A supergroup is born

Nearing the end of 1967, Austin, Texas-based Sonobeat Recording Company had enjoyed moderate success with its first three stereo 45 RPM singles, all released within the first few months of its operation: the Sweetarts’ rock single A Picture of Me, Lee Arlano Trio’s jazz instrumental There Will Never Be Another You, and Don Dean’s pop vocal Night Life. 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. were on the lookout for another hot Austin rock band to record. The previous year, in 1966, two of Austin’s most popular club bands, The Wig and the Baby Cakes, had disbanded, and some of their former members had merged to form a new entity. During one of the new band’s initial practice sessions, keyboardist Johnny Schwertner saw a television commercial for the classic gangster movie The Lavender Hill Mob. Inspired by the name, he suggested replacing “Mob” with “Express” to create a more contemporary name. The band members unanimously adopted the name, and Lavender Hill Express officially was born (the band was unrelated to the Clefs of Lavender Hill, a Miami, Florida, band that formed in 1966 and disbanded in 1968).

On evenings and weekends, Bill Sr. and Rim scoured Austin’s thriving music scene, catching Lavender Hill Express a few times in summer and fall 1967 at the Jade Room, a popular downtown Austin nightclub. Sonobeat’s friend Mike Lucas, who was then an afternoon deejay at KNOW, Austin’s top rock ’n’ roll radio station, managed the band and made introductions. By November ’67, Lavender Hill Express had embarked on a one-year recording relationship with Sonobeat Records. The band was one of the best the Joseys had heard, and as a bonus, its material was original, making it an ideal choice to record new songs that also would feed Sonobeat’s publishing company, Sonosong Music.

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The band has Visions

The first of Lavender Hill Express’ Sonobeat releases was guitarist Layton DePenning’s up-tempo Visions, a pop-rock tour-de-force with a catchy hook and strong vocal harmonies. The flip side was keyboardist Johnny Schwertner’s ballad Trying to Live a Life, on which Johnny also provided lead vocal. In ’67, Sonobeat had no recording studio facilities, so it rented nightclubs during their off hours and carted in its portable gear for recording sessions. Only months before, Sonobeat recorded its first single, by the Sweetarts, using the large dance floor at Swingers Club in north Austin as a mobile recording studio. Sonobeat returned there for Lavender Hill Express’ first session. The resulting instrumental backing tracks were solid, but producer Rim Kelley thought a string arrangement would add a contemporary sound, a trend popularized by The Beatles, Mamas and Papas, and Motown artists. Sonobeat hired local arranger-conductor Richard Green, who contracted a string quartet – two violins, a viola, and a cello – composed of members of the Austin Symphony Orchestra for an overdub session. Green also played harpsichord alongside the string quartet. The string and harpsichord overdub session, held at the KAZZ-FM studios in downtown Austin, were scheduled for November 25, 1967, giving Richard about a month to pencil out arrangements for both tunes. The vocal overdubs were recorded a day after the strings were recorded, also at the KAZZ studios, and on December 6th Bill Sr. drove the final mixes to Houston, Texas, for mastering and pressing by Houston Records, Inc. Lavender Hill Express’ first single barely made it out in ’67, hitting Austin record stores only days before Christmas. It sold well enough to justify a second pressing in February ’68, at which time the band made a promotional appearance at a record-signing event at G.C. Murphy, one of Austin’s leading discount record retailers in the ’60s. Collectors easily can tell whether they have a copy from the first pressing or the second pressing: the first pressing used Sonobeat’s yellow label background and the second marked the first appearance of Sonobeat’s blue label background. The February 3, 1968, edition of Cash Box named Visions a Best Bet.

Lavender Hill Express immediately benefitted from airplay that Visions received on Central Texas radio stations. Layton DePenning recalls that the release of the single legitimized the band, providing opportunities to open for the Beach Boys, Lovin’ Spoonful, Animals, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Buffalo Springfield, and almost every other national act that came through Austin in the months following the single’s release.

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Please Watch Out!

When it came time to record Lavender Hill’s second single, Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Sr. took the producing reigns, holding sessions with the band in mid-March 1968. Bill Sr. selected the hard driving Watch Out! by drummer Rusty Wier as the “A” side and lead guitarist Leonard Arnold’s Country Music’s Here to Stay as the “B” side. Guest musician Jim Brown was brought in to play steel guitar on Country Music’s Here to Stay, foreshadowing Austin’s progressive country movement that began in the early ’70s and in which four members of Lavender Hill Express, including Leonard, figured prominently.

The basic tracks for Watch Out! and Country Music’s Here to Stay were recorded at Austin’s hottest music venue, The Vulcan Gas CompanyThe Vulcan was Austin’s first successful hippie music hall, opening in 1967 in an old warehouse at 316 Congress Avenue and closing in 1970. Its better known successor was Armadillo World Headquarters. in downtown Austin. The sessions were recorded during off-hours in the Vulcan’s empty auditorium-sized dance hall. The reverb on Rusty Wier’s rim shot, used as punctuation in the chorus of Watch Out!, was created by placing a mike at the far end of the hall; the mike was turned on just as Rusty hit his snare to capture the Vulcan’s booming acoustics. With he Vulcan sessions completed, back at Sonobeat’s home-based Northeast Drive studio in Austin, engineer Rim Kelley flangedFlanging is a sweeping audio frequency comb filter created by playing two identical tapes on synchronized tape decks and recording the combined output onto another tape deck while lightly and alternately dragging a thumb on the outer flange of each tape reel during playback; the resulting slight frequency offsets create a swooshing sound. Modern digital audio workstations create a similar effect with the turn of a knob. the instrumental track for Watch Out! before the lead guitar and vocals were overdubbed. Although the basic instrumental track was flanged throughout, the effect is timed to create a particularly dramatic swoosh on the snare reverb. Rim recalls that the inspiration for adding the flanging effect was The Small Face’s 1967 hit Itchycoo Park, itself heavily flanged between verses. Sonobeat’s second Lavender Hill Express single was released regionally in June ’68 and garnered a Cash Box magazine Newcomer Pick review.

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Look Outside My Window

The third and final Lavender Hill Express single, recorded in September 1968 and released the following month, was Outside My Window, Layton DePenning’s experimental tune with highly visual lyrics and a jam-like progression. Sonobeat returned to The Vulcan Gas Company to record the instrumental backing track, and additional instruments and vocals were overdubbed at Sonobeat’s home-based Western Hills Drive studio. Outside My Window ran seven and a half minutes but was faded at 3:45 for the single. The flip side was Rusty Wier’s acoustic guitar and electric bass ballad Silly Rhymes, recorded entirely at the Western Hills Drive studio and one of the first sessions in which Sonobeat used its new Scully half-inch 4-track tape deck. Rim, who produced the first Lavender Hill Express single that featured a string quartet overdub, wanted to bring arranger Richard Green back to add a string section to Silly Rhymes, but Sonobeat’s heavy 1968 recording and release schedule, which stretched its resources to the limit, made the strings an unaffordable luxury. Meanwhile, Outside My Window became the only Sonobeat single released in two versions; the alternate version – distributed only to radio station deejays – offered the commercial stereo mix for FM stations on one side and a special monaural mix for AM stations on the other. The stereo/mono version of Outside My Window was’t sold to the public. The single picked up a Best Bet review from Cash Box magazine.

An additional song with the working title Trouble, written and with lead vocal by Rusty Wier, also was recorded alongside Outside My Window at The Vulcan and originally was intended as the “A” side of the band’s third single, with Outside My Window serving as the “B” side. Silly Rhymes was intended as the first of additional tunes that would round out a 10- to 12-track album, but when Bill Sr. and Rim heard the final mix of Silly Rhymes, the song selectino for the third single immediately changed. The planned Lavender Hill Express album was prematurely reported in the October 25, 1968, issue of The Armored Sentinel, the official newspaper of Fort Hood Army base in Temple, Texas, about 70 miles north of Austin. The paper reported “Austin rock group Lavender Hill Express is putting the finishing touches on their new album which they’re hoping to have released before the new year. They are much in demand in Texas for personal appearances and the album could be their springboard to national recognition”. But the additional tracks were never recorded and the album never finished for financial reasons, and Trouble was shelved.

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Wrapping ’em up

Visions was packaged in a single-sided black and white picture sleeve, but Bill Sr. pulled out all the stops for Watch Out!, which was released in a double-sided, two-color picture sleeve so that record retailers could rack the single in both the rock and the country sections, depending on which side of the sleeve faced out. Rim designed the sleeves for both singles using photos supplied by the band. However, by the time Outside My Window was released, Lavender Hill Express was well established, so the single was packaged only in a generic paper sleeve.

Lavender Hill Express holds the record for the most singles – three – that Sonobeat released by the same artist.

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Digital reissues and a vinyl experiment

In June 2014, Sonobeat Historical Archives began restoration and remastering of Lavender Hill Express’ material, initially by making high resolution 88.2kHz/24bit digital transfers from Sonobeat’s original analog session master tapes and then by using digital audio workstations to remove distortion, restore dynamic range and fidelity, and rebalance the mixes. We reissued the band’s Sonobeat catalog as an EP entitled Visions via the iTunes and Amazon Music stores on July 22, 2014, adding the long-shelved Trouble as a bonus track, fulfilling The Armored Sentinel’s prophecy of an impending album, albeit 46 years later. The surviving members of the band supported the digital reissue with a reunion performance at The Saxon Pub in Austin (Rusty Wier’s son Bon took his late dad’s seat at the drums and on vocals) on July 26, 2014. As a bonus, the Sweetarts reunion lineup made a special guest appearance with Lavender Hill Express at The Saxon to celebrate both bands’ 2014 digital reissues.

In 2017, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Sonobeat’s vinyl release of Visions with a sparkling new remastered digital edition, available on Apple Music and iTunes in an Apple Digital Master version, on Amazon Music, and on more than a dozen other music download and streaming services around the world.

Watch Out!, released by Sonobeat on vinyl in June 1968, celebrated its 50th anniversary in June 2018 with a freshly-remastered edition, available on digital download and streaming platforms around the world and in a spectacular Apple Digital Master version on Apple Music and iTunes.

The 50th anniversary digital editions of both Visions and Watch Out! were remastered for Sonobeat Historical Archives by Colin Leonard at SING Mastering in Atlanta, Georgia, using our high resolution 88.2kHz/24bit transfers from the original analog master tapes. Colin”s impressive mastering credits include albums and singles by Alessia Cara, Justin Bieber, Bruno Mars, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Icona Pop, Mastodon, Indigo Girls, Gucci Mane, Lil Baby, Cardi B, and dozens more hitmakers.

Visions’ flip side, Trying to Live a Life, was remastered for its 50th anniversary by Sonobeat Historical Archives’ in-house team.

In April 2023, Sonobeat Historical Archives embarked on an experiment with partner Wonderfulsounds in the U.K., authorizing a limited edition vinyl press-run of Lavender Hill Express’ Silly Rhymes, available only to members of Wondefulsounds’ Singles Club. Wonderfulsounds’ 7" reissue spotlighted for a brand new audience of discerning audiophiles Rusty Wier’s acoustic ballad, originally released by Sonobeat in 1968 as the “B” side of Outside My Window.

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And their stories go on...

Lavender Hill Express is considered Sonobeat’s first super group, and all of the band’s singles were big hits by Sonobeat standards. It’s no wonder. The band was composed of some of Austin’s most talented and formidable rock musicians: Layton DePenning and Leonard Arnold had been founding members of the Baby Cakes. Rusty Wier and Jess Yaryan were founding members of The Wig, perhaps Austin’s hottest band in the mid-’60s. Johnny Schwertner had been in The Reasons Why, a popular Central Texas band based in Temple, 75 miles north of Austin.

Just before the band recorded its third Sonobeat single, Johnny left Lavender Hill Express to co-found Plymouth Rock that recorded a single with Sonobeat in 1969. Gary P. Nunn, who joined Lavender Hill Express as Johnny Schwertner’s replacement on keyboards in time for the Outside My Window and Trouble sessions, later became a significant figure in Austin’s cosmic country movement as a founding member of Jerry Jeff Walker’s Lost Gonzo Band. From 1977 to 2004, Gary’s song London Homesick Blues was the opening theme for Austin City Limits, at 50 seasons the longest running music series in U.S. television history. Gary was inducted into the Austin Music Awards Hall of Fame in 2001. Post-Lavender Hill Express, Jess Yaryan switched from music to management, taking the reigns at Austin’s Saxon Pub, and ex-Plymouth Rock guitarist John Inmon joined Rusty and Layton to form the trio Rusty, Layton & John. Rusty, Immediately followilng Lavender Hill Express, Layton and Gary co-founded Genesee. Later Layton, John, and Leonard Arnold went on to become influential musicians in Austin’s progressive country movement in the mid-’70s. Rusty enjoyed a successful solo career based in Austin, with many albums to his credit and a hit tune of his own, Don’t It Make You Want to Dance (Bonnie Raitt’s 1980 cover, featured in the Urban Cowboy motion picture soundtrack, hit #1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart). Inducted into the Austin Music Awards Hall of Fame in 2001, Rusty succumbed to cancer on October 9, 2009. Leonard Arnold co-founded Austin progressive rock band Phoenix, later performed in Austin country-rock band Blue Steel, and eventually moved to Nashville, where he performed with Vince Gill and dozens of other country greats. Leonard succumbed to cancer in September 2015. Layton DePenning returned to Sonobeat in 1971 as a founding member of Genesee and later did a stint with progressive country star B. W. Stevenson (of My Maria fame). Layton is a member of present day Austin country-rock band Denim and operates a recording studio just south of Austin in Buda, Texas.

A super group in every way, the collective talents of the band’s members as songwriters, singers, and musicians are self-evident in its Sonobeat legacy and in the remarkable musical careers each enjoyed in the years following.

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