Seymour, Texas is exactly the kind of place you’d expect to find a great new rock band — small, quiet, and some would say, boring. It’s the kind of place where you indulge your passions, because in a town of about 2,500 people, there isn’t much of anything else to indulge.
Small towns have produced performers like John Mellencamp, 3 Doors Down, Kacey Musgrave, and countless others. It should be really no surprise, then, that there’s a just-emerging act coming out of the small town 40 minutes west of Wichita Falls — Seymour’s talented and engaging Brass Skulls.
The first time we saw Brass Skulls perform was during Fall of 2023 at an outdoor concert in Bud Daniel Park, and it was electric. They returned to the city on this occasion for a show at the Iron Horse Pub (in support of Strange Lucy,) led by charismatic singer and songwriter Landon Green.
As we noted last fall, Brass Skulls is a talented rock band that plays covers of classic and new rock, like Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam, among others. Their show at the Iron Horse was about seventy percent cover tunes by our estimation, with a healthy sprinkling of original music, and that is where the promise of Brass Skulls emerges.
Throughout the night, the Skulls played original tracks with titles like Whole, Live and Take, Haunting, Nothing, and Heartless, and each song had some kind of compelling element — a riff, a hook, a chorus. Their first original of the night, Can’t Change Me, was particularly good.
Green and drummer Dave Navarro are the primary songwriters in Brass Skulls and it shows in their onstage chemistry. As with previous gigs, Navarro stood out on backing vocals, singing great harmonies with Landon all night.
Guitarist Clayton Miller and his six-string brother, lead guitarist Roger Smithson, kept it moving with straightforward electric guitar, and Dave’s wife, Sam Navarro, put on her usual bass clinic.
Did we mention that John Mellencamp is from Seymour, Indiana? Sometimes the most extraordinary talent comes from the most unexpected places.
We’re very much looking forward to Brass Skulls getting into the studio and putting down some of these original songs for our listening pleasure, which the band told me they hope to do soon.
Have you seen Brass Skulls perform? Tell us about it in the comments.
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