Mr. Sun

The Zoo Crew has got First State Bank’s “Mr. Sun” rolling out of the bins for the Zoo Freaks, and if you have never heard this one, settle in. It comes off the collection First State Bank 1970-1976, the long look back at a hard Texas outfit that never cut a proper album in its day and left behind three singles and a trail of club gigs. “Mr. Sun” was the flip side of “Coming Home to You” on Music Mill 1012, pressed around 1971, and it is the side the collectors still chase. Randy Nunnally wrote it, sang it, and drove the guitar. What you get is a power-chord boogie with a lysergic tilt, the kind of East Texas hard psych that sits somewhere between a Hendrix burn, a Grand Funk stomp, and a T. Rex shuffle, only meaner and closer to the ground. No polish. No big-city gloss. Just a small-label single that still kicks like a Harley on a two-lane.

The song sat in near-silence for decades. First State Bank never toured past the Texas club circuit in any lasting way, and when the band folded, the 45s went into attics. Then the crate-diggers found them. RidingEasy Records and Permanent Records put “Mr. Sun” back in front of people on Brown Acid: The Tenth Trip, the 2020 volume of that heavy-underground series. The same band had already turned up on Brown Acid: The Third Trip with “Before You Leave,” so the compilers knew the name. Lance Barresi, who hunts these sides with Daniel Hall, has said he goes through hell and high water just to find the records, then starts the long job of tracking down whoever is left so the song can be licensed instead of bootlegged. A lot of these labels and lineups have been gone thirty or forty years. When the trail goes cold, the song stays buried. “Mr. Sun” got the second chance. That is the story the reissue folks tell, and it fits. A B-side cut for a little Texas imprint comes walking back out of the stacks half a century later, still loud.

The band did not start in a Dallas boardroom. They came up in Gladewater, the little East Texas town between Longview and Tyler, oil-field country where a battle of the bands still meant something. An April 27, 1969 piece in the Gladewater Mirror shows them early: Terry Clayton on keyboards, Randy Nunnally on guitar, Harvey Hanson on drums, Don Wilson on bass, with Glen Sheridan managing and Raymond Murray handling the stage. They had already won contests in Tyler and Longview, and they were pointed at Shreveport, hoping a win there would buy a trip to California and a shot on the Happening ’69 show beside Paul Revere and the Raiders. Nobody ever printed the result of that contest. The California trip, if it happened, did not make the papers. What did happen is they kept playing.

Nunnally was the one who stayed. Born in 1952, he was the only constant member from the Gladewater days through the last single, and he wrote all six songs that made it onto wax. Everybody else rotated. Donny Hyles, Terry Salyer, and Shannon Day passed through. So did Kirk Brewster on guitar, Michael Williams on bass, David Eppes on drums, and a further crowd that included Marty Warren, Rabbitt Scruggs, Brian Johnson, Kelly Kemp, and John Windle. A band that changes that often either falls apart or belongs to one stubborn writer. First State Bank belonged to Nunnally. The Facebook page the old circle still keeps calls the core of them rock legends, and for a Gladewater outfit that never had a major-label push, that is a fair hometown verdict.

After the battle-of-the-bands years they left Gladewater for the Dallas club circuit, with regular nights in Arlington and Houston as well. That is the stretch that shaped the records. Three singles, and that was the whole catalog. Music Mill 1012 paired “Coming Home to You” with “Mr. Sun.” Banke RHB 714 carried “It’s Not Easy to Say” and “King Snake,” cut at Robin Hood Brians Studio in Tyler and published through Sunnybrook Music. Banke 91321, a Steve Wright production on Mockingbird Music, held “A Long Long Time” and “Before You Leave.” Six songs. No album jacket in the racks at the time. The First State Bank 1970-1976 set that the Zoo Crew is spinning from is the later gathering of that run, put out on CDR by ShroomAngel, so the singles could sit together the way a proper LP never did.

“Mr. Sun” is the one that travels. The A-side is a homecoming song. The flip is the sun itself, big and a little unhinged, the sort of track a freeform station was built to play between a deep Zeppelin cut and something the request line has never heard. On the Dallas circuit they would have opened or closed a set with it, depending on the room. Club P.A.s in those years were not kind, and a song this thick needed a stack that could take the low end. When it works, it works the way a good biker-bar rocker works: simple changes, a guitar that will not sit down, and a singer who sounds like he has been on the highway since Gladewater.

Nunnally did not get old in the business. He died in 1986, thirty-four years old, and the band name went with him. No reunion tour, no late-career interview circuit, no boxed set from the original camp. What remains is the singles, the Gladewater Mirror clipping, the Dallas club stories, and the Brown Acid rescue. The compilers have said there is a long list of songs they would love to use and cannot, because the people cannot be found. First State Bank was one of the ones they found. That is why “Mr. Sun” is on the air at THE ZOO instead of stuck in a sleeve in somebody’s shed.

There is no standing official website, Instagram, or X account for the band that a browser can open and trust. The page that still carries their name is the band’s Facebook, First State Bank, where the old lineup is listed and the photos of Nunnally and the later hands still sit. The write-up that actually names the single, “Coming Home to You” backed with “Mr. Sun,” and walks the Gladewater-to-Dallas trail is on Garage Hangover. That is the paper trail. Spin it loud, Zoo Freaks. East Texas did not waste this one.