Sonobeat Artists
Adobie Flatz
Like a tumbleweed rolling past
We know very little about Adobie Flatz, a blues-rock band that recorded with Sonobeat co-founder and producer Bill Josey Sr. in January 1973. We do know the session or sessions occurred at Sonobeat’s studios in the KVET Building on North Lamar in Austin, Texas, and that there are tapes by the band in the Sonobeat archives that contain three songs: Trust (by Phil Livingston, who may have been a member of the band), Wrong Time, and an untitled blues tune. Based on our newspaper archives research, it’s highly likely the band was based in El Paso, Texas, and that its members likely attended the University of Texas at El Paso. From November 1972 through February 1974, the UT El Paso school newspaper, The Prospector, frequently listed playdates for a band called “Adobe Flatz”, without the “i” in the band name, so it seems equally likely that Bill Sr. misspelled the group’s name on the master tape box and that the band indeed was “Adobe” rather than “Adobie” Flatz. We have other confirmed instances in the Sonobeat archives of Bill misspelling band names (e.g., he misspelled the Sweetarts as “Sweet-Tarts” and Shiva’s Headband as “Sheva’s Head Band” on master tape boxes). And, continuing this line of speculation, we believe the band may have been named for the small town of Adobe Flats, Arizona, about 85 miles west of Phoenix, a bit over 500 miles west of El Paso, and directly on the I-10 route from El Paso to Los Angeles. Perhaps one of the band’s founding members was from Adobe Flats and attended UT El Paso. That said, our band name origin theory is a wild although somewhat educated guess.
Instrumentation on the Adobie Flatz tracks was drums, bass, rhythm guitar, and lead guitar, and lead vocals were enhanced with harmony parts. The recordings were mixed down from a 4-track session master recorded on Sonobeat’s Scully 240 half-inch machine to a monaural demo tape. In 2008, we mixed a new stereo version of Trust using the 4-track session master, a snippet of which we present below along with Bill’s original mono mix of Wrong Time. There’s nothing more in the Sonobeat archives to help us identify the group’s members, how the band came to Bill’s attention, and where it may have performed in the Austin area. We’d love to know more about Adobie (or, more likely, Adobe) Flatz.
Recording details
Unreleased recordings
- Trust (Phil Livingston)
- Wrong Time (composer unknown)
- Unidentified blues song
Produced and engineered by Bill Josey Sr.
Recorded at Sonobeat Studios, 705 North Lamar, Austin, Texas, in January 1973
Recorded using...
- ElectroVoice 665 dynamic, ElectroVoice Slimair 636 dynamic, and Sony ECM-22 electret condenser microphones
- Scully 280 half-inch 4-track and Ampex AG-350 quarter-inch 2-track tape decks
- Custom 16-channel 4-bus mixing console
- Fairchild Lumiten 663ST stereo optical compressor
- Blonder-Tongue Audio Baton 9-band graphic equalizer
- Custom steel plate stereo reverb
- Ampex 681 tape stock
