White Light
Wildly experimental
progressive rock.
New Orleans quintet to Austin trio
Mid-December 1975. Sonobeat producer Bill Josey Sr. began recording sessions with White Light at Sonobeat’s Blue Hole Sounds studio on the outskirts of Liberty Hill, Texas. White Light, a progressive rock band founded in New Orleans, Louisiana, as a traditional rock quintet, had just relocated to Central Texas and reformed as a trio. The original White Light began in 1966 as a high school garage band but fell apart in ’69 as its members went off in different directions. Band co-founder Robert Haeuser joined the Air Force and in 1973 was transferred to Austin’s Bergstrom Air Force BaseBergstrom Air Force Base, part of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, was decommissioned by the U.S. government in 1993, the land sold to the City of Austin, and in 1997 reopened as Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.. By ’74, Rob had finished his Air Force tour of duty, was groovin’ on Austin’s eclectic music scene, and was anxious to put White Light back together. But only Michael Hobren from the original band was available, so Robert enlisted his brother, Russell, better known as Rusty, a drummer (who wasn’t in White Light’s New Orleans lineup), to round out the unit. Thus, White Light shined again.
Sonobeat Artists
White Light
A serendipitous meeting
Having officially joined the band while still living in New Orleans, in September 1974 Mike Hobren and Rusty Haeuser drove to Austin with their instruments and amps in tow, where they and Rob moved into a ramshackle house. Mike recalled a sequence of serendipitous events: after “terrorizing” their Austin neighbors with their “bombastic electrified” practice sessions for more than a year, the group took up the rural life, moving into an isolated mobile home some 30 miles north of Austin, where they had no nearby neighbors to disturb. Their new digs were just down the road from Sonobeat’s Blue Hole Sounds studio on the outskirts of Liberty Hill (a rural community nestled in the idyllic Texas Hill CountryThe Texas ”Hill Country” is that portion of Central Texas sitting on the Edwards Plateau and featuring beautiful rolling hills and grasslands. The 31,000 square mile region is considered the geographic border between the American Southeast and Southwest.). In mid-1973, Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Sr. had moved the Sonobeat studios from downtown Austin into an old stone A.M.E. church, spending months retrofitting it into a warm and comfortable countrified recording studio. Mike, Rob, and Rusty frequently drove past the Blue Hole Sounds sign on Baghdad Road, leading into Liberty Hill, and one day finally decided to check out the studio. Bill gave the boys a tour of the grounds, and within a few weeks the band decided to spend $50 to record three original songs at the studio. Bill was only interested in bands with original material for potential release on the Sonobeat label, was impressed with the songs he heard in that first White Light session, and invited the trio to work with him in the studio, this time to create an album at Sonobeat’s expense.
It was a bitter winter outside, but inside that old stone church/recording studio there was always a warm magic when we were recording.”
courtesy Mike Hobren
courtesy Mike Hobren
courtesy Mike Hobren
White Light
- Robert (Rob) Haeuser (bass and synthesizers)
- Russell (Rusty) Haeuser (drums, congas, and flute)
- Michael (Mike) Hobren (lead and acoustic guitars, slide guitar, and vocals)
The White Light album that was, but wasn’t
The Sonobeat sessions, recorded over many intensive weeks between mid-December 1975 and February 1976 and in which Bill encouraged uninhibited experimentation, yielded eight completed original tracks that Bill and the group sequenced into an untitled album. Bill also made an unusual deal with the band, one in which he provided free studio time, shopped the resulting demo album to his major label contacts and, if the album sold, would produce and engineer a more polished version for release; but, departing from his custom and practice, he agreed to let the band itself make a direct deal with the major label, with Bill taking only a producer fee and credit.
Bill submitted White Light’s demo album to United Artists, Columbia, and Arista, where he had long-established contacts, but all passed, considering the material too esoteric. As all this was unfolding, Bill’s battle with cancer, diagnosed in 1975 and which he hadn’t revealed to the band, was taking a progressively harsher physical toll on him (and which may have been the motivation for his unusual deal with the band). Surprisingly, just a few weeks after passing on the masters, United Artists went through a management shakeup, and its new management asked to reconsider the album. Bill resubmitted it in April ’76, but then months passed with no decision. In the meantime, White Light began playing gigs at the landmark Liberty Lunch club in downtown Austin, just north of Lady Bird Lake. Soon thereafter, the trio started playing gigs at the popular Castle Creek Club on Lavaca and 15th Street, a block northwest of the Texas State Capitol in downtown Austin. But within only months, frustrated by the big record companies’ rejection of their album, progressive country’s aggressive encroachment into Austin’s live music venues, and Bill’s death in September ’76 (leaving the status of United Artists’ interest in the album in limbo), White Light disbands..
Because White Light viewed itself as a three-man orchestra and used so many instruments and special effects, we overdubbed extensively on the album. Electric and acoustic guitars were recorded using offsetting counterpoint techniques, and percussion instruments were overdubbed repeatedly until [producer] Bill [Josey Sr.] ... began saying, ’Acceptable.’ It’s amazing the power that a single word can have.”
White Light’s music was purely an experimental form of progressive rock crossed with jazz-rock fusion, inspired in part by British bands Yes and Genesis. White Light’s album was intricate and engaging, featuring several long, evolving songs using unusual instrumentation, including Rusty on glockenspiel. Many songs were improvisational and some included vocals that were often “played’ like an instrument. Occasionally a song digressed into a pure free-form jam, strengthening its moments of true inspiration and evident originality and craftsmanship. White Light demonstrated that the Austin music scene in the mid-’70s was still diverse and dynamic even in the face of the progressive (or “outlaw”) country movement that had taken a firm grip on Central Texas. White Light’s album remains an inventive and energetic musical legacy that was considerably ahead of its time.
Rusty succumbed to cancer on October 17, 2015.
Untitled, unreleased album
Recording details
Unreleased album
All songs composed by White Light
Side 1:
- Fields
- Mere Drop in the Pool
- Solar Offering
- Oceans
- Spirits on the Wing
Side 2:
- Pacemaker
- Song for Leo
- Stargazer
Produced and engineered by Bill Josey Sr.
Recorded at Sonobeat’s Blue Hole Sounds studio, Liberty Hill, Texas, on December 13, 1975, January 10, 1976, February 21, 1976, February 26, 1976, and various dates in March 1976
Recorded using...
- AKG D707E dynamic, ElectroVoice 665 dynamic, ElectroVoice Slimair 636 dynamic, and Sony ECM-22 electret condenser microphones
- Dokorder 7140 quarter-inch 4-track and Ampex 2100 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
- TDK L-1800 and Scotch 207 tape stock
Listen!
Our thanks to White Light co-founders Mike Hobren and Rusty Haeuser for providing details of the band’s background and lots of great band photos.