Seratones at Proud Larry’s
Published 2:14 pm Tuesday, November 1, 2016
On October 27, the blues-driven rock ‘n’ roll quartet Seratones from Shreveport, Louisiana commanded the stage at Proud Larry’s.
With their fiery debut album, “Get Gone”, recently coming out on the Oxford label Fat Possum, the band have more than one direct connection to Lafayette County: their record was also produced at Dial Back Sound in Water Valley.
Seratones frontwoman AJ Haynes says that getting found by Fat Possum was a stroke of fate.
“It was totally serendipitous,” Haynes said. “We were playing our first out-of-town show as Seratones in Hot Springs, Arkansas and we were the opening band that night. The lead singer from the second band, NERVES, used to work at the warehouse at Fat Possum and told them about us. Bruce (the Fat Possum Label Manager) and Matthew (the President) contacted me the next week and we signed to them almost immediately after playing a showcase in Oxford.”
Haynes says that she had been a longtime fan of Fat Possum and their diverse roster of artists which ranges from classic blues to surf punk to psychedelic rock.
Though the music of Seratones draws from classic rock and soul artists like Jimi Hendrix and Aretha Franklin, Haynes was entrenched in the DIY punk scene in her native Shreveport.
“Right around the time I met the guys in my band and we started hanging out, they were putting on punk shows and it just felt like home and familiar,” Haynes said. “It reminded me of being in church when I was in Columbia, Louisiana. It was a small group of people, like a tribe. We were looking out for each other.”
This raw punk spirit can be heard all over the album “Get Gone”, particularly on the barnstorming opener “Choke On Your Spit” and the charging “Headtrip”.
But Haynes and the band try to eschew labels when writing their songs.
“We’re not necessarily going for pop or punk or blues or jazz, but rather how we make it meaningful for us,” she said. “At the end of the day, we have to sing these songs over and over again, so you might as well state your truth.”