Artists

New Atlantis (first incarnation)

It's 1968. Austin, Texas-based Sonobeat is recording rock band New Atlantis. It's romantic to imagine the band names itself after Sir Francis Bacon's classic 1627 utopian tale, but more likely the name is inspired by a "New Atlantis Exhibit" on display at The University of Texas in Austin, the band's home town. The 1966 University of Texas exhibit showcases letters, clippings, and ephemera from the Leicester Hemingway collection documenting the tiny and short-lived island republic off the coast of Jamaica that Leicester (Ernest Hemingway's brother) founds on July 4, 1964. Whatever the inspiration, New Atlantis (which, in its first incarnation, sometimes is known as New Atlantis Hard Rock Band) is one of the most progressive and impressive bands on the Austin scene in the late '60s. Indeed, its original members – Jim Mings (an Austin guitar legend), Mike Reid (piano and Hammond B3; he also contributes to Sonobeat's Base sessions), Jay Meade (drums; he, too, also contributes to Sonobeat's Base sessions), and Danny Galindo (bass; formerly of the 13th Floor Elevators, and, yes, still another contributor to Sonobeat's Base sessions) – are former members of some of the best Austin progressive rock bands of the era. They're so good in New Atlantis that the band takes first runner up honors in the 1968 Austin Aqua Festival Battle of the Bands (the Sweetarts, who record Sonobeat's first commercial release in 1967, take first place).

New Atlantis records half a dozen tracks for Sonobeat co-founders Bill Josey Sr. and Rim Kelley beginning in October 1968 at Vulcan Gas CompanyThe Vulcan is Austin's first successful hippie music hall, opening in 1967 in an old warehouse at 316 Congress Avenue and closing in 1970. in downtown Austin and continuing on and off into August 1969. The August '69 sessions are recorded at the First Cumberland Presbyterian Church's auditorium at 6800 Woodrow Avenue in northwest Austin, and vocal and guitar overdubs are recorded at Sonobeat's Western Hills Drive studio, also in northwest Austin. The resulting tracks are many notches above Sonobeat's previous recordings.

New Atlantis tracks its original song, The Shadow Knows, during the October 1968 sessions at the Vulcan, setting the stage for the band's spectacular cover of Fire, on which producer Rim Kelley uses his homemade, top secret "Sonotone Black Box" to anthropomorphize Jim's scorching lead guitar. Rim proposes to release a single, with one of New Atlantis' originals, either I Got The Feelin' or Song For Suzanne, as the "A" side and Fire as the "B" side, but the idea is abandoned for reasons not documented in the Sonobeat archives and no longer recalled. For our sound bites below and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Sonobeat's recording sessions with New Atlantis, we've remastered I Got The Feelin' and remixed and remastered Song For Suzanne. When we pull the original half-inch 4-track session masters in February 2018, we can't locate I Got The Feelin' but find clean 4-track versions of Song For Suzanne and Fire, and, oddly enough, the Sonotone Black Box effect on Fire is missing, leading us to conclude that the effect is added "live" during mix-down to the two-track stereo master.

New Atlantis (second incarnation)

A second incarnation of New Atlantis returns to record with Sonobeat in August 1969, shortly after taking second place in the '69 Austin Aqua Festival Battle of the Bands (Shepherds Bush takes first place). The new New Atlantis session lineup features holdovers Jay Meade and Danny Galindo along with new band members Donnie Erickson on lead guitar (Donnie is 13th Floor Elevators front man Roky Erickson's brother) and guitarist Bob Galindo (Danny Galindo's brother), who replace Jim Mings and Mike Reid, respectively.

This second round of New Atlantis sessions yields She's A Country Girl, which appears to be a loose adaptation of Little Willie John's 1955 blues single Home At Last (composed by Rudolph Toombs), and a cover of World In A Jug, the "B" side of Canned Heat's 1967 single Rollin' and Tumblin'. Bob Galindo recalls that New Atlantis II also records covers of If I Were A Carpenter and Red Balloon, both songs composed and originally recorded by Tim Hardin, but we haven't found either track in the Sonobeat archives.

It's a pity the New Atlantis recordings are never released because they're examples of a great band populated – not once, but twice – by some of Austin's most talented and imaginative musicians stretching creatively. We're pleased to present sound bites from power ballads Song For Suzanne (a/k/a I Know You So Well) and I Got The Feelin', the hard rocker Trouble In My Heart, and the slightly loose instrumental jam The Shadow Knows, all from the 1968 New Atlantis Sonobeat sessions. The first two songs are Jim Mings compositions, on which he also sings lead. In 2018, we remix Song For Suzanne from the original 4-track session tracking master and remaster I Got The Feelin' from the original 2-track stereo mix. We're not certain who composed or belts out Trouble In My Heart. We're disappointed to find the 1969 2-track stereo mix-down of New Atlantis II's upbeat version of She's A Country Girl a/k/a Home At Last, on which Donnie Erickson sings lead, has deteriorated to the point that it's no longer playable, so in 2008 we make a new stereo mix from the original half-inch 4-track session tracking master.

Jim Mings presently is a member of the Jazz Guitar Summit in Columbia, South Carolina. Jay Meade lives in Harlingen, Texas, where he owns an ad agency. Mike Reid still lives in Austin where he teaches in the Austin Independent School District. Danny Galindo suffers a fatal illness in 2001. Bob Galindo is a Project Manager with the Austin Community College. Donnie Erickson succumbs to cancer on May 26, 2018, and in tribute, we add a clip below from World In A Jug, on which Donnie plays lead guitar and sings lead vocal.