Tom Penick

Songwriter and musician Tom Penick assisted Bill Josey during recording sessions and helped solicit business for the "Blue Hole Sounds" studio that Bill built in 1973 in an old stone church outside Liberty Hill, Texas.

Tom traded his services -- setting up mikes and running cables, positioning sound baffles, and preparing the recording equipment for Bill's recording sessions -- for studio time to record his own compositions. This Old Cowboy, recorded in August 1975, was a demo -- much like Sonosong's Herman Nelson, Bill Wilson, and Roy Headrick demo albums -- intended to interest other artists in recording Tom's material. In the sound bite we present from the Sonobeat archives, Tom demonstrates the gentle country-folk approach he took in This Old Cowboy.

Nasty Habit

Nasty Habit work tape

Beginning in September 1975, Sonobeat owner/producer Bill Josey Sr. began working with Central Texas rockers Nasty Habit, formed by lead guitarist Stanley Gilbert, drummer and lead vocalist Gary Dry, and bass guitarist Jesse Sublett, classmates at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos. San Marcos is about 70 miles south of Liberty Hill, where Josey had set up Sonobeat's "Blue Hole Sounds" studios and where he recorded Nasty Habit's tracks. Josey planned to release a stereo 45 by the group -- Does Your Mother Know (written by Gilbert) backed with Listen (written by Gilbert and Dry) -- but the Sonobeat archives don't document the reason the single was never released. Gilbert recalls one or two additional songs, possibly including What About Me, also were recorded during the same sessions, but those tracks haven't been found in the Sonobeat archives.

Jesse Sublett was with Nasty Habit only a short time, although he performed on the Sonobeat sessions. Craig Toungate later joined the group as lead singer and may have re-recorded some of the vocal tracks in later sessions at Blue Hole Sound. The sound bites we present below feature Dry's lead vocals and Gilbert's harmonies.

Sublett went on to become a seminal influence in Austin's punk rock era as a founding member of the rock/blues band Jellyroll and the punk bands the Violators and the Skunks. Soon after the final Sonobeat sessions, Stanley Gilbert and band manager Bill Brinkley recast Nasty Habit as a hard rock trio, renaming the band "Truck" and performing throughout Texas. Truck played its last gigs at Austin's iconic Armadillo World Headquarters in 1980.

The Nasty Habit work tape box mentions that Apple Tree is at the head of the tape. Apple Tree not only isn't a Nasty Habit song but it's mislabelled on the tape box: in fact, it's a take of Tom Penick's This Old Cowboy (from which you can hear a sound bite above).

Austin Blues-Rockers

	The Austin Blues-Rockers' master tape boxes

The Austin Blues-Rockers was a rhythm and bluesey act cast from the same mold as many Motown "girl groups" of the late '60s and early '70s. In December 1975 and January 1976, Sonobeat owner/producer Bill Josey Sr. began working with the group, initially recording Rock House (or House-Rocker, as it's called in some December 1975 takes), Snatch It Back and Hold It, Chicken Shack, and It's Hard to Stop, at Sonobeat's "Blue Hole Sounds" studio outside Liberty Hill, Texas. It's Hard to Stop and one take of House-Rocker wer completed with vocal overdubs, but the other tracks were left as unfinished instrumental backings.

Bill Josey Sr.'s session notes

In March '76, the Blues-Rockers returned to Blue Hole Sounds to cut two excellent songs: Soulful Dress and Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around). These two later tracks appear to have been intended for release as a Sonobeat stereo single. But 1976 was a financially challenging year for Sonobeat, and if there was no other reason the Austin Blues-Rockers' intended single wasn't released, it surely would have been because Josey's ongoing battle with cancer was diverting most of his financial resources from record releases to chemotherapy treatments.

Notes from Josey's December 21, 1975, sessions with the Austin Blues-Rockers identify the band's personnel as Al Davies (bass), Derick O'Brien (guitar), Doke Ford (harp), David (whose last name isn't indicated; drums), and Frieda Borth (vocals), who in 1969 was a member of Austin group Contraband that also recorded with Sonobeat. Bill Sr.'s notes indicate that he was looking to assemble enough material by the group for an album; his notes indicate that It's Hard to Stop, Rock House, and Snatch It Back and Hold It together had a running time of 15 minues 35 seconds. During the '70s, typical albums had running times of 35-45 minutes.

We're pleased to present sound bites from two of the Austin Blues-Rocker's completed vocal tracks and from one instrumental.

Next: 1976