Before You Leave

Zoo Freaks, the Crew just laid the needle on a Texas 45 that never got the FM push it deserved, and that is exactly why it belongs on THE ZOO. The song is “Before You Leave,” cut by First State Bank, the hard-rock outfit out of Gladewater that later set up on the Dallas club circuit. You will find it on the collection they call First State Bank 1970-1976, the only long-player anybody has been able to stitch together from what survived. It is not a slick reunion record. It is the paper trail of a band that burned bright for about six years, wrote its own songs, pressed a handful of singles, and then vanished into the same East Texas night it came out of.

“Before You Leave” first showed up in 1975 as the flip side of “A Long Long Time” on Banke Records 91321. The label credits Mockingbird Music as publisher and calls it a Steve Wright production. Randy Nunnally wrote it, same as he wrote every song the band put on wax. Clocking in around three and a half minutes, the cut sits in that heavy-psych pocket Texas bands were working in the middle of the seventies: a guitar figure that leans on you, a vocal that sounds like somebody talking you out of the driveway, and a rhythm section that never bothers to pretty it up for radio. Collectors who have held the original 45 will tell you the A-side got the billing, but the flip is the one that stuck once the record diggers got hold of it. The Garage Hangover write-up on the band files that Banke single right alongside the earlier Music Mill 45, “Coming Home to You” backed with “Mr. Sun,” and the other Banke record, “It’s Not Easy to Say” backed with “King Snake,” the one cut at Robin Hood Brians’ studio in Tyler.

The album the Crew is playing from is not some lost major-label LP that sat in a vault. First State Bank 1970-1976 is a ShroomAngel compilation, pulled together because the original master tapes went up in a fire. What was left was the music off those 7-inch singles plus a live radio broadcast, and that is the whole surviving book. The Rockadrome listing for the CDR puts it plain: the band formed around 1970, gigged hard, pressed a few singles, and by 1976 had built a real local following. A couple of those tracks later turned up on the Brown Acid series, which is how a lot of Zoo Freaks outside Texas ever heard the name. The disc is dedicated to Randy Nunnally. That is the whole spirit of the thing. Not a cash-in. A memory.

The second life of “Before You Leave” is a record-store story, and those are the ones this station likes. In 2016 RidingEasy Records put the song on Brown Acid: The Third Trip, track ten, right between Elliott Black’s “Highway Song” and Flash Beverage’s “The Train.” Lance Barresi of Permanent Records, the digger who has been feeding that series, has said in print that he goes through hell and high water just to find these singles, then tracks down whoever is left so the bands get paid instead of bootlegged. When the groups and the labels have been gone thirty or forty years, that phone call is the whole second chance. “Before You Leave” got that call. Four years later the same series reached back for the earlier single and put “Mr. Sun” on Brown Acid: The Tenth Trip. NTS has spun both. That is a long road for a Banke flip side out of East Texas.

How the band got started is an April 1969 story in the Gladewater Mirror, the earliest public picture anybody has turned up. Gladewater sits over by Longview and Tyler, an oil-patch town that already had a real First State Bank, which makes the band name either a local wink or a dare. The early lineup was Terry Clayton on keyboards, Randy Nunnally on guitar, Harvey Hanson on drums, and Don Wilson on bass, with Glen Sheridan managing and Raymond Murray handling the stage. They won battle-of-the-bands contests in Tyler and Longview, then pointed the van at Shreveport hoping to win a paid trip to California and a spot with Paul Revere and the Raiders on the Happening ’69 show. Nobody has turned up the result of that contest. What we do know is they did not need a television break to keep going. They packed up for Dallas, worked the club circuit, and kept regular dates in Arlington and Houston.

Randy was the only member who never left the letterhead. Discogs files his years as 1952 to 1986, and the write-ups all agree he wrote the six songs that made the records. Everybody else came and went. Donny Hyles, Terry Salyer, and Shannon Day passed through. So did Kirk Brewster on guitar, Michael Williams on bass, and David Eppes on drums. Marty Warren, Rabbitt Scruggs, Brian Johnson, Kelly Kemp, and John Windle are names that show up in the later roll call. That revolving door is why a 1969 newspaper photo and a 1975 single can feel like two different groups. The through-line is Nunnally’s guitar and his pen. If you are the sort of Zoo Freak who reads the fine print on a 45, that is the fine print that matters.

The hard turn in the story comes at the peak. By 1976 the band had a following and a stack of singles, and the lead guitarist had drawn the ear of Ted Nugent, who asked Randy to come out as guitarist on a tour. Around that same stretch Randy was diagnosed with ALS. The Rockadrome notes on the 1970-1976 set say he went downhill fast and was gone a few years later. The band did not survive the loss of its only constant member. There was no farewell album, no victory lap, no later reunion to tidy the ending. What remained was three singles, a live broadcast, and a name that record diggers kept tripping over in the bins.

There is no official First State Bank website, no band Instagram, and no band account on X that we could confirm without landing on an actual bank, so those links stay off this page rather than point you at the wrong porch light. The closest thing to a living social page is the Facebook presence Discogs files for the group, First State Bank, where old band names still surface. For the paper trail that actually names the song, start with the Garage Hangover history, which prints the Banke 91321 discography and the Gladewater lineup. The Discogs artist page lists the 1975 single and the ShroomAngel 1970-1976 compilation. The Rockadrome listing for that 1970-1976 set is where the Nugent offer, the ALS note, and the lost-masters story are spelled out. And the RidingEasy page for Brown Acid: The Third Trip still carries “Before You Leave” as track ten. No fan club site has held together, which fits a band that folded before the internet was a rumor.

That is the long way around a three-minute flip side, and it is the reason the Crew keeps it in the rack. First State Bank never got the California trip, never got the Nugent tour, and never got a proper album while the amps were still warm. What they got, forty years late, was a second hearing. “Before You Leave” still sounds like a Texas band telling you the night is not over yet. If that sits right with you, you are already in the right room. Keep it locked on THE ZOO, tell another Freak, and we will keep digging up the records the big stations stepped over.