Playing early-'70s Little Rock progressive rock, Rayburn is a deviation from the rest of the music released by Psych of the South. Harold Ott believes the band should have been huge.
"When I heard them, I was shocked to learn they were never even released," he says.
Rayburn was signed by an RCA subsidiary, Mega Records of Nashville, Tenn., but Jack Stephens, co-founder of Stephens Inc. and father of keyboardist Jackson "Steve" Stephens Jr., secretly bought the contract. As far as the band members knew -- then and for years later-- the label simply lost interest.
"Jack wanted his son to work for him, and he didn't want him running around with a bunch of long-haired hippie kids ... and they were very talented, but you know, he didn't want him to pursue a music career," says Tom Roberts, guitarist with The Coachmen and brother of Rayburn guitarist Jimmy Roberts.
In 1973, 21-year-old Jimmy Roberts was diagnosed with spinal cancer and he died shortly after. (His wife, Rosie Vela, would eventually rise to fame as a supermodel, sing with Electric Light Orchestra and have an independent recording career.) The band broke up but in 1977, they returned to the studio to record the last songs written with Jimmy.
"A lot of the songs actually have to do with dying," says Dakota Norsworthy. "It's not unheard of in that time period, when a lot of people are processing Vietnam, but it just makes it more apropos when you know the rest of the story." Rayburn is her favorite of all the Psych of the South releases.
"They were not a cover band," Roberts says. "They were gifted musicians who had studied music, and they were serious about it."
In 2009 Rayburn reunited, with the addition of a few of their musical children, to play a release party for a Psych of the South album that collects the band's reel-to-reel demos from 1972 to 1977.
The re-formed group was so successful that, in 2010, Stephens funded a Nashville recording session -- a sort of compensation for that missed session four decades ago. They used a Grammy-winning producer and hired a 26-piece orchestra.
Roberts calls the resulting album, Rayburn: Your Mind, "cinematic." It's dedicated to his brother Jimmy.
Style on 11/30/2014