Liquid Reunion 2010

2010-08-06T13:26:00.000-07:00

Left-to-right: Andy, Zane, Kip, and David

Still More Pictures!

2010-01-22T19:39:00.000-08:00

The more time goes by the more pictures surface from the classic Liquid Rainbow line up. Enjoy!

More Pictures of the Classic Liquid Rainbow Lineup

2008-12-12T14:22:00.001-08:00

From back to front, David Coleman (guitar) Zane Carrol (vocals), Kip Jarrel (drums), Kurt Wallenhorst (bass) and Andy Austin (guitar), Mainstreet, 1981.

The rhythm section! Kip Jarrel (drums) and Kurt Wallenhorst (bass), Mainstreet, 1981.

Kurt Wallenhorst (bass) and Andy Austin (guitar), Mainstreet, 1981.

Zane Carrol (vocals) and David Coleman (guitar), Mainstreet, 1981.

The Story of Liquid Rainbow

2008-08-20T16:31:00.000-07:00

In 1977, Andy Austin and Eugene Waycaster, who had been best friends since they were twelve years old (they lived right down the road from one another on East Street, a crooked little road in a poor working class neighborhood in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, a mid-sized city twenty minutes southeast of Nashville), bought instruments and started playing Black Sabbath and Jimi Hendrix covers.

In 1978, Andy and Eugene hooked up with a drummer who lived out towards Lebanon, Tennessee (Andy can’t remember his name). The band expanded their repertoire to include songs by Deep Purple and other heavy rock bands. Soon they began throwing out ideas for original compositions. A high school mate, Scott Dewey, tagged the band with the name "Black Horse" and brought a cache of original lyrics (Andy still has some of the original type-written pages). Things were starting to gel when the drummer called it quits because his parents were suspicious of those "long-haired boys."

Picture taken Summer of 1979. From left to right, Andy Austin, Johnny Zacarro, Eugene Waycaster, and Stanley Bowman.

In 1979, Andy started jamming with drummer Kip Jarrell, a high school mate. Influenced by the punk scene, they played songs by the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, alongside the ACDC, Black Sabbath and Kiss songs they knew. Andy's cousin, David Coleman, who also played guitar, joined Andy and Kip for a while. The developing unit disbanded after David left for California. The band played one gig, a house party at Trey "Keeble" Clayton's place.

In the early summer of 1980, Andy and Eugene joined with Jim Cannon (drums), Zane Carroll (vocals), and Susie Elam (vocals) to form a group focused on all original material, mostly compositions by Andy and Zane. All were high school mates with a long friendship history. They rehearsed at Andy's house.

Andy Austin, 1980, rehearsing with an early version of Liquid Rainbow.

Andy suggested that everybody read a sentence that appeared in a poem of sorts penned by Jimi Hendrix and published on the inside of the Electric Ladyland album jacket:

“And he blurted out the sound burnt the side of his inner wall also passing by, and the liquid rainbow melted EROS all through his rooms and rooms of ears that he was hiding from Ethel the Queeny.”

Andy didn’t know what Hendrix was talking about (he suspects Hendrix didn't either), but this entity or phenomenon called “liquid rainbow” sounded cosmic, so Andy suggested the band appropriate it. Everybody agreed and the band became Liquid Rainbow.

Liquid Rainbow documented some of its work using Andy's father’s Teac 1/4” reel-to-reel. The whereabouts of the recording are uncertain (especially after a tornado destroyed Andy's father's house); however, Andy still remembers one of the original compositions they put to tape, a funky jam he wrote called "She was Standing There."

Without playing any gigs, Liquid Rainbow dissolved in the middle of the summer. Some didn't feel they were ready to be in a band. Others felt that the direction things were moving in was too heavy.

Later that summer, Andy, Kip, and David (returning from California) got back together and started jamming at Andy's house. They told Kurt Wallenhorst, a high school mate who played guitar, that if he would buy a bass he could join the band. He agreed. Kurt contacted Zane and told him what was going on and convinced him to re-join the band. Andy's sister, Suzi, became the principal lyricist.

Kurt Wallenhorst, Andy Austin (desperately trying to look cool), and Zane Carrol, April 1981.

With all the pieces in place and everybody on the same page in terms of musical direction, Liquid Rainbow rented a rehearsal space at Saint Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and practiced a set of all original material. The song list, which developed over time, included:

After the Storm (David/Suzi)
Alice's Eyes (David/Suzi)
Bad Boy (Andy)
Celestial Carol (David/Suzi)
Conquest of the World (Andy/Suzi)
Let's Rock (Andy/David)
Lucifer's Dream (David/Suzi)
Midnight Shadow (David/Suzi)
Rock the Heavens (David/Suzi)
Rocket Lag (Andy/Suzi)
She Seems to be Content (David/Suzi)
The Walls Came Tumbling Town (David/Suzi)

On New Years Eve, 1980, Liquid Rainbow played its first gig at the Iron Horse biker clubhouse right outside of Murfreesboro. It was a crazy night. After they had finished their set, one of the bikers told them to keep playing. The boys explained that they had run out of material. The biker told them to start over again. So they played the set over again. When they had finished that, the same biker told them to start it over yet again. Zane complained that his voice hurt; he had been screaming through an inadequate PA system for more than two hours. The biker (literally) picked Zane up and set him to one side, saying, “You don’t need a goddamned singer.” So the boys played the set a third time, this time without any vocals.

Finally, everybody seemed satisfied and the boys then started taking pictures to document their first gig. Kurt had asked one of the party-goers to move so that a friend could snap a shot, and the party-goer started to attack Kurt. The same biker dude who had told us to keep playing came flying into the room and beat the party-goer until he lay curled up on the floor crying. The boys thought that was pretty cool until Andy realized that the biker dude had used his Crybaby as a weapon, it's guts hanging out through its torn die-cast casing. Things got out of hand as the night progressed, so the boys threw their gear into the back of the truck and split.

Kurt Standing by marquee, Mainstreet, Murfreesboro, Tennesse, April 1981.

The spring and summer of 1981 saw the band play several gigs. They appeared at 328 Mainstreet, a famous Nashville music emporium (although based in Murfreesboro) in which many national and international acts performed. There, on separate nights, Liquid Rainbow opened for Lust and Steeler (two bands Ron Keel fronted in the early 1980s before moving to LA and scoring minor international success). They played a keg party organized for a school mate, Bill Taylor, the occasion being his birthday.

On stage at Mainstreet, Murfreesboro, Tennesse, summer 1981.

The lineup of Liquid Rainbow changed when Kurt left the band in the spring of 1982. Danny Mundhenk, a student in the Recording Industry Management (RIM) program at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU), replaced Kurt. That fall, the band played a huge music festival out on Franklin Road (just outside of Murfreesboro) and a massive keg party organized by Paul Dodson on his farm. Zane left the band after that show.

In the fall of 1982, Liquid Rainbow recorded a two-song demo on a 4-track 1/2” reel-to-reel machine (Jimmy Jose and Mark James engineered the recording). The songs recorded were David's compositions “After the Storm” and “The Walls Came Tumbling Down,” with lyrics penned by Suzi. A several generations old mix of the session is in Andy's possession (he is working to restore it, although it is in bad shape). Andy handled vocal duties in place of Zane. The idea was always to re-record some of the tracks, but that never happened.

Later that fall, the band entered Haynes House, a 16-track facility on the Middle Tennesse State University campus (in Murfreesboro) to record Andy's composition “Rocket Lag." Mundhenk engineered the session. Andy sang this song, as well. The location of the original tape, as well as locations of the several mixes that were distributed, are unknown.

Andy left Liquid Rainbow soon afterwards over a dispute as to who would be the singer. The band didn’t want Andy to sing and brought in some dude from Texas to sing his vocal parts on the studio recording “Rocket Lag.” The other members gave the Texan a tape of a full rehearsal to prepare for an audition and basically assured him the gig (if the Texan in question reads this and still has the tape, Andy will digitally restore it for him for free).

Liquid Rainbow re-formed late fall of 1982 with Matt Green on drums and George Harrell on bass. They built a studio in which to rehearse and wrote several new songs, as well as worked up several cover songs.

Frustrated with the direction of the band - and of his life in general - Andy moved to Miami in December 1982 to start over. David followed Andy to Miami shortly thereafter and they worked together in a band that would eventually become Maddax.

This closed the final chapter of the Liquid Rainbow story. There were brief flirtations with resurrecting the band. Andy jammed with Kurt and Kip in early fall 1983, and Andy and Zane put a band together in summer 1985, and both times the idea of a reunion was considered, but it was decided to leave the band to history.

Three members of Liquid Rainbow reunited in 1987 in Miami Florida. From left to right, Lee McKee (archivist), Andy Austin, David Coleman, and Kurt Wallenhorst.