Artists

It's a November evening in 1970 at Sonobeat's Western Hills Drive studio in northwest Austin. During a break in his November recording sessions with Fast Cotton, Sonobeat producer Bill Josey Sr. records 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 sessions is to create a demo tape of his original tunes to circulate to A&RArtist & Repertoire exeutives at record labels build and manage a roster of artists, connecting them to new songs and overseeing their recording activities. executives at the major record labels. Bill Sr. annotates the "target" artists who he believes may be interested in each of Tom's songs: the first untitled tune is aimed for The Carpenters, the second (also untitled) is for Sergio Mendez and Brazil 66, and the third, Locust Summer Day (Tom renames the song in 2018 by dropping the 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.

Tom plays electric piano and provides vocals on all three songs. Locust Summer Day also features Tom on guitar. The minimalist instrumentation make Tom's songs all the more interesting as there's nothing to distract from the melody and message of each.

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