The Lost Gonzo Band
Palomino Club
North Hollywood, California
May 15, 1977



01. The Last Thing I Needed, The First Thing This Morning
02. (On The Silver Tracks?) (It's Gonna Bring Us Back?) unknown song title
03. Railroad Man
04. Fool For A Tender Touch includes band introductions
05. Linda Lou
06. Loose and On My Way (tape paused)
07. London Homesick Blues (Home With The Armadillo) (missing the start and the tape runs out! end of song cuts off! Murphy's Law in effect)
08. Instrumental (unknown title) (beginning of song lost to tape flip)
09. The Nights Never Get Lonely
10. That's Why I'm Satisfied
11. Relief
12. Honky Tonk Man
13. Take Me Back To Tulsa
[61:03]


this is what I got for the band members
Gary Nunn - vocals
Bobby Nunn - vocals
Kelly Dunn - Organ
John Inmon - lead guitar
Billy Dub -
Michael Holloman - drums
Bobby Smith - bass
Robert (Bob) Livingston -

band member and song title corrections/additions welcomed


Recorded by Allen Tarzwell

Source:
Sony Microphone > Sony TC-50 > using 1 TDK Audua C60 recorded from leader to leader
(Mono Handheld Auto-Level Portable Cassette Deck with External Microphone)


Transfer: (2011)
Nakamichi CR-7A (azimuth aligned to tape, no Dolby, Bias @ 120us) > Audigy 4 pro @ 24-44

Mastering: (2015)
Adobe Audition 3.0 and iZotope RX4A (prep) > CD Wav > AudioGate (convert to 16-44) > Flac (Level 8)
Song information embedded with Stamp ID3 tag editor


Nice of Allen to loan me his old tapes to share with you.
Some copies of Allen's recordings do exist out there.
This is the first time that the master has been digitized.
Not the best sounding recordings, but very decent and these are from the master cassettes.

For historical reference only and not intended for resale or any commercial use.

enjoy
-M- (July 2015)
Flying M Productions


Fan Recordings for Collectors
Trade Freely But Please Do Not Sell


---


A Brief History by Bob Livingston


As I remember things... THE LOST GONZO BAND got its name in early 1972 on the way to a Jerry Jeff gig at a club in Austin called Castle Creek.
It was cold outside, but Austin was jumping with new adventures and we were in the thick of it.
I was riding in the back of a black Checker cab with Michael McGeary, Herb Steiner and Craig Hillis.
Gary Nunn was at the wheel.
Gary had bought this fine ride from a guy that had driven it down from New York and he had painted it jet black.
It had a big back seat with lots of space that could hold a lot of musicians and equipment.
It was a cosmic limo and we went everywhere in it.

(Note: I know exactly what kind of car it was and how it rode and how much space there was because a couple of years later, I borrowed that black Checker from Gary to bring my wife, Iris, and new son, Tucker Boots, home from the hospital.)

We were all bumping along in Gary's Checker with our guitars and amps piled on top of us.
Gary was driving erratically for all sorts of reasons.
Hillis was trying out an Eric Clapton riff he planned to insert that night in "Pot Can't Call the Kettle Black."
Cowboy Herb was holding court on stocks and bonds and McGeary was going on about his latest..uh...conquest.
Only I was deep in higher thought...


We were playing with both Jerry Jeff & Michael Murphey - sometimes simultaneously!
Gary and I had played on Murphey's album, Geronimo's Cadillac and on Jerry Jeff's first MCA album, Jerry Jeff.
Gary, Hillis, Herb, McGeary and I had played on Murphey's Cosmic Cowboy Souvenir in Nashville.
When we played gigs with Murphey, we were called the 'Cosmic Cowboy Orchestra'.
But with Jerry Jeff, we were a band without a name, no identity. It was spooky.
So we had to come up with a different name every night.
"The Unborn Calves" & "The Rodeo-dee Riff Raff" are two fine examples of our genius.
Jerry Jeff was a part of these games, but he gave us a lot of leeway and mostly left it up to us.


(Another note: Searching for a band name is always an unique endeavor and you never know where it will lead. In 1969, I was in Breckenridge, Colorado playing in a band with Ray Wylie Hubbard, Rick Fowler and Michael McGeary. We needed a name for the band and were tired of looking at random words in National Geographic, so we wrote down words on pieces of paper and put 'em in two hats. We each wrote down 20 words, they were supposed to be additives and nouns but things got all mixed up. Four guys X 20 words = 80 divided by two = forty possible band names in one round! Then you can scramble them around and do it again, and again. Hours of fun! "Icewater Enema," "Blue Goop," "Flintlock Termite," "Burned Out Vagabonds" and "Bloody Chimney" came out of this session. During one of my turns, I pulled out the words "Tucker Boots." I thought it was a cool name for a band, but eventually "Texas Fever" won out. Years later, I named my first son, Tucker Boots Livingston.)

Meanwhile, back in the Cosmic Checker...

In the BIG back seat, I was consumed with reading a book called Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (Allah rest his soul).
It was gonzo this & gonzo that with a lot of talk about "Dr. Gonzo" and gonzo states of being.
As we were pulling up to Castle Creek someone asked, "Who are we gonna be tonight?"
I had just read a passage about 'getting gonzo last night" so I offered, "What about the gonzo band?...the lost gonzo band?"

Everyone said OK and the "gonzo" name stuck.
Jerry Jeff liked it too because he was a personal friend of Thompson and if there ever was was a gonzo character, it was Jerry Jeff.
With Jacky Jack plowing ahead, we were hurtling down wild dirt roads & backstreet highways and played the roadhouses and honky tonks of America like nobody's business...


In late 1972, we had to make a choice about playing with either Murphey or Jerry Jeff.
Hillis, McGeary, Herb and I chose Jerry Jeff.
Gary had gone to England with Murphey and came back with a song called "London Homesick Blues."
Kelly Dunn, a California keyboard player MeGeary brought to town, joined the band.
We all met back up with Jerry Jeff in Luckenbach, Texas and recorded the classic Viva Terlingua in the dance hall.
That was the first time the Lost Gonzo Band name appeared in print.
Sweet Mary Egan, Micky Raphael, from Willie's band, and Jo Ann Vent were also there.
For the next record, Collectibles, John Inmon, a great Austin guitar player who had played with a rock band with Gary called Genessee joined up after Hillis left for personal reasons.
John had been in the wings for awhile, playing with Murphey after we left him to play with Jerry Jeff.
We had to get him in the band and finally did.
We were really rockin' & rollin' now!
We added wild man, Thomas Ramirez on sax & Donny Dolan became the Gonzo drummer.
We were kick ass and opened most of the Jerry jeff shows.
We finally got a record deal of our own and cut two albums for MCA: Lost Gonzo Band in 1974 and Thrills in '75.

We really wanted to tour and record more on our own, so we left Jerry Jeff at the end of 1976.
There have been a lot of other "once and future Gonzos" along the way:
Bobby Smith joined us in 1976 and took over the bass duties from Gary and I so we could concentrate on piano, guitar, singing and jumping around onstage.
Mike Holloman, a young talented drummer from College Station became our 'youth element.'
We cut Signs of Life for Capitol in 1976 and embarked on a hectic schedule of touring. Holloman left us to play in the pit band for the Broadway version of "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," so we got Paul Pearcy, an ubiquitous drummer who played with everyone, and the only Austin native of the lot.


We left Jerry Jeff with great expectations.
We had received great reviews in magazines and papers like Rolling Stone and the Village Voice.
Our manager, Michael Brovsky, put us out on the road in a Buick station wagon and a big Chevy truck to hold our equipment.
We toured everywhere and played every joint and cock-pit from Louisiana to Long Island.
We played honky-tonks and buckets-of-blood in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma, dodging beer bottles and wild punches.
We played with jugglers in Canada, the Allman Brothers in Nashville and with the one eyed beggar in Juarez.
We also played some pretty cool venues like the Bitter End in New York and the Celebrity Theater in Phoenix.
We started another record project in 1979 and recorded over 50 songs.
Brovsky said we could be the "Moody Blues of country music," but Capital said, "Where's the country band we signed?"
We dropped out of the major label race by mutual design.

Out on the road, it became a rogues gallery of insanity and the band broke up on a cold windswept day after a freezing tornado night in Nebraska in 1980.
We weren't exactly at each others throats, but close.
Both of our vehicles were broken down, so we each took separate flights home and left *John T. Davis, our roadie at the time, to sort things out, repair our band truck and drive home alone.
I think we left the Buick in a cornfield...

*John T later became a writer for such publications as the Austin American-Statesman, the Austin, Chronicle, the American Way, Dirty Lenin and many more.

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