Rebooting in Liberty Hill, Texas

The relocation of Sonobeat’s studios from Austin, Texas, to nearby Liberty Hill in August 1973 essentially shut Sonobeat down for months. Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Sr. had leased an old A.M.E. stone church on the outskirts of Liberty Hill. The small A.M.E. congregation used the church only two Sundays a month and the building’s spacious floor with a high pitched ceiling worked together to make the old church a perfect recording studio. But the building required extensive retrofitting and upgrading – the installation of air conditioning, insulation, and rewiring – before Bill could begin using it for recording sessions. Entering 1974, Bill had held only a handful of “work-for-hire” recording sessions at his new studio and hadn’t had the time or resources to devote to development of acts for the Sonobeat label itself. He began 1974 with a remote recording session featuring a young band, the Country Nu-Notes, headed by Johnny Lyon. Johnny and his singing partner Janet Lynn recorded with Sonobeat in 1973, before Bill moved the studio to Liberty Hill, and he was anxious to record more with them. Bill hauled his recording gear to The Broken Spoke, a honky tonk dance hall on South Lamar in Austin, one of the city’s liveliest live country music venues.

The Nu-Notes played good ol’ traditional country music in stark contrast to the new progressive, “outlaw” country music movement that had been growing in Austin since 1971 and that was showing no signs of flagging. As a traditional Texas country band, the Nu-Notes were somewhat of an anomaly but nonetheless were a solid and talented group that Bill thought held promise. He recorded 29 songs with the band during a long Sunday session at The Broken Spoke, but ultimately nothing came of the recordings.

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Also in ’74, folk singer and songwriter Arma Harper began recording from time to time at the new studio that Bill had named Blue Hole Sounds, referencing Liberty Hill’s popular natural swimming on the south fork of the San Gabriel River. Bill liked Arma’s original material, a gentle pop and folk fusion, and put months of time and energy into planning and recording a dozen tracks with Arma for a potential album. Suddenly, it seemed good fortune was returning to Sonobeat and that the move to Liberty Hill and the time, effort, and resources he’d put into refurbishing the old church had been worth it.

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Although business at Blue Hole Sounds – primarily work-for-hire assignments – picked up in the second half of the year, Bill put out no releases on the Sonobeat label and sold nothing to any national label in 1974. He needed the custom work (for which he charged hourly studio rental and engineering fees) in order to cover overhead and living expenses and to recover from the cost of his 1973 studio move and subsequent retrofitting of the church building. The mostly barren 1974 would give way to a more interesting, if not more challenging, 1975, as Bill began to again develop artists for potential Sonobeat Records releases.