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Taking his own turn

During a break in his November 1970 recording sessions with Fast Cotton, Sonobeat producer Bill Josey Sr. recorded three songs written and performed by Fast Cotton keyboardist Tom Van Zandt, also formerly a member of Fast Cotton’s predecessor rock band, Austin’s Sweetarts. The sole purpose of Tom’s Sonobeat session was to create a demo tape of his original tunes to circulate to A&RArtist & Repertoire (A&R) executives at record labels recruit and manage a roster of artists, connecting them to new songs and overseeing their recording and promotional activities. executives at the major record labels. Bill Sr. annotated the “target” artists who he believed might be interested in each of Tom’s songs. The first untitled tune was aimed for The Carpenters, the second (also untitled) was for Sergio Mendez and Brazil 66, and the third, Locust Summer Day (Tom renamed the song in 2018 by dropping On a from the title that appears on the master tape box), for Bobby Gentry, famous for her disturbingly matter-of-fact story-song Ode to Billie Joe. If you recall Ode to Billie Joe, and listen to our sound bite below, you’ll understand Bill’s choice of Bobby Gentry for the moody Southern-style Locust Summer Day. There is no indication in the Sonobeat archives whether and to whom he may have submitted Tom’s songs at the national labels and none were ever covered.

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Tom played electric piano and sang on all three songs. Locust Summer Day also featured Tom on guitar. The minimalist instrumentation made Tom’s songs all the more interesting as there was nothing to distract from the melody and message of each.

Bill’s session notes were taped to the back of a box he’d previously used for Fast Cotton session masters, but that’s not so odd since Tom’s session occurred during a break between Fast Cotton sessions. The only mix-downs from Tom’s original 4-track session master in the Sonobeat archives are monaural, so for Sonobeat’s 50th anniversary in 2017 we made new stereo mixes using the guidance Bill left us in his session notes.

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None of Tom’s Sonobeat recordings have been released; however, in collaboration with cutting edge TV production company Butcher Bird Studios, Sonobeat singles by Austin ’60s bands Lavender Hill Express, Plymouth Rock, and Sweetarts and one of Tom’s unreleased Sonobeat recordings were featured in Butcher Bird’s 2018 8-episode live streaming sci-fi series Orbital Redux. Much like the music in the Guardians of the Galaxy films, each of the Sonobeat songs in Orbital Redux has special meaning to the series protagonist. Tom’s song Locust Summer Day was chosen to appear in the first episode of the series.

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