Yes, there was life before and after Sonobeat for many artists Sonobeat recorded during the '60s and '70s.

At the beginning of 1967, Sonobeat was cobbling together its recording equipment and looking for an act to record. Through Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Sr.'s connections, Leo and the Prophets, defacto house band at Austin's Ozone Forest night club, stepped up to be Sonobeat's first guinea pig. After several disappointing sessions, Sonobeat shelved the Prophets tapes, but a few months later the band recorded and released a single on Austin's Totem label. That single, Tilt-A-Whirl, got airplay on KAZZ-FM, where Sonobeat co-founder Rim Kelley (Bill Josey Jr.) worked as a DJ, but the single was banned from Austin's top 40 AM station, KNOW (now Spanish-language station KFON), because of its obscure "banana peel" lyrics, presumably oblique drug references. Tilt-A-Whirl, written by band leader Leo Ellis and member Ron Haywood, was produced by J. O. Glass and J. C. "Scat" Hamilton, and garnered positive reviews in local and regional press as well as impressive sales throughout Texas. The Sonobeat sessions with the Prophets were unsatisfactory primarily because in early '67 Sonobeat, in its infancy, was just beginning to experiment with stereo recording techniques. At least Sonobeat was on the right track from an A&R perspective, as evidenced by the solid regional sales of the Prophet's self-released single.

One of Austin's top rock bands, the Sweetarts, whose 1967 stereo single A Picture of Me was Sonobeat's first commercial release, issued a well-produced single on the Dallas-based Vandan label a year before the band's Sonobeat sessions. That single, So Many Times, tracked up the KAZZ-FM Fun Fifty chart for several weeks in 1966. Its popularity, songsmanship, and strong instrumental and vocal performances were major reasons Sonobeat wanted to record the group. Not only was So Many Times a local Austin radio hit, but the flip side, You Don't Have to Hurt Me, also attracted airplay on Texas radio stations, including KAZZ-FM and KNOW in Austin, KONO in San Antonio, KILT in Houston, and KLIF in Dallas-Ft. Worth. Interestingly, Ernie Gammage, who wrote both sides of the Sweetarts' Sonobeat single as well as both sides of the Vandan single, was miscredited on the Vandan release as "E. Cammage". The Sweetarts' Vandan single was produced by Tom Brown (who owned Vandan Records) and Don Brooks, directed by Gene Garretson, and recorded at Vandan's Dallas studios.

Lavender Hill Express was formed in 1967 from the ashes of popular Austin rock bands The Wig and the Baby Cakes. The Wig, managed by KNOW DJ Paul Harrison, was composed of Rusty Wier (drums and vocals), Benny Rowe (lead guitar), Johnny Richardson (guitar), Jess Yaryan (bass), and Billy Wilmont (keyboards). The Wig put out two regional singles that got plenty of airplay and sales: Crackin' Up and Drive It Home, both produced by Paul Harrison and released on his labels BlacKnight and Goyle, respectively. The hard-driving Crackin' Up was written by Rusty, who, a couple of years later as a founding member of Lavender Hill Express, wrote the Sonobeat singles Watch Out! and Silly Rhymes. Although it was good for Sonobeat that The Wig and Baby Cakes broke up to give Austin the Lavender Hill Express, both The Wig and the Baby Cakes were exceptionally strong bands, and each had a strong and loyal fan base throughout Central Texas, where they performed pretty much non-stop through the mid-'60s. Lavender Hill Express producer Rim Kelley recalls visiting The Wig during a practice session at Paul's house off Manor Road in Austin; there's an imaginative and, for the mid-'60s, quite unusual vibrato-like effect performed by Billy Wilmont on keyboard at the end of Crackin' Up. Paul shared the band's secret for creating the effect with Rim, who adds that to the list of moments that collectively led to the decision to start Sonobeat. You can hear both of The Wig's hits at GarageHangover.

Shiva's Headband recorded an unreleased single for Sonobeat in early 1968. The single, Kaleidoscoptic backed with There's No Tears, was recorded at Austin's iconic Vulcan Gas Company music hall and was completed and mastered for release as Sonobeat single Rs-103. The Sonobeat archives even contain copies of the test pressing of the stereo single. Although Sonobeat had already scheduled Kaleidoscoptic for release, ongoing debates with the band about the sonic qualities of the recording delayed its release, with the possibility of rerecording the vocals, but eventually all release plans were scrapped and the master tapes shelved. Shiva's Headband was a major influence in hippy music circles across the U.S., and it was inevitable that the band's music would eventually make it to commercial release. Founder and electric violinist Spenser Perskin released the band's anthem, Take Me to the Mountains, which he composed, on the band's own Austin-based Armadillo label (named in homage to the Vulcan Gas Company's successor, the Armadillo World Headquarters, which Perskin co-founded). The Armadillo single in turn begat a nationally-released album on Capitol Records.

In the mid-'60s, Vietnamese songbird Bach Yen began touring the U.S. as a musical emissary on invitation from the U.S. government, first appearing on the Ed Sullvan Show on CBS in January 1965, later in '65 on the musical variety show Shindig, and in November '66 on NBC's Bob Hope Presents The Chrysler Theatre. Bach had a minor role in the 1968 John Wayne Vietnam war epic, The Green Berets, in which she performed as a Saigon singer, harkening to her own roots. In 1968, Bach recorded two soulful ballads produced by Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Sr. and released on the Sonobeat label as a stereo single. This Is My Song and Magali (which Bach performed in her native language, French), were among Sonobeat's most sophisticated productions, featuring string and horn sections overdubbed months after the basic instrumental and vocal tracks were recorded. Bach's Sonobeat single was hardly her first recording: she had a successful European recording career before coming to the U.S., releasing several French-language albums on the Polydor label. And, two or three years after recording with Sonobeat, Bach released a single on her own short-lived U.S. label, Poupée. That single, featuring the Spanish ballad Malaguena and French ballad What Now My Love (Et Maintenant), was produced by Dick Kravit.

Austin folk-rock troubadour Cody Hubach recorded a single and album with Sonobeat -- both unfortunately never released -- over a span of three years beginning in 1969. Cody, a welder by day and musician by night, helped build Sonobeat's massive steel plate reverb in 1968 and was a constant friend to Sonobeat co-founder and producer Bill Josey Sr. Although Cody's Sonobeat material wasn't released, Cody went on to record and release several singles and albums for other local and regional labels and appeared as himself in Willie Nelson's 1980 feature film, Honeysuckle Rose. Notably, Cody's signature composition, Hooley, which he first recorded for an unreleased Sonobeat single and a second time for the unreleased album, eventually was released on Austin Records' Dixietone label in still another version produced by Paul Bearden.

The examples above are just a sampling of the dozens of Sonobeat artists, including individual members of bands Sonobeat recorded, that had pre-Sonobeat or went on to post-Sonobeat recording careers. These include Johnny Winter, Eric Johnson, the late Rusty Wier, Layton DePenning (who's current bands Denim and the Fabs perform regularly in Austin), Leonard Arnold, Jim Chesnut, rockabilly star Ray Campi, James Polk, and Bill Wilson.