny and Janet Lyon recorded at the Sonobeat studios on North Lamar in Austin, Texas, in March 1973. Sonobeat owner/producer Bill Josey Sr.'s abbreviated session notes uniquely are written on masking tape affixed to the 4-track half-inch reel on which the masters of several artists are sequenced. Unfortunately, Bill didn't indicate the titles of any of the songs recorded by those artists or the additional musicians who contributed to the recordings.

Although we assume Johnny and Janet were related, perhaps even married, we're just not sure. But we are sure that a year later, in '74, Bill Sr. recorded Johnny's band, the Country Nu-Notes, in a live performance at South Austin's iconic Broken Spoke music hall. We also assume that the Country Nu-Notes provided the instrumental backing on Johnny and Janet's Sonobeat sessions. And we know, too, that Johnny is still active in the Central Texas country music scene and owns the Texas Hall of Fame in Bryan, Texas.

The Sonobeat archives don't shed further light on the Johnny and Janet Lyon recording sessions. It appears that Bill Sr. recorded two or three songs by the pair, but no stereo or mono versions have been found in the archives, so we've taken the liberty of mixing down the 4-track master of an upbeat duet and a song featuring Janet, titles unknown, to demonstrate the pure country music heritage that Johnny and Janet embodied in 1973.

Ernie Gammage and Base

Base master tape box

Welcome back to the story of Base, a studio band brought together by Sonobeat owner/producer Bill Josey Sr. In June 1972, Base featured a group of luminary Austin musicians, including guitarist Eric Johnson (Mariani), drummers Jay Meade (New Atlantis) and Bobby Rector (Golden Dawn, a contemporary of the 13th Floor Elevators), and bassists Ronnie Leatherman (13th Floor Elevators), Danny Galindo (13th Floor Elevators and Fast Cotton), and Mike Reid (New Atlantis). Bill had recorded all these musicians before in other groups or knew them from KAZZ-FM live broadcasts in the '60s and had recruited them specifically to jam while he experimented with quadraphonic recording and mixing techniques. As summer '72 ended, Bill turned his attention to other recording projects and put aside the Base tapes, but he didn't let go of his desire to record and release quadraphonic stereo singles and albums. "Quad", first introduced in 1970, was the newest consumer audio technology being promoted by major labels like Capitol, Columbia, Decca, and MCA and by audio equipment manufacturers like CBS, ElectroVoice, RCA, Sansui, and Sony, and Bill believed it was the wave of audio's future.

Bill's belief in quad was deep enough that he convinced many other artists who he recorded from mid-'1972 through mid-1973 to work in the format. Bill called his quadraphonic mixing technique "Sonoquad" and even, for a brief period, renamed the Sonobeat Studios on North Lamar in Austin, Texas, the Sonoquad Studios, anticipating a recorded music trend that ultimately fizzled out before it had a chance to catch on with consumers. Of course, the ill-fated quad format was predecessor to today's 5.1 surround sound systems that first appeared in the 1990s in movie theaters and then migrated to home theaters in the 2000s.

Bill reincarnated Base in 1973, when rock songwriter, guitarist, and singer Ernie Gammage returned to Austin from a sabbatical in England. It's clear from the actions that Bill took with this new incarnation of Base that he intended to produce commercial quad tracks to sell to major record labels. Ernie, a seasoned songwriter with an ear for a great hook, was the headliner Bill believed would make that possible. Ernie may hold the record for appearing in the most groups Sonobeat recorded: first, in the Sweetarts, who recorded Sonobeat's inaugural 45 RPM release, A Picture of Me, in 1967; then in Fast Cotton, who recorded five original songs with Sonobeat in 1970, but disbanded before any could be released; and, finally, in Base version 2. The 1973 Base sessions that Ernie headlined yielded Lady, a beautiful, soulful remake of Ernie's excellent song that he had first recorded with Fast Cotton, and a cover of Taj Mahal's She Caught the Katy and Left Me a Mule to Ride, another song also in Fast Cotton's live performance repertoire. Ernie's participation in the '73 sessions was so fundamental that Bill changed the name of the group to "Ernie Gammage and Base". Incidentally, Ronnie Leatherman recalls that Roky Erickson and a reconstituted 13th Floor Elevators that featured Roky's brother Donnie, Ronnie, and John Ike Walton recorded at least one track, Maxine, during the course of the 1973 Base sessions.

	Base quad master tape box with Bill Josey Sr.'s recording diagram and mastering notes

Bill sent the session tapes for Lady and She Caught the Katy, recorded on Sonobeat's 4-track half-inch Scully 280, to Columbia Records for processing with a CBS/Sony SQ matrix encoder to a quad/stereo/mono compatible 2-track master and for Dolby tape noise reduction. Josey circulated 2-track open reel dubs of the tracks as well as audiocassette copies of these two songs to major labels.

On offer below are the two Ernie Gammage and Base tracks that Bill felt would best show off his quad recording and mixing techniques as well as the musical and performing talents of the band itself. As a special treat, we offer a newly discovered and rare insight from producer Bill Josey Sr.: his audio message and instructions -- which preceded Lady and She Caught the Katy -- on the 1/2 inch 4-track master tape he sent to Ron Bledsoe and Bob McGraw at Columbia Records for quad encoding and Dolby processing.

Our thanks to composer/performer Ernie Gammage for permission to present Base's recording of Lady in its entirety (we love this track) and to Elevators historian Paul Drummond (author of the new 13th Floor Elevators biography Eye Mind) for passing along recollections from Ronnie Leatherman.

If you missed the first part of the Base story, now's a good time to backtrack to 1972.

Next: 1974