Larry Boyd & Group

	Larry Boyd & Group work tape box (left) and master tape box (right)

In February 1976, Sonobeat owner/producer Bill Josey Sr. recorded country-rock artist Larry Boyd & Group (who performed as Coldspring) at Sonobeat's "Blue Hole Sounds" studio -- a converted AME stone church -- outside Liberty Hill, Texas. The only Boyd & Group tapes in the Sonobeat archives contain various takes of Sally G and indicate the song was cut specifically as a demo, "to render an opinion" about Larry and his group. Larry recorded one other song, Back Home Again, in the same Sonobeat sessions. The Sonobeat archives don't indicate to whom Bill circulated the demo, but if he followed his standard pattern, he would have sent the demo to A&R executives at several national record labels. Perhaps there was no interest from potential national labels, but regardless the reason, there appear to have been no further sessions with Larry & Group.

Bill Josey Sr.'s session notes

Bill habitually kept handwritten session notes, identifying the participating musicians, song composers, and, occasionally, diagramming the stereo position of each instrument in the basic recordings. He often included notes to himself to aid in overdubs and mix-downs.

26-year-old Larry Boyd at Blue Hole Sounds studio

Almost all of Bill's session notes have been lost or destroyed, but in a rare discovery, his notes for Larry Boyd's session and a candid snapshot of Larry in the Blue Hole Sounds studio survive, both found with the master tape of a good tune (written by Beatle Paul McCartney) and good performance that has never been publicly available before.

Musicians on the session were Eddie Fariss (drums), Rick Smith (bass), Bob Spalding (guitar), and Larry Boyd (electric and acoustic guitars). Larry overdubbed both lead vocal and harmony vocals a week after the instrumental tracks were laid down.

After Bill Sr.'s death in September '76, Larry's group rented the church that had been the Blue Hole Sounds studio from the AME congregation that owned it, using it for rehearsals and equipment storage between gigs.

White Light

White Light dub tape box

Early in 1976, Sonobeat recorded progressive band White Light at Bill Josey's "Blue Hole Sounds" studio outside Liberty Hill, Texas. White Light, originally formed in Louisiana, consisted of Michael Hobren (lead, acoustic, and slide guitars; vocals) and brothers Robert Haeuser (bass; synths) and Russell Haeuser (drums and congas; flute). Michael Hobren recalls a sequence of serendipitous events: White Light had relocated from New Orleans to Austin in September '74, hoping to capitalize on Austin's burgeoning music scene.

After "terrorizing" their neighbors with their "bombastic electrified" practice sessions for more than a year, the group moved into a mobile home down the road from "Blue Hole Sounds" studio, on the outskirts of Liberty Hill (a rural community about 35 miles north of Austin), where there were no nearby neighbors. Driving past the Blue Hole Sounds studio sign one day, Michael, Robert, and Russell finally decided to stop in to introduce themselves, and Sonobeat owner Bill Josey Sr. eventually invited them to work on an album with him. The resulting sessions -- produced over an intensive period during February through March '76 and in which Josey encouraged uninhibited experimentation -- yielded eight completed tracks that Josey and the group sequenced into an untitled album.

Josey submitted White Light's album to several national labels including United Artists and A&M, but eventually all passed, considering the material too esoteric. However, even as Josey's battle with cancer intensified, UA, following a management change, surprisingly renewed its interest in the album, so Josey resubmitted it in April '76. In the meantime, White Light began playing gigs at the popular Castle Creek Club on Lavaca and 15th Street, a block northwest of the state Capitol grounds in downtown Austin. Later the trio became the de facto house band at the landmark Liberty Lunch club, which was located in downtown Austin, just north of Town Lake.

White Light on stage at Castle Creek Club in Austin

White Light's music was purely experimental jazz-rock fusion, inspired in part by British-based Yes, which had several successful albums beginning in 1972. White Light's album is intricate and engaging and features several long, evolving songs using unusual instrumentation, including Russell on glockenspiel. Many songs are improvisational and some include vocals, often "played" like an instrument. Occasionally a song digresses into a pure free-form jam, strengthening its moments of true inspiration and evident craftsmanship.

White Light demonstrated that the Austin music scene in the mid-'70s was still diverse and dynamic even in the face of the "outlaw" country movement that had a firm grip on Central Texas live music venues. Eventually, frustrated by the major labels' rejection of their album, the stranglehold progressive country had taken on most of Austin's live music venues, and producer Bill Josey's death in September '76 (leaving the status of United Artists' renewed interest in the album in limbo), White Light disbanded. It's truly disappointing that Sonobeat never had an opportunity to release White Light's quite original album that, in retrospect, was considerably ahead of its time.

 Helmer Dahl

Helmer Dahl dub tape box

Helmer Dahl appears to have been the last act to record for Bill Josey Sr. at his "Blue Hole Sounds" studio outside Liberty Hill, Texas. The sessions were conducted over April 11-13, 1976, but Bill's session notes indicate the April 13th session was not originally planned. There are no later master tapes in the Sonobeat archives, and only a month after the Helmer Dahl sessions, Bill Sr. became too ill to continue to operate the studios.

A rare artifact from the Sonobeat archives: producer Bill Josey's Helmer Dahl session notes

Just who was Helmer Dahl? One famous Helmer Dahl is credited as the "father" of Norway's modern electronics industry during the period immediately following World War II. Although we're not certain, the Helmer Dahl who recorded with Bill Josey may have been a Central Texas musician of Swedish ancestry who lived in Hutto, Texas, a small town about 15 miles west northwest of Sonobeat's Liberty Hill studios. Dahl offered up a combination of pop standards, like Release Me, and traditional northern European folk songs like Beer Barrel Polka, performed on an electric organ to a "modern" but simple '70s beat and featuring what sounds a lot like the then-new Arp synthesizer for beats and bass.

Bill Josey's sessions notes are detailed enough to conclude that he was trying to build a final Sonobeat album. He even brought Dahl back for an impromptu third session, on April 13, 1976, to record two additional songs, 5' 2" and Cotton-Eyed Joe, in order to bring the total running time of the potential album closer to the 40 minute vinyl standard. We believe Cotton-Eyed Joe was the final recording made by Bill Sr. and Sonobeat.

By the end of April '76, Josey's financial resources were almost depleted because of his battle with cancer, so he was unable to do more than circulate demo cassettes of the album to some of his contacts at national record labels. There are no documents in the Sonobeat archives to indicate whether Bill received responses to the demo cassettes before entering the Veterans Hospital in Temple, Texas, a month later. Bill Sr. died in September '76, the Helmer Dahl sessions his final contribution to the Central Texas music scene.

Next: unknown session dates