http://www.cjlo.com/articles/cjlo-sxsw-zak-slax-coverage-part-1

Immediately afterwards I set my sites on the Hotel Vegas once again, where Texas legends Bubble Puppy were slated to perform; an occasion not to be missed. Their 1969 hit ‘Hot Smoke and Sassafrass’ is a wildly imaginative rocker which broke new ground, and their debut LP ‘A Gathering of Promises’ is a true treasure from the original psychedelic era. The reformed group were in fine form, soaring like silver eagles, playing hard but with a relaxed gracefulness, joy radiating from the stage. 60’s psych elements remain in the lush 4-part vocal harmonies, but this is a new breed of puppy, clearly informed by the following decades of heavy rock wizardry. Of course, this is an approach that BP was ahead of the game on, pioneering the use of twin guitar leads since their inception. Upping the ante however is this lineup which features a triple guitar assault, all making whirlwind tours of the fretboard with just the right amount of distortion; a very ‘dialed-in tone’ as they say. And don’t think drum and bass solos were left out of the equation - fantastic players, each and every one! All this shredding didn’t feel gratuitous in the least as it sometimes can; it was a genuine gift to an adoring audience comprised of many generations. Even Nardwuar was there…..

http://wristbandconquest.com/sxsw-music-week-days-4-7/

Texas Natives Bubble Puppy are absolute legends and it was a privilege to see them do their thing as part of this Levitation Showcase. My dad is a prog rock musician and has been for over 40 years. His band Woodenhead had a song back in the day called “Bubble Head”, inspired by Bubble Puppy’s pioneering psych rock when they big in the late 60’s and early 70’s. The entire band of gray haired rockers sang the vocals to their big hit “Hot Smoke n’ Sassafras” in unison. The dual lead guitar work kept the growing crowd engaged throughout the entire set. As the elder statesmen at this psych rock appreciation pow wow, they showed and proved how much psychedelic rock is rooted in Austin.

Bubble Puppy featured in the Where are they now Section of the magazine.   Thank you Goldmine!   

https://www.austin360.com/entertainment/music/many-bands-our-music-team-makes-some-sxsw-recommendations/cojjGUcwxXPcpNsoEGDGPM/

Thursday

7 p.m. Bubble Puppy (Hotel Vegas Patio). The 1960s psychedelic band scored one of Austin’s first pop hits with “Hot Smoke and Sassafras.” While they never reached that level of notoriety again, they’ve continued to perform after a 2011 reunion when they were voted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame.

https://www.mystatesman.com/entertainment/music/preservation-hall-jazz-band-rita-coolidge-among-veterans-sxsw/wWuMy4yaDcIEWaj5jTwbxK/

Austin American Statesman - Peter Blackstock

Bubble Puppy. The 1960s psychedelic band scored one of Austin’s first pop hits with “Hot Smoke and Sassafras.” While they never reached that level of notoriety again, they’ve continued to perform after a 2011 reunion when they were voted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame. (7 p.m. March 15, Hotel Vegas Patio)

San Antonio Current - Chris Conte

Bubble Puppy: “Hot Smoke & Sasafrass”
If opening up for The Who in ’68 isn’t good enough for you, we don’t know what is. With a new live studio record released just last year, which includes their psych rock classic “Hot Smoke & Sasafrass,” Bubble Puppy is a band that helped shape the psychedelic rock movement in Texas during the late ’60s — and continues today.

Re-enlivened by their 2011 Austin Music Hall of Fame induction, these Sixties psych rock gladiators swing for the rafters again like the shoulder-chipped opening act they spent much of their career being. Original guitarist/vocalist Rod Prince and drummer David Fore enlist guitarists Gregg Stegall and Mark Miller, and bassist Jimi Umstattd for this live studio re-recording of classic selections from BP and their sequel band Demian. Glorious twin guitar leads and regal vocal harmonies proliferate on an elongated "What Do You See." 1969 Top 20 hit "Hot Smoke and Sassafras" retains dynamic punch, but lesser-known Demian songs prove revelatory. Everyman anthem "Only a Loner" rings worthy of the AOR immortality that eluded it in 1971. Whichever regulatory body certifies badassery, Bubble Puppy got this one right.

It’s been over half a century since Bubble Puppy first landed on the Texas music scene. Forming in San Antonio in 1966 after their previous band The Bad Seeds disbanded, the group's first show was actually opening for The Who at the San Antonio Municipal Auditorium in 1968. A year later, their first single "Hot Smoke and Sasafrass" would impressively secure the number 14 slot on the Billboard 100 chart, capturing the attention of national audiences with the track's winding duel-lead guitar licks, vocal harmonies, heavy drum rhythms and unexpected transitions.

But a lot has changed since the late '60s. From switching their name to Demian and heading out to California after a bad deal with record label International Artists (Red Krayolas, 13th Floor Elevators), to car accidents, a couple attempts at reuniting the band in the late '70s and '80s, and the death of founding bass player Roy Cox, it’s safe to say frontman Rod Prince and the gang have been through some shit.

The comeback was slow, to be sure. In 2011, after the late Margaret Moser (revered music journalist and co-founder of South Texas Museum of Pop Culture) asked to them to play the Austin Music Awards, it seemed like the Puppy was back and better than ever playing select shows across Texas which led to headlining performance at the inaugural psychedelic music festival Psych Del Rio.

With the only original members being guitar/lead vocalist Rod Prince and drummer David Fore, Mark Miller (guitar/vocals), Gregg Stegall (guitar/vocals) and Jim Umstattd (bass) round out the band and judging from this latest album Certified Badass (a live studio recording released last month which includes tracks from Prince's entire catalog), the now five-piece has managed to capture that same spirit of free-flowing psychedelic rock they originally were able to capture in the late '60s.

Their next show is in Austin, and while we don't usually promote going to check out bands in different cities, catching these rock 'n' roll veterans in their environment will be worth the trip.

The Current caught up with frontman Prince to talk about the new album, plans for the future and what they’ve all been up to all this time.    See full article at https://www.sacurrent.com/sa-sound/archives/2017/11/24/bubble-puppy-returns-with-certified-badass-record

Get the New Bubble Puppy CD!    It's BadAss!   http://cdbaby.com/bubblepuppy1

http://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2017/09/bubble-puppy-psych-del-rio.html

The most impressive act of the night was truly the incredibly energetic show put on by Bubble Puppy. Most of the younger crowd that came to see some of the other bands or people that just completely stumbled into the venue by chance didn’t seem to have any idea what or who they were seeing but they were eventually caught up in the magic. The current lineup of Bubble Puppy really is the most cohesive incarnation of the band. They played flawlessly and you could really tell how much fun they were having being up there – Drummer David “Fuzz” Fore had the biggest grin on his face for the entire hour and a half set. Rod Prince’s bold, almost operatic voice, carried us through the classic songs such as ‘Hot Smoke & Sassafras’, ‘A Gathering of Promises’, and newer songs we hope to hear more of in the near future. These guys really give everything they have every show and all while having a blast on stage! Always respect your elders – especially when they are our psychedelic fore-fathers. I made arrangements to meet up with Rod and for over an hour we discussed the history, the present, and the future of Bubble Puppy.

follow the link above for the entire article and interview with Rod Prince

Psych Del Rio is the psychedelic brain child of Glenn and Gem Hotvet, who have been keeping shit weird with their steady curation of psych and garage rock shows at their venue/gallery K23, the Central Library and the Scobee Planetarium. The duo announced Psych Del Rio late last year, a free fest that will celebrate the roots of Texas psych rock at the Arneson River Theater. (if you’ve attended Maverick Music Festival in the last couple of years, you know how amazing that area is as a concert venue). Headlining the fest will be San Antonio psychedelic rock veterans Bubble Puppy, whose notable first live show was opening for The Who back in 1967. Also on the bill is Sacred Bones’ Psychic Ills, The Warlocks and a generous helping of some of the region’s best trance-inducing musical projects. As heavy an impact psych-rock from Texas has made to the genre, it’s about time we celebrated those roots here in San Antonio with a festival that’s shaping up to be one of the more intriguing local events this year.

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Friday, September 15, 2017
River Wild: Psych del Rio Brings Heady Vibes, Dope Lineup to Arneson
Posted By James Courtney on Fri, Sep 15, 2017 at 11:45 am
THIS, AND ALL THE RAD PSYCH DEL RIO ART, WAS CREATED BY LA ARTIST RAMIN NAZER.
This, and all the rad Psych del Rio art, was created by LA artist Ramin Nazer.
Psych del Rio, as we first announced back in December 2016, is a new, free (!!) psychedelic music festival that will take place on Saturday September 23 on the banks of the San Antonio River at Arneson Theatre. And, here's the thing: this is the best music festival, pound for pound (if you will), that the Alamo City has ever seen, at least in recent memory.

No disrespect to River City Rock Fest, Maverick, Untapped, Mala Luna, or the like, but this carefully curated lineup is absolutely without a weakness. It is fresh and relevant yet reverent to the history of the far-flung genre. Plus, it's got a prime location. And, did I mention it's fuckin' free?

(I have to imagine that any tourist finding herself floating on a barge between the stage and the crowd on Saturday will quickly be making plans to call Saytown home.)

The whole mad affair has been orchestrated, along with help from a slew of local sponsors, by Gem and Glenn Hotvet, who own and operate K23, a venue that's never been shy about waving its freak flag in the form of groovy music and art.

Our readers will be aware that, of late, the curatorial power couple with impeccable taste has been branching out, making a concerted (see what I did there) effort to host shows in less conventional settings (those Planetarium shows tho). Psych del Rio is the culmination of these efforts to expand.

Gem Hotvet is not shy when it comes to talking about her love of music. "Without music life is draped in a thick, scratchy blanket of awkwardness and unease," she told the Current.

Discussing her and Glenn's efforts in general, as well as Psych del Rio specifically, she elucidated a kind of admirable credo:

"In the end my goal is to enrich the musical fabric of my hometown. I don't think that the quality of our music should be corporatized and attached to a dollar sign. San Antonio has such a vibrant, rich culture and so many passionate people, we really don't need to pander to them with bad radio and sub-par lineups on tired Fiesta events."

"I think the final decision came once the election happened," she said, "with all this awful bullshit going on I wanted to do something positive, to put out an uplifting vibe."

Now let's get back to talking about this lineup.

For starters, eschewing all pretense to egalitarianism, let's look at the biggies.

Bubble Puppy, the elder statesmen of the bill, are a San Antonio band that was originally active in the late 1960s, when our region was still known as a psych-rock hotbed. The band's one proper album, which included its only hit "Hot Smoke and Sassafras," was 1969's A Gathering of Promises.

Psychic Ills, a band from New York on the righteous label Sacred Bones, is a shapeshifting act that has dabbled in just about every flavor of psych music, from electronic exploration to its current jangly, rootsy, and dreamy incarnation.

The Warlocks hail from Los Angeles and traffic in a heavy, dark, and grungy (shoegaze-y?) brand of lysergic sound. With a voluminous back catalog, this band could, all by itself, melt your face all night.

Other highlights include out of state bands Sugar Candy Mountain (psych-pop-rock from Oakland), Flavor Crystals (spacey krautrock from Minneapolis), and Lochness Mobsters (punk/surf psych from Lake Charles).

And, lastly, I'd be remiss not to mention some of the local/regional acts that comprise the core of Psych del Rio's lineup. You gotta dig San Anto's Sunjammer (muddy and loose proto-psych/freakbeat) and Mockingbird Express (throwback psych-blues), as well as Anabelle Chairlegs (marauding psych-pop from ATX), Tele Novella (retro-flavored mod-pop from Lockhart), and Sherry (sunny art-pop from ATX).

https://www.sacurrent.com/sa-sound/archives/2017/06/22/music-picks-shows-to-see-this-week

Bubble Puppy
Friday, June 23

If you think Bubble Puppy’s only good song was their hit “Hot Smoke And Sassafras”, I urge you to dust off that album (or jump online) and re-listen to the record in its entirety. It’s a solid piece of rock and roll that deserves another whirl. After opening for The Who in 1967, the then San Antonio-based band moved to Austin and signed a recording contract with Houston’s International Artists, a label shared by psych-rock familia The 13th Floor Elevators and Red Krayola. After parting ways with the label, the band changed their name to Demian and headed out to Los Angeles to record a new self-titled album. When that wasn’t as successful as their effort, the band to split up. However, almost four decades later, the psychedelic rock and rollers resurfaced in 2011, with a few new members, to play the Austin Chronicle Music Awards and have been active ever since. If you can’t catch them this week, the band’s also slated to headline K23’s psych rock fest, Psych Del Rio in September. With The Damn Torpedoes, $18-$60, 7pm, Sam’s Burger Joint, 330 E. Grayson St., 210-223-2830 — Chris Conde

The official lineup for San Antonio's latest music festival experiment was just released today and looks pretty amazing.

Psych Del Rio is the psychedelic brain child of Glenn and Gem Hotvet, who have been keeping shit weird with their steady curation of psych and garage rock shows at their venue/gallery K23, the downtown Library and the Scobee Planetarium. The duo late last year announced Psych Del Rio, a free fest that will celebrate the roots of Texas psych rock at the Arneson River Theater downtown (if you’ve attended Maverick Music Festival in the last couple of years, you know how amazing that area is as a concert venue).

Headlining the fest will be San Antonio psychedelic rock veterans Bubble Puppy, whose notable first live show was opening for The Who back in 1967. Also on the bill is Sacred Bones’ Psychic Ills, The Warlocks and a generous helping of some of the region's best trance-inducing musical projects.

As heavy an impact psych-rock from the Texas has made to the genre, it’s about time we celebrated those roots here in San Antonio with a festival that’s shaping up to be one of the more intriguing local events this year.  Posted By Chris Conde 

The official lineup for San Antonio's latest music festival experiment was just released today and looks pretty amazing.

Psych Del Rio is the psychedelic brain child of Glenn and Gem Hotvet, who have been keeping shit weird with their steady curation of psych and garage rock shows at their venue/gallery K23, the downtown Library and the Scobee Planetarium. The duo late last year announced Psych Del Rio, a free fest that will celebrate the roots of Texas psych rock at the Arneson River Theater downtown (if you’ve attended Maverick Music Festival in the last couple of years, you know how amazing that area is as a concert venue).

Headlining the fest will be San Antonio psychedelic rock veterans Bubble Puppy, whose notable first live show was opening for The Who back in 1967. Also on the bill is Sacred Bones’ Psychic Ills, The Warlocks and a generous helping of some of the region's best trance-inducing musical projects.

As heavy an impact psych-rock from the Texas has made to the genre, it’s about time we celebrated those roots here in San Antonio with a festival that’s shaping up to be one of the more intriguing local events this year.  Posted By Chris Conde

by Alejandra Lopez

If you ask some folks in San Antonio where to find the best live music, they might point you 80 miles north and tell you to head into what’s been widely considered the Live Music Capital of the world. Those folks, however, don’t know a damn thing about Texas music.

For decades, San Antonio’s music scene has been cast into the shadows by the big stages of Austin, our musicians stolen by that supposed promised land called the 512. And, as Margaret Moser, founder and curator of the South Texas Museum of Popular Culture, puts it, “San Antonio has never gotten the respect it deserves.” And if anyone can accurately gauge the neighboring Texas music scenes, you can bet that it’s Moser, the former Austin Chronicle music editor and director of the Austin Music Awards.

If you’ve never paid a visit to Tex Pop, you might be surprised to find that sandwiched between the Planet K and Broadway Grocery Stop on Mulberry Avenue is an unassuming treasure chest filled with relics that chronicle the history of South Texas music. With a humble interior, one that could be described as anything but glamorous, the tiny museum tells the stories of music and musicians that South Texans wouldn’t find elsewhere. Which is why in 2011 Moser and Mike Kleinman* created a space where these histories and their artifacts could live, like the recently acquired, semi-permanent exhibit in dedication to the late Steven “El Parche” Jordan and childhood photos of Doug Sahm dressed up in his performance wear — a Sunday button down with embellishments sewn by his mother. “Doug Sahm is the big reason why we started Tex Pop,” says Moser.

This month, the museum will celebrate its 5th anniversary with a tribute to San Antonio’s psychedelic nightspots of the 1960s with “Night at the Pusi-Kat” on May 21. The Pusi-Kat, as some may recall, played host to groovy names like the Yardbirds, Deep Purple, the Electric Prunes, B.B. King and even Jimi Hendrix, who stopped by after his 1968 show at the Municipal Auditorium.

The night will feature performances by Pusi-Kat house band Bubble Puppy, Cain’s Children and The Zilches with tributes to radio DJs Bruce Hathaway, Bobby Reyes and the late Rob Meurer and an exhibit to highlight some of Tex Pop’s greatest moments.

Follow the link to the show...  http://video.klru.tv/video/2365778851/

Check our the video at  https://youtu.be/lvDEa0vUbb4

Bubble Puppy kicks off #AllATX15 with "Hot Smoke & Sassafras" at @acllive

http://music.blog.austin360.com/2015/08/27/all-atx-show-traverses-all-along-the-moontower/?ecmp=austin360_social_facebook_2014_sfp

And our own David 'Fuzzy' Fore as #4 Best Drummer!   http://www.austinchronicle.com/austin-music-awards/year:2014/category:best-performing-bands/

http://sacurrent.com/music/trippin-out-in-tx-a-journey-through-texas-psychedelic-music-scene-1.1677293

With its ever-expanding music infrastructure and a deep bench of bands, it’s hard to imagine a Texas where Austin isn’t the focal point of Lone Star music. East 6th, Austin City Limits, Rainey Street, Fun Fun Fun Fest, Red River, Psych Fest, SXSW—there’s a reason why Austin claims to be the live music capital of the world. But if you look back to the 1960s, in one of the most fruitful periods in American pop, a different vision emerges; one where San Antonio and Austin share equal billing as the region’s hotspot for rock ‘n’ roll creativity, working in relative harmony to hook national acts and nurture a local scene in South Central Texas.

At the helm of this SA/ATX creativity was the then-young genre of psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll, merging rock forms with new manipulations in sonic style and chemical balances in the brain. The left-field music of the 13th Floor Elevators and Jimi Hendrix coupled with the newly popular LSD wonder drug were opening porous young minds across the nation, not just along the I-35 corridor.

First synthesized by Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman in 1938, LSD only became popular as a recreational trip in the 1960s, as advocates like Ken Kesey and Timothy Leary championed the stuff as a gateway to untapped consciousness. The word itself comes from psychiatrist Humphry Osmond, who combined the Greek words “psyche” (mind) and “delos” (manifesting) to translate the experience into language. And like Osmond’s conversion, psychedelic musicians relayed the acid trip in their music, a synethesiac blend of rock ‘n’ roll and serotonin.

Go Southwest, Young Man

Though San Francisco marked the epicenter of the psychedelic shockwaves that swept the nation, South Texas recorded early and independent tremors, churning out a distinctly Texan flavor of psych—cactus kids dancing with California’s flower children.

A poster from the era, tacked to the bathroom wall of the South Texas Popular Culture Center (1017 E Mulberry, “Tex Pop” for short), reps a slightly doofy San Anto and a slightly hipper, mustached Austin basking in the lysergic embrace of Mother Texas. Proud of her fraternal cities, she sighs, “My children of tomorrow are becoming heavy!” Produced by SA poster artist Dan “Boogie” Wynans, the bill promotes an evening at the Sunken Gardens in 1969 featuring bands from both sides of the psychedelic I-35 nexus.

Margaret Moser, SA native, proprietor of Tex Pop and co-founder of the Austin Chronicle, points to surf rock as the instigator of SA psych. Like an older sibling turning the Alamo City on to the good stuff, band members from Bubble Puppy and the Laughing Kind came up from the coast in the early ’60s, bringing with them the carefree licks and early effects pedals native to that surf sound. “San Antonio probably had the biggest non-coastal surf scene of any city I ever saw,” says Moser, “certainly in Texas.”

At the time, San Antonio also had capable music venues to support local and touring bands. Spots like Fredericksburg Road’s adolescent-only Teen Canteen, already in operation pre-Brit Invasion, housed amateur groups looking to hone their talents in a dance-friendly setting. As musicians tightened up and committed to “really being bands all the time,” says Moser, “San Antonio tried to gussy itself up, too.” Shortly after the reveal of HemisFair Park for the 1968 World’s Fair, the Pusikat Club opened nearby at 120 Villita to showcase to the HemisFair crowd, according to Moser, “just how hip San Antonio was.”

As LSD hit Texas in the mid-60s, that surf sound got weirder and heavier. The spaced-out wave journeys got a little more ethereal, the guitar effects got a little more distorted and pretty soon SA artists like Lord August and the Visions of Lite, Swiss Movement and Bubble Puppy were playing what Austin’s 13th Floor Elevators were calling “psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll.”

The most commercially successful of any South Texas psych outfit, Bubble Puppy formed in San Antonio in 1966 when singer and guitarist Rod Prince moved from the coastal ’burbs to collaborate with his writing partner Roy Cox. “I was in Mathis then, having just returned from LA,” Prince says. “I had nothing else going, so I went to SA and Roy and I put the players together to form the first incarnation of what would become the Puppy.” At the time, Prince says the San Antonio music scene was “very tight-knit. Everyone knew everyone, like a family, without much in the way of showbiz competition.”

In 1969, Bubble Puppy landed a Top 20 hit with “Hot Smoke and Sassafras,” a tight, six-string death punch over which Prince sings cryptically of “the place above where it began.” When Prince tells the Current that Bubble Puppy was “consumed with virtuosity,” it’s no joke. Through tempo changes and a wandering guitar interlude, “Sassafras” makes writing an intricate hit seem effortless.

With the opening of Austin Highway’s Mind’s Eye and Mystic Moor, venues as psychedelic as their names suggest, San Antonio developed a solid infrastructure to support local and touring genre players. “San Antonio was really poised in the late ’60s to be in the center of attention,” says Moser.

If Alamo City psych grew out in the open, up the road in Austin the music was nurtured underground, like pot plants growing in the back of a bedroom closet. The University of Texas was already cultivating a small, experimental folk community that attracted other young Texan beatkniks (like Janis Joplin, for a hot minute).

When acid emerged in Austin in 1965 and guitarist Stacy Sutherland, drummer John Ike Walton and songwriter and electric jug player Tommy Hall teamed up with the young, scabrous voice of Roky Erickson to form the 13th Floor Elevators, psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll was born. With their debut release in 1966, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, the quartet, widely lauded as the architects of psych rock, were indeed the first band to use the word “psychedelic” to describe their sound.

From here, the folkers operating in Austin’s bohemian outskirts went electric, buying the necessary gear to turn on and drop out. “I would defy you to find an open psychedelic band operating as early as the Elevators were,” says Elevators contributor Powell St. John in Scott Conn’s rock-doc Dirt Road to Psychedelia. The Elevators were the centrifugal force for a scene that included bands like The Conqueroo, Shiva’s Headband and the Golden Dawn. To keep it in Texas, Houston’s International Artists records housed the Lone Star psych bands.

The Children of Tomorrow Come Together
When Austin’s Vulcan Gas Company opened its doors in the fall of 1967, the San Anto and Austin psych scenes sang in harmony, filling the dive with mind-manifesting rock. “When the Vulcan opened up,” recalls Moser, “I would say that fully half the bands that played there were SA bands. Austin was essentially a political capital and a college town. When a cool club came along like the Vulcan, it couldn’t really pull the stature of bands that were touring to San Antonio.” For instance, when Jimi Hendrix came through Texas in 1968 and 1970, he played San Antonio, oozing psychedelia and shattering minds at the Municipal Auditorium and HemisFair.

One imagines the blues-influenced Hendrix could have dug the South Texas psych sound as it grew up among the regional giants of blues history, from Blind Lemon Jefferson’s tinny 1920s classics to the swingin’ power of Big Mama Thornton.

“One writes what one knows,” says Rod Prince, “so environment plays a part for sure, and flavors any style of music. So I’d say that made the Texas psych offerings different from the city-oriented bands.” Perhaps that explains the squirrely squeal of Tommy Hall’s electric Elevator jug and Roky Erickson’s feral yells, cured from the best of the black blues musicians.

Young music freaks could often see the influencers on the same stage as the influenced. Accidentally ahead of its time, the Vulcan, out of necessity, booked blues greats like Big Mama, Freddy King, Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed alongside rock acts. “They were part of that scene and part of that identity,” says Spencer Perskin of Shiva’s Headband.

In 1969, Shiva’s Headband released the definitive tune of this psych-blues nexus, the awesomely titled “Homesick Armadillo Blues.” Perskin trash-talks the Frisco rain and longs for the Texas sun, resolving on the twelfth-bar of the tune, “I don’t hate California, it just ain’t my style.”

The Head Trip Ends
The I-35 psych oasis wasn’t to last into Nixon’s second term. Just as the Manson murders and the Altamont meltdown deadened the good vibrations in California, police crackdowns in Texas put a damper on the music.

“I was living here [in San Antonio] in the early 1970s and there really was a sense of Feds and ‘heads all over again,” says Moser. “We got our one joint and we’re being chased down by a pile of cops … The paranoia was very real.”

Bubble Puppy’s Prince put a Texas twang on the situation, calling it “the longhairs versus the goat-ropers.”

The Austin Police Department looked to chop the head from the psychedelic snake by targeting the Elevators. “This was when the police in town were convinced if they could pick off the ringleaders, they cold nip it in the bud,” says St. John.

Already suffering from undiagnosed schizophrenia, in 1969, Elevators singer Roky Erickson was convicted for possession of a lone joint and sentenced to the Austin State Hospital until 1972. As Erickson underwent electroshock therapy in a radically different psych scene, the Texas genre he inspired dissipated in the late ’60s. Police kept on busting, musicians moved out to California and in the summer of 1970, the Vulcan Gas Company closed its doors.

Though it was in operation for less than three years, the Vulcan Gas Company’s influence can still be felt in Austin. “Around 1970, Austin stole all the music thunder,” says Moser. “Partly it’s the booking policy of the Vulcan and Armadillo and their incredibly broad view of what kind of music you could play in front of people: ballet, Stanley Clarke, Chuck Mangione, Devo and the Clash. When you had that menu of music laid out to you week after week, night after night, there wasn’t any reason not to go. That spilled over into other clubs too.” While Austin diversified and its music clubs took off, San Antonio dug its heels into burgeoning punk and metal scenes.

Reverberation Appreciation
Sometime in the mid 2000s, psych returned to Texas in a kaleidoscopic blaze. Since 2004, Austin’s the Black Angels have led the charge with five albums of revivalist psych as pure as a hit of Stanley Owsley acid. The Angels’ Christian Bland has his own theory on psych’s re-entry.

“It’s hearing real rock ‘n’ roll again on the radio,” says Bland. “I got into it hearing the White Stripes on the radio in the early 2000s and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. The Warlocks, Clinic and the Brian Jonestown Massacre got me interested in trying to play the ’60s style, which I grew up listening to.

When I heard these newer bands bringing this sound into the modern day, that piqued my interest and I wanted to do the same.”

Moser, who saw it all as the Austin Chronicle’s music editor from its inception up until this year, understands the new attention a little differently. “Roky never went away,” she says with a smile. “Roky, like Willie Nelson, is one of those musicians who’s revered by everybody. Because the Elevators’ music really was born out of Austin, the city always kept it very close. So when it was time for a genuine revival in psychedelia like the mid-2000s and a band like the Black Angels comes along, they carry the Elevators’ gravitas.”

Marc Anthony Smith, a veteran of psychedelic San Anto, poses an alternative, lysergic account of psych’s return. In November of 2000, the DEA bagged William Leonard Picker, the Walter White of LSD. According to the US government, with Picker’s operation shredded, worldwide LSD availability dropped a staggering 90 percent. “When that happened, LSD was off the scene, too. If anyone said they had it, that was a lie ‘cause it was not anywhere in the South,” says Smith. “Sometime in 2005, it started coming back. And I do think it has something to do with it. If you’re a [air quotes] psych band, if that’s your ethos and there’s not anybody who gets it, that’s hard to play.”

Whether it’s a retro-regurgitation of pop culture, a guitar-rock renaissance, a great time for drugs or a confluence of it all, psych is booming in American music. “There’s a lot of bands playing in garage and psych, the ’60s kind of style,” says Bland. “There were some when we started, but there’s been an explosion that we’ve seen all around the country when we’re on tour.”

To help keep the psych movement churning, Bland and the Angels founded the Reverberation Appreciation Society. “Our goal is to preserve the heritage of psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll that we believe started here in Austin and to keep the legacy alive and to push it into the future,” he says.

The Reverb Appreciation Society record label has recently pressed wax from up-and-comers Holy Wave and Night Beats, and Reverb’s annual celebration Austin Psych Fest has joined the big wigs of the Austin festival circuit.

“The idea came about in 2008,” Bland says. “Having been on tour for two and a half years at that point, we’d met so many cool bands around the country. We decided, ‘Why not throw a psychedelic gathering with our friends on the Saturday before SXSW?’” Since then, Psych Fest has ballooned from a SXSW satellite to its own three-day palooza on Carson Creek Ranch.

“It’s almost doubled every year since we started,” says Bland. “Last year we had 3,500 [attendees]. Our goal is to continue to grow every year. But not by sacrificing and having Toyota come in or something crazy like that. We want the organic and not [to] force any random bands that don’t fit Psych Fest. It has to be a psych-influenced band.”

For Psych Fest 6, “psych-influenced” takes a broad, poptimist definition, concerned more with the mind-manifesting spirit than with the psych rock style. Indie icons Avey Tare and Panda of Animal Collective both play solo sets on Saturday and Sunday, while vaporwave pioneer Oneohtrix Point Never plays Friday night. Of course, the Reverb Appreciation Society chartered some traditional acts too: The Black Angels, ’60s icons the Zombies, San Fran legends Flamin’ Groovies and South London’s Loop, touring the US for the first time since 1990.

In Austin, psych’s heartbeat obviously pulses strong, but if you roll your windows down for a Friday night drive on the St. Mary’s Strip, you’ll hear psych creeping back into SA’s sonic landscape, too. The chameleonic pop of the Flower Jesus Quintet, Crown’s pulsating blues-psych rhythms or Lonely Horse’s spiritual visions burst from SA venues on a weekly basis.

Marc Anthony Smith, who drums with Creatura, “of the Jefferson Airplane school,” and fronts and plays guitar in the Mockingbird Express, “from the Jimi Hendrix school,” credits SA’s psych interests in part to the vanguard up I-35. “It’s a feedover,” says Smith. “It’s like a watering hole. We go up there, get nourished, get worn out and come back. But it’s a return of the style, the psychedelic ethos never left.”

In 2014, with psych re-emerging via exciting new bands in SA and Austin, Texas’ children of tomorrow are becoming heavy once again.   by Matt Stieb

http://www.freepresshouston.com/bubble-puppy/comment-page-1/#comment-178724

For far too many, Houston’s role in music history has merely two stages. In the national media especially, our city’s contributions are typically limited to A) Beyonce and B) ZZ Top. Done. Maybe Townes Van Zandt will get mentioned if you’re dealing with a particularly sharp outsider who knows his Americana. Somehow all the tastemakers and journalists (and certainly all of today’s shallow-ass, poseur hipsters) seem to have never got the memo that for a period of a few short years during the sexual revolution, Houston was home to independent record label International Artists: a rare incubator for blues, rock and early psychedelic music, all with a distinctly Texas flavor. Unless you count the Red Krayola’s Mayo Thompson touring with an entirely new band (and doing mostly new music), or the 13th Floor Elevators’ Roky Erickson playing mostly post-Elevator material, the Bubble Puppy is the only IA band still gigging. Their insanely tight playing and Who-like vocal harmonies are something you’ll never hear on the Eagle, but the Bubble Puppy produced one perfect album at IA and every song on their set list is like a slice of warm, hallucinogenic, apple pie. They played the Continental Club in November and are set to play Dan Electro’s in the Heights on April 25th.

You have maybe one of the coolest rock monikers/reputations of any rock band from your era–that is “the most feared opening act in rock”. It appears many places. Who gave you that title and why do you think it stuck?

The most feared thing was from our habit of blowin’ most of the big name acts we played with off the stage. The Puppy was maybe the most well-rehearsed act out there in those days, when most others would just get out there and play. It was our life entirely, the music and the band–six to ten hours daily, every day, and that made us mighty tough to get the best of. I sometimes think it was a detriment to a degree, in that nobody wants to headline a show with an opener that’s gonna make you look shabby [laughter].

Did you guys get to meet The Who at all when you opened for them in San Antonio?

Ah, it’s common knowledge about the show with The Who. The day before the show, all of The Who except Roger came down to the club in San Antone where we rehearsed, and spent a couple hours jammin’. A fine time indeed for relative beginners like we were then, and after the show, Pete came to our place and we sat up most of the night talkin’ and joking. He’s a mighty fine person, and shared all manner of insights and career advice with us too.

Is it true that George Harrison wanted to do some kind of cover of “Hot Smoke and Sasafrass”?

Well, the actual story is that Apple wanted to lease “Hot Smoke” and promote it, but of course IA wouldn’t let anyone that knew what they were doing handle anything they considered their property. One more instance of the greed and stupidity of those people, and another chance to really exploit the worldwide hit that “Hot Smoke” was was lost to IA’s foolishness. They had no clue what to do with a major hit record, and their idea of touring the Puppy was to send us to Chicago and book us in every little surrounding town for a pittance, when the major agencies would’ve had us all over the planet. Sad but true.

Do you have any plans to release Demian’s only album again?

We’ve talked of a remake of the Demian LP for sales at our shows, and I expect that to come to pass soon.

What are some challenges you encountered in your resurrection of the Bubble Puppy?

It’s been a challenge in a lot of ways, this return to performance. One of the toughest is the fact that I live two-and-a-half hours away from Austin, making rehearsal a major endeavor. Of course the major hard spot was the fact that I’d damaged my fretboard hand in ’90, and wasn’t able to play most of my old parts. This was neatly fixed by the genius of my old friend Mark Miller, who’s the only person I’ve ever know that could play my parts note for note, inflection for inflection–perfectly. In the time we’ve been together, I’ve gotten much better at it though, mostly from just playing again. But I sing more than I play these days, as you saw at the Continental. With those killer players, I don’t need to. This incarnation of the Puppy is more magical performance-wise than any other yet, and there’s no ego trips, no dissention or head games, just pure brotherhood and magic in the music. Mark, Gregg and Jimmy cut their musical teeth on the Puppy and Demian, so it’s been infinitely easy to make the band sound like the original. No, better than that, because of the joy and tight sense of family we all feel in the project. It’s a precious gift for me, and I treasure those guys.

“Bubble Puppy wins 4th Place for Best Performing Rock Band in the Austin Music Polls for 2013-2014! David "Fuzzy" Fore wins 4th place for Best Drummer! Thanks to All our Bubble Puppy Fans and Friends!”

http://www.austinchronicle.com/Awards/MusicAwards/?mode=browse&category=Best%2520Performing%2520Bands&year=2013

PRESS RELEASE:
“…..And so, without further ado, The One! The Only...the ones who opened up for the Who! The ones who opened for Steppenwolf and got more encores than Steppenwolf! They had a number one hit across the world! BUBBLE PUPPY! “

If you were at the Saxon show in August, you heard that very introduction from Ron Oliveria, a fixture on Austin television news for 30-years. The fans responded with an exuberance that echoed for the entire night!!

Bubble Puppy electrified the stage with their hits from the past re-igniting their infamous 60’s music souring into this millennium with renewed energy and amazing talent.

Original members, co-founder, Rod Prince, and David “Fuzzy” Fore, are now joined by Mark Miller, Jimmy Umstattd and Gregg Stegall. This band has not only launched a new wave of enthusiasm from fans, old and new around the globe, but the hard core talent generated from this union of brothers is positively dynamic!

When Bubble Puppy reunited upon request for the AMA’s Texas Hall of Fame award in March of 2011, and then the Texas Legacy award in San Antonio just months later, they are now responding to the call from fans and friends. The answer is…Bubble Puppy is back! With the help of social media, word is spreading that Bubble Puppy has returned to the stage. They’ve performed in Austin, Houston, San Antonio, the UtopiaFest 2013 and are now putting together another great Texas tour for 2014! ., Bubble Puppy is also one of the featured bands in the new book, The Boys from Houston.

“Since the winter of ’66 when me and (Roy) Cox put this together….in all this time, other than the core of the Puppy, and all the incarnations….even as short a time as we’ve had together, it’s these people you see right here…..I’ve never experienced the level of Brotherhood and Music and a Buzz that we have going on right here…..right now” Rod Prince, August 3, 2013.

Bubble Puppy was the second-most-famous '60s rock band named after writings by Aldous Huxley. Which isn't to diminish what the Texas psychedelic rock band accomplished during its four-year run, only to say that Bubble Puppy made one album with one formidable hit before bad business sunk the group. The Doors, which also looked to the English writer for its name, managed to stick around a little longer.

While the Doors' story has been documented to the point of comedy - "I'm drunk. I'm nobody. I'm drunk. I'm famous. I'm drunk. I'm dead," comedian Denis Leary quipped - Bubble Puppy didn't last long enough to be canonized the same way. But discerning '60s psychedelic rock enthusiasts still remember the band's hit "Hot Smoke and Sasafrass," a No. 14 single (more for its sound than spelling) in 1969. The band's sole album, "A Gathering of Promises," still sounds vibrant today; less trippy than much psychedelia, and more like a blueprint for '70s hard rock.

Bubble Puppy played a few reunion gigs, including one in 1985 with the original lineup. More recently, the band assembled in 2011 for the Austin Chronicle's Music Awards and Texas Music Hall of Fame induction.

Singer and guitarist Rod Prince and drummer David Fore have assembled a 21st-century version of Bubble Puppy with guitarists Mark Miller and Gregg Stegall, and bassist Jimmy Umstattd. This ensemble will play the Continental Club Friday night, the first Bubble Puppy show in more than 40 years.

Fore was in the audience at Bubble Puppy's first gig. The band's roots had started with the Bad Seeds, a garage-rock act singer and guitarist Prince started near Corpus Christi in 1964 with bassist and keyboardist Roy Cox. The band relocated to San Antonio and added guitarist Todd Potter. The members settled on the name Bubble Puppy, a variation on a title of a children's game in Huxley's novel "Brave New World."

Bubble Puppy's inaugural gig was opening for the Who at the San Antonio Coliseum in 1967.

Fore says he was "blown away, it wasn't like anything I'd heard." Shortly afterward he got a call from Prince, who was a friend, asking the teenager to quit school and join the band as drummer. The band moved to Austin as a psychedelic scene there began to coagulate. The four members lived together and rehearsed tirelessly.

Houston provided Bubble Puppy its first break. Prince and Cox were recording demos with a friend in town when they got an offer to record for the International Artists label, which also was home to Austin's popular psych-rock band the 13th Floor Elevators.

"In those days, you could do stuff like that," Fore says. "You didn't own that much stuff. So we got in a van and moved to Houston. Eight months later, we were on 'American Bandstand.' "

Houston wasn't the most welcoming environment for those into the psych scene in the day. Outside of the sanctuary of clubs like the Catacombs, Love Street and Club Fantastic, long-haired types were regarded with suspicion by the law.

"I got pulled over once in the middle of the daytime," Fore says. "The guy drug me by the collar and took me to a phone booth and slammed me against it. He called the police station to check on me, but I had no record at all. But inside the clubs the scene was fantastic."

The band had a number of issues with International Artists, as many acts did. Among them was a clumsy approach to releasing music. "Hot Smoke and Sassafras" was the B-side of the song "Lonely." Fore says the band thought "Hot Smoke" should've been the lead single with another B-side, and have "Lonely" released as the second single. KILT and other radio stations played "Hot Smoke," which quickly caught fire. "International Artists had nothing to do with it," Fore says. "We had the DJs to thank."

The song's appeal is obvious. It's tough and gentle, with a forceful beat and lighter harmonies, as well as some alterations in time signature that suggested future prog rock. The song retains a feeling of improvisatory jamming without meandering. The lyrics are the most psychedelic thing about it.

"Our songs were just poppy songs," Fore says. "A lot of them had uplifting themes. The psych part had more to do with the light show. You don't hear it quite as much in the songs. We didn't sound anything like the 13th Floor Elevators. I guess we have some of that reputation from the jamming."

Bubble Puppy hit with "Hot Smoke" before it had an album, "another IA oversight," Fore says. Eventually, "A Gathering of Promises" was assembled, and the band had a record to promote. The cover is a brilliant relic of its era, with the four members dressed by a theatrical costume designer.

"They interviewed each one of us and figured out our personality types," Fore says. "Rod was the Viking, a strong guy in leather. I was kind of a prince in crushed velvet."

Fore no longer has his costume. "I gave it to the world's foremost Bubble Puppy fan," he says. "I tried to wear it on stage, but it didn't work. It was too hard to play in it."

The band's trajectory at that point should've been upward. But International Artists was unable to capitalize on the success of "Hot Smoke," putting the group on strange tour routes that didn't maximize potential audiences. Bubble Puppy was on the same stage as the 1910 Fruitgum Company, a quintessential '60s bubble-gum band. Despite the differences in sound, the association was difficult to shake.

Bubble Puppy eventually shook free of International Artists, which was on the brink of collapse. The band moved to Los Angeles hoping to start anew, though it left things behind, including some recordings. Andy Bradley, chief engineer at SugarHill Studios, says a majestic 15-minute jam is in the studio's vaults.

The four men of Bubble Puppy didn't find fame out West. They made a terrific album in 1970 that documented the band making a transition from psychedelia into a more direct, powerful style of what would eventually become hard rock. "Demian" yielded no hits, but it remains a collector's item, with sellers seeking $50-$100 on eBay for a copy these days.

It was a self-titled recording because the band also left the name Bubble Puppy in Houston. When the group's members settled on "Demian," they became the second-most-famous band to pull a name from the writings of Herman Hesse, author of "Steppenwolf."

By the numbers, Bubble Puppy was a one-hit wonder. But that shouldn't be read as a pejorative. The band's output is rich and deeper than one song.

"A Gathering of Promises" and "Demian" boast a sound ahead of its time. Both deserve reappraisal and new discovery.

by Andrew Dansby

The last time Bubble Puppy took the stage in Houston, it was as the band Demian and it was at a club known as Of Our Own. And it was, to the best of David Fore‘s memory, sometime in 1970.

Friday night, Bubble Puppy finally returns to Houston for an appearance at the Continental Club.

Bubble Puppy, if you don’t remember, was a Texas psychedelic band that recorded for International Artists and had a pretty huge hit in 1969: “Hot Smoke and Sassafras.”

After trouble with record companies and a name change, they called it quits in 1971. They got back together in 2011 when they were inducted into the Austin Music Awards Hall of Fame. Since then they’ve played sporadically, mostly in the Austin area. Just recently they headlined the second night of the Utopia Fest. The band has been honored at the Texas Legacy Music Awards in San Antonio and has a star on the South Texas Music Walk of Fame in Corpus Christi.

Bubble Puppy formed in San Antonio in 1966 and played its first live gig as the opening act for The Who at the San Antonio Coliseum. Fore, a Corpus Christ kid who played drums, knew members of the band. “They completely blew my mind,” Fore said. He was invited to join the band in the summer of 1967 and the lineup for Bubble Puppy was set: Rod Prince on lead guitar vocals, Todd Potter on lead guitar and vocals, Roy Cox on bass and vocals, and Fore on drums.

Bubble Puppy moved to Austin in the summer of 1967, where they live in a house in the country, practiced nonstop and played a couple times a month at the Vulcan Gas Company.

In 1968, Bubble Puppy had taken up residence in a farm house owned by Prince’s grandparents on East Mount Houston Road and were wood-shedding surrounded by 10 acres of pine trees with no neighbors to complain about the noise. They had only three albums to keep them company, Fore said: Steppenwolf, Bread and Wheels of Fire. It was at that house where their sound developed. “We could practice all night, which we often did,” Fore said.

It was on an earlier trip to Houston that Prince and Cox had hooked up with International Artists and abandoned Austin — for a while. Ray Rush, who was to become the Bubble Puppy’s producer, heard some of the band’s original songs and was blown away.

“He thought that we were going to be bigger than The Beatles,” Fore said, adding that’s what everybody said back then. Prince and Cox telegraphed the other band members: “Load the van. Move to Houston.” So they did. “Todd and I were both 17. Rod and Roy were both like 19,” Fore said. They began playing at the local clubs. “I think our first gig was at the Catacombs,” Fore said. After that, they played Love Street mostly.

“We were having so much fun,” Fore said.

In December 1968, Bubble Puppy released its first single on IA records — and it was a hit. It hit No. 14 on the national charts and was No. 1 in Chicago and Miami. Bubble Puppy released its debut album — A Gathering of Promises — in 1969, followed by two other singles that failed to make much of a dent.

Frustrated with the lack of support from IA, they packed it in and moved back to Austin. Fore said in retrospect, it was a bad idea to leave IA because the band was separated from it unreleased recordings. “There are supposedly a lot of master tapes floating around out there that will probably never see the light of day,” Fore said. “I’d just like to hear them again.”

But on the upside, Bubble Puppy got a record deal with ABC-Dunhill Records immediately in Los Angeles and changed its name to Demian. Demian released an album in 1971, but its failure to perform on the charts led to financial difficulties with the label. The group broke up in 1972.

One Bubble Puppy’s website, Prince says, “The years of brutal rehearsals and the live shows we performed every week made us the deadliest of acts to follow.” The motto on the Puppy’s homepage: “The most feared opening act in rock ‘n’ roll history.”

Bubble Puppy toured with the Grass Roots, Canned Heat, Jefferson Airplane, Spirit and Steppenwolf.

“Back then, encores weren’t guaranteed. What would happen is, we were touring with Steppenwolf, we would always get one and they sometimes would. It kind of got to them after a while. Their bass player (Nick St. Nicholas) later became our manager, so I confirmed this with him. They would stay at the hotel until we finished playing — finished doing our encores. Then their roadies would call and they would come over after we finished. So that’s where that motto came from. It was true at the time.”

Ray Rush might have been on to something when he mentioned Bubble Puppy in the same sentence with The Beatles. But International Artists got in the way. Fore said he’d learned about 10 years ago that Apple Records wanted to release Hot Smoke as its first single. Fore said he’d never heard a thing about that. But he was able to later confirm it at a reunion of Corpus Christi friends, when Carl Becker of J-Beck Records told him the story.

“He took a suitcase full of records over to Europe. One of them was ‘Hot Smoke.’ He met with George Harrison, who was already fully aware of Hot Smoke. (Harrison) said, ‘We want to license that.’ So Becker came back to the United States and talked to IA about it. They said they wouldn’t do it because they were going to open a London office. They couldn’t even open a can of tuna. So the story is true. Things would have been so different if they would have done that.”

Today, Prince and Fore are joined by guitarist/vocalist Mark Miller and bassist/vocalist Jimmy Umstattd. Gregg Stegall replaced Potter when he left the band. Cox died in April.

Bubble Puppy is scheduled to play at 10 p.m. followed by Rich Hopkins and the Luminarios at midnight. Rich Hopkins should be very afraid.

by Rick Campbell

Hooray For Earth cooled things off as the sun went down before famed Austin '60s psychedelic act Bubble Puppy brought all of the older attendees down from their campsites. The 'most feared opening act in rock' performed a burner of a set that came to a peak during their hit "Hot Smoke and Sassafras."

This local group were amongst a handful of Sixties psychedelic bands like the 13th Floor Elevators that put Austin on the map as a counter-cultural oasis in the middle of a red state. If you haven't heard of Bubble Puppy you have still probably heard their Top 20 Hit "Hot Smoke and Sassafras" without even knowing the band. The incessant pounding drumbeat keeps the songs thoroughly rocking along with trippy guitar noodling and stoney vocals. We are lucky that classic bands like Bubble Puppy still play, and their performance at UTOPiAfest is guaranteed to bend your mind maaaaaaan.

 From the March 20, 2011 article - Rolling Stone

Bubble Puppy, Austin Music Hall, Saturday night. In 1969, this San Antonio unit had a brief moment in the sun – their burbling garage-on-the-verge-of-psych nugget "Hot Smoke & Sassafrass" reached No. 14 on Billboard's pop chart. They later moved to California and evolved into an ominous proto-metal band called Demian. Forty years ago, they broke up; there was a brief reunion in the mid Eighties, but nobody much noticed. Still, there they were on Austin Music Hall's stage Saturday night as part of an Austin Music Awards event – five men (three guitars, bass, drums) probably all in their sixties, one with a mullet and one with a British Invasion moptop and the most balding one brandishing the most demonic voice, having the time of their lives and letting stoner-rock whippersnappers know how it's done. (One hint: bands back then had to be able to sing). A huge sound, and kind of gorgeous, too – showed how psychedelia presaged not just metal, but the Western country-rock of, say, the Marshall Tucker Band.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/blogs/festivals/the-bands-you-didnt-see-but-maybe-should-have-at-sxsw-20110320#ixzz2qgMmtvyp
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

From August 20, 2012 -Bubble Puppy's hit song Hot Smoke and Sassafras is on the Billy Bob Thorton movie soundtrack for the Jane Mansfield's Car Movie.  Starring Billy Bob Thorton, Robert Duvall and Kevin Bacon.  

Billboard Magazine - From the 3/20/2011 article

Bubble Puppy, Austin Music Hall, Saturday night. In 1969, this San Antonio unit had a brief moment in the sun – their burbling garage-on-the-verge-of-psych nugget "Hot Smoke & Sassafrass" reached No. 14 on Billboard's pop chart. They later moved to California and evolved into an ominous proto-metal band called Demian. Forty years ago, they broke up; there was a brief reunion in the mid Eighties, but nobody much noticed. Still, there they were on Austin Music Hall's stage Saturday night as part of an Austin Music Awards event – five men (three guitars, bass, drums) probably all in their sixties, one with a mullet and one with a British Invasion moptop and the most balding one brandishing the most demonic voice, having the time of their lives and letting stoner-rock whippersnappers know how it's done. (One hint: bands back then had to be able to sing). A huge sound, and kind of gorgeous, too – showed how psychedelia presaged not just metal, but the Western country-rock of, say, the Marshall Tucker Band.

From the July 9, 2012 article by Margaret Moser  

“In the midst of sassafras, many things will come to pass,” intoned Bubble Puppy’s 1969 hit, “Hot Smoke and Sassafras.” An unlikely mirror into the future to be sure, but then who would have predicted a lucky Friday the 13th pairing of Bubble Puppy and San Antonio's the Krayolas this week at Antone's?

Possibilities were endless in those days, which is why the axis of rock & roll still revolves around the music of the Fifties and Sixties. It was made by young people for young people without older generations to co-opt it. There’s even a saying among Sixties garage bands that, “If the band had long hair when you joined, it was already over.”

It was never fair to call Bubble Puppy “garage rock.” That was a term of convenience ensuring the band's authenticity. And they were authentic: David Fore, Rod Prince, Todd Potter, and Roy Cox had played in rock combos and surf bands around Corpus Christi and Austin before Bubble Puppy formed and started practicing weekly at the Pusi-Kat in San Antonio. They made rock & roll of the moment - esoteric, electric, unstoppable.

When “Hot Smoke and Sasafrass” was released in 1969 on International Artists, the label famously associated with the 13th Floor Elevators, it was a big psychedelic deal. Having our boys appear on American Bandstand and all over the radio in those halcyon days of major labels felt like mere steps away from the Beatles on Capitol.

And if it never happened completely for Bubble Puppy, you can fill in the blank with standard reasons - personality conflicts, change of musical direction, outside need for steady income, drugs, a major label effort that stiffed. Nevertheless, Bubble Puppy accumulated a repertoire of songs singular in Texas rock history.

That repertoire pumped out “Hot Smoke and Sasafrass,” while also crackling the velvet electricity of “Elizabeth,” “What Do You See,” and "If I Had a Reason,” music so timelessly rock & roll that it still levitates. Bubble Puppy's reunion set at the Austin Music Awards during last year's South by Southwest prompted Rolling Stone to gush about the band's “huge sound, and kind of gorgeous, too.”

What makes Bubble Puppy's appearance at Antone’s on Friday so rooted in South Texas lore isn’t just a stellar resume. It’s that they're paired with fellow true believers the Krayolas.......

From the July 11, 2012 article by Peter Mongillo

Before Austin/Houston psychedelic rock band Bubble Puppy performed at last year's Austin Music Awards, they went to work. Their first performance in more than 25 years meant getting back to where they could play decades-old songs, including "Hot Smoke and Sassafras," the 1968 hit that put the group on the map.

In some cases, drummer David Fore, who can be heard around town holding down the beat for the Eggmen and the Kopy Kats, wasn't even sure what the 17-year-old David Fore was doing on the recordings. "It was like a different person almost," he says.

The work paid off, and the band played well, earning compliments from publications including Rolling Stone, whose Chuck Eddy was in town for South by Southwest and called their sound "huge" and "kind of gorgeous."

The band enjoyed themselves, too, enough to agree to keep going. A December show at the Saxon Pub yielded similar results. "I couldn't believe it," Fore says. "The energy in the room was insane."

Friday night at Antone's, Bubble Puppy returns again. It isn't the first time they've tried reunion shows — they got back together in 1984 (which resulted in a live album, "Wheels Go Round") — but this time around more fans are coming out, something Fore attributes to the same thing that is helping younger bands reach audiences.

"We tried this in ‘75, and we couldn't find anybody," Fore says. "We couldn't find our crowd; there was no way to advertise. Now with Facebook, it's just awesome."

The band formed in 1966 in San Antonio with Roy Cox, Rod Prince, Clayton Pulley, Todd Potter and Danny Segovia. Fore was in the audience when the band opened for the Who. "They blew my mind," Fore says of Bubble Puppy. He joined, and a year later the band moved to Austin, where they began opening shows for bands including Shiva's Headband.

Their time in Austin didn't last long — a recording contract with International Artists, who put out albums by the 13th Floor Elevators, among others, led them to Houston. They released "Hot Smoke and Sassafras" at the end of 1968. A fiery piece of rock and roll, the band combined searing guitar riffs with more spacey elements to create a hit.

They developed a reputation as a killer live act, hitting the road with Steppenwolf and even upstaging them. "It got to where Steppenwolf wouldn't even come over," Fore says. "Back in the day we would get encores sometimes and Steppenwolf wouldn't."

Fans of the band know how the rest of the story played out. In 1970, because of what they saw as a lack of support from the label, the band moved back to Austin and then on to California, where they changed their name to Demian. They broke up in 1972.

That's the past, though. Bubble Puppy's current lineup, which consists of original members Prince (vocals, guitar), Potter (vocals, guitar) and Fore (drums), as well as Mark Miller (vocals, guitar) and Jimi Umstattd (vocals, bass), are working on new material, which is faithful to the band's early vision. "We're trying to keep it fairly psychedelic and guitar-oriented," Fore says. "There's a reason you got popular, and you've got to at least pay homage to it, or you're in trouble."

Their return also comes at a time when a lot of younger bands are discovering their music. "I've seen kid bands playing ‘Hot Smoke and Sassafras'; it's amazing," Fore says. "It's really nice to be recognized. A whole generation of guitar players grew up listening to Rod."