Singer-songwriter

Country-folk singer-songwriter Roy Headrick hails from Georgetown, Texas, 28 miles north of Austin, up Interstate 35. For years we believed Roy was the first composer to record a song demo album for Sonobeat’s publishing arm, Sonosong Music, but the last whose song demo album was actually pressed and distributed. But in February 2017, while making new high resolution cover scans of the master tape boxes in Sonobeat’s archives, we got a much closer look at the handwritten notes on one of Roy’s tape boxes and realized it says “November 28, 1969"” instead of “November 28, 1967”, as we’d previously believed. And, when we auditioned the tape, we got Roy’s verbal confirmation of the recording date. So, the elapsed time between recording Roy’s album and its release was far shorter than we had thought, although there’s still an unusual and unexplained two year gap. Roy’s album, titled Songs from the Catalog of Sonosong Music Company: Roy Headrick, Composer, featured 13 of his original compositions (Terry May, about whom there’s no information in the Sonobeat archives, was credited as co-writer of one song on the album), all sung by Roy self-accompanied on standard guitar. Roy’s material is primarily country-folk with one or two songs that could be considered Americana, and most are story-songs. All are heartfelt and feature clever lyrics. Later in his career, Roy turned exclusively to country music.

Sonobeat recorded Roy’s 1969 sessions at its home-based Western Hills Drive studio in northwest Austin. Sonobeat co-founders Bill Josey Sr. and Rim Kelley“Rim Kelley” was the pseudonym used by Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Jr. as a radio deejay in Austin, Texas, during the 1960s and as a Sonobeat producer from 1967 to 1970. engineered the sessions using Sonobeat’s Ampex AG-350 quarter-inch 2-track recorder. The recordings are simple and straightforward.

One of Roy Headrick’s master tape boxes

A second Roy Headrick master tape box

Roy Headrick’s Sonosong demo album label

Roy Headrick before a 2017 Georgetown, Texas, performance
Williamson County Sun

Sonobeat finally issued Roy’s album in 1971. Bill Sr. distributed copies from a limited run of 100 vinyl copies to Nashville country record labels, hoping that a song or two might be picked for a well-known artist to cover; however, there’s no indication in the Sonobeat archives that any national label or artist – country or otherwise – ever recorded any of Roy’s tunes. Like all of Sonobeat’s non-commercial demo album releases, Roy’s was issued in a plain white jacket with the album title rubber stamped in the center of the cover and wasn’t made available to the public. Despite using Sonobeat’s “Surrounding Sound Stereo” logo on the album label, the album was pressed only in a monaural version, as were all of Sonosong’s composer demo albums. Oddly, though, the master tapes in Sonobeat’s archives are stereo mixes.

Roy Headrick’s Sonosong demo album

While music was clearly Roy’s passion, in 1970 he began a 19 year career in the City of Austin’s planning department, retiring at the end of 1988. Today, in his mid-80s and still living in Georgetown, Roy continues to write and record new songs, still clever and heartfelt, and performs publicly from time to time. Many of Roy’s current recordings are available on SoundCloud and Apple Music and are easy to find by searching for “Roy Headrick”.