Serita’s Black Rose Duo has been moving their audiences with emotionally-charged performances for more than two decades. Octave Records’ newest release, Serita’s Black Rose Duo, presents vocalist, harmonica player and self-described “funkateer” Serita Crowley and her longtime partner, guitarist Jon Hayes in an inspired set of timeless covers of favorite songs from the 1960s and 1970s.
Joined by bassist/vocalist Robert K. Pace II and Callum Bair on keyboards, guitars and percussion, Serita’s Black Rose Duo offers their soulful takes on an eclectic mix of songs from Bad Company, Blind Faith, Jim Croce, Dave Mason and more, plus an original blues, “Out to Sea.”
Serita and Jon and their musicians have played countless gigs, and it shows in their musical empathy and ability to inspire each other, often on the spur of the moment. Serita Crowley’s powerful, bluesy vocals can soar, or get intimate. Jon Hayes is an agile acoustic guitarist and a supportive backup singer. They bring a distinct flavor to the material, and Rob Pace and Callum Bair round out the sound of the record with solid, driving bass playing and adept instrumental touches. This isn’t your average duo.
Serita Crowley. Courtesy of Jon Hayes.
Serita’s Black Rose Duo was recorded using Octave Records’ Pure DSD high-resolution recording process, to capture not only every nuance and dynamic expression but the feeling and the humanity of their performances. Like every Octave Records recording, it brings the musicians to the listeners with remarkable clarity. Serita’s Black Rose Duo was recorded and mixed by Paul McGowan and Callum Bair at Octave Studios, with Logan DeWild assisting. The album was mastered by Gus Skinas. The album was mixed and mastered using Octave Records’ state-of-the-art monitoring chain, featuring a PS Audio PMG Signature DAC and preamp and Aspen FR30 loudspeaker, to ensure the highest level of fidelity during every step of the process.
Serita's Black Rose Duo leads off with Bad Company’s “Ready for Love,” and they take it into slow-burn territory, with Serita delivering the lyrics with unstoppable conviction. Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” finds her hitting high notes and higher emotions, spiced by lead guitar stabs and a rich bed of Hammond B-3 organ. The album’s original, “Out to Sea,” features Serita on harmonica and the blues gets intense: “somebody help me/I’m drifting deeper and deeper into the sea/What have I done to deserve such misery?
“Summer Breeze” brings a soulful vibe with a harder edge than the original, as does “Make it With You,” a powerful makeover of the breezy Bread version. “Operator” features adept fingerpicking from Jon Hayes, and beautiful harmonies from Serita and Jon. Their version of Dave Mason’s “We Just Disagree” adds a sharper, more regretful focus to the lyrics. “Wild World” closes the album, adding a gritty street-wise feeling to the song with its stark instrumentation and Serita’s sympathetic delivery of the song’s message.
Serita’s Black Rose Duo features Octave’s premium gold disc formulation, and the disc is playable on any SACD, CD, DVD, or Blu-ray player. It also has a high-resolution DSD layer that is accessible by using any SACD player or a PS Audio SACD transport. In addition, the master DSD and PCM files are available for purchase and download, including DSD 512, DSD 256, DSD 128, DSD 64, and DSDDirect Mastered 352.8 kHz/24-bit, 176.2 kHz/24-bit, 88.2 kHz/24-bit, and 44.1 kHz/24-bit PCM. (SRP: $29.)
I spoke with Serita and Jon about the making of the album.
Frank Doris: Can you tell me a little bit about how you got together and what kind of music you like to play?
Jon Hayes: Serita and I are a couple, and we've been together about 23 years. She was working at a food place and was putting up flyers, scouting for musicians. I was looking for somebody else to collaborate with. We hung out a few times and played, and then I ended up moving in around the corner, and the next thing you know, she moved in with me and we became a couple. So we've been doing this music thing as a couple for a few decades.
FD: So obviously it's working out.
JH: Well, so far so good. Neither of us have gone to jail or into the hospital yet.
We started early on playing as a duo and then tried to expand into a full band, and going through all the different headaches that come along with adding more people. So then we decided we're just going to hire musicians and go that route. But ultimately, we've landed with our dear friends, Robert Pace and Mark Weymouth. We have a relationship with those guys that's kind of a cohesive unit.
Jon Hayes. Courtesy of Tim Motley.
FD: Did you all fly to Colorado to record the album?
JH: Serita and I decided to drive there because I'm a left-handed guitar player and there's no way I'm putting my guitars on a plane. I'm actually right-handed. The only thing I do left-handed is play guitar. Which everybody is always shocked by.
FD: That’s really unusual. I’m a lefty who plays righty which as you know is much more common. You play guitar, and then Serita does most of the vocals?
Serita Crowley: I do most of the vocals. I'm out front and I play harmonica.
FD: I like the grit in your voice, and the way you take chances on a few of the songs, where you just go for the high notes.
SC: Thank you. Yeah, over the years, we would play festivals and things like that, and I'd have friends standing out in front of us and they're studying me, and they're like, “How do you do this and that?” And you know what? The only advice I can give is to do you, because you can't do someone else. There's only one Jimi Hendrix. There's only one Janis. There's only one Tina Turner, and then there's you. So whatever it is that you have to lend to folks' ears, your niche is what you should do.
FD: In 1991, Les Paul told me the same thing. He said that you can copy other guitar players’ licks. You can learn from them, but you'll never sound like them, so don't bother trying. But then again, they'll never sound like you. So what you should concentrate on is sounding like you.
SC: There you go.
FD: And that really comes across in the way you cover the songs. How do you make them your own? Because you don’t sound like the duo in the corner of the restaurant, that everyone ignores and that sounds like every other bar duo you've ever heard.
SC: I have over a thousand vinyl albums, and some 45s. I even have that little flimsy square thing that was on the back of a cereal box…
FD: A Flexi-Disc!
SC: I grew up [with vinyl], and somehow it got into my head, and so I live and I feel [it], and I don't get that with a lot of new stuff today. And I always like to keep it original. [That music] makes you feel younger, it makes you feel…it takes you back to a time when you were safe, you felt good. The air was a little different, the trees and everything were just better, and the [artists] actually had something to say. It wasn't AI-driven or anything like that.
FD: Or you didn't have 12 people writing the songs and putting down 400 tracks – I heard there was an Aerosmith record where they actually did that – and destroying the feel. Did you do the album mostly live?
JH: We drove from Michigan to Colorado. Initially it was just going to be Serita and I, and then our bass player, Robert Pace, tagged along. He's one of the most talented bass players around, amazing. The first two days it was just Serita and I going in and we recorded 10, 12 songs live initially. By the third day Robert came in and ended up recording bass on most of the songs so we re-recorded them live.
It was done in a very old school [way]. We're not hiding behind [big] production or Autotune. It's raw, it's organic, and it's natural.
FD: How did you get introduced to Paul and Octave Records?
JH: A few years ago, I was doing a wedding gig, and one of the guys that was helping to run sound was Logan DeWild. I was shocked to later learn that he was only 17 years old, because I was taken aback about how much knowledge he had of so many things. He had met Paul at an audio show a few years ago, and more recently had shared some of our music with Paul, who really liked it and asked if we wanted to come to Octave. It was an amazing experience, and we are so grateful to Paul and his crew for the opportunity; it’s been a great collaboration for us as musicians to make a record there. Callum Bair was the main producer we worked with and he is crazy talented. He played guitar and added some extras like organ and keys which I think help support the raw nature of the tracks.
FD: What did it feel like to listen to your music played back on a really high-end setup?
JH: It is very different. I didn't really know what DSD was prior to this, [and] the recordings we did…it was just very, very different. It had a very clean depth to it, but very raw and organic. And we listened to other records that were done in PCM format, and even those just sounded incredible. Each instrument had its own space in the room, and you could just see where they were visually.
FD: That's the mark of a really good high-end system, to get that illusion of people being in space and having the speakers disappear.
JH: But I feel like it's just totally the opposite direction of how most music is recorded and produced in studios. It is my understanding that Octave Records uses little to no EQ that [Paul] adds I'm hearing, and rarely does he add any compression. It's almost like the studio is designed to sound so good naturally within the space, using the right type of microphones… So much music, most of it that's out there is manipulated so much because you're EQ’ing and compressing and adding all these extra plugins and effects on each different channel, and then you're compressing those again.
FD: I like the way they made jazz albums in the 1950s and 1960s. Something really gets lost in today's modern production.
JH: When you recorded back old school like that, I think people just thought of recordings very differently, when you had limited tracks, and especially if you were in a studio that was really expensive, and tape was really expensive. I think people really want to see things in their real form, mistakes and imperfections and all, and really embracing those things: just give it to 'em raw and who cares [if it’s not “perfect.”]
FD: On some of the vocals I could tell that Serita was just going for it. How did you pick the songs?
JH: We didn't really know what we were going to do. When people ask us what kind of music we play, we always say, “the good kind.”
It's songs from the Seventies that I feel like people generally react to. We get more of a reaction from those songs when we play them live. And I feel like thematically, they kind of went together. They were curated in a way that I think was a good choice of songs that worked together.
FD: Even if it's kind of on a subconscious level, it's not a disjointed song selection, and you're not doing the usual bar band stuff from the bar band playing in the corner of the restaurant who everyone’s ignoring. I don't know how it is where you are, but where I live, if you hear a bar band, you're going to hear “Wagon Wheel”…
SC: Oh my god, we're not going to do that. No. And we're not going to do “Brown-Eyed Girl.” We're not going to do “Sweet Caroline,” “Free Bird.” We’re not that band. We’ll do “Free Bird” if you put $23,000 into our tip jar. And every time someone calls out, “Free Bird!”…
FD: …Which stopped being funny about 40 years ago…
SC: …The price keeps going up. We're at like a million dollars now if they want us to play that song, and we don’t even know it, lol!
JH: We do all kinds of [songs]; we run the whole gamut when it comes to gigs. I'm more trying to make ourselves pleased than I am the audience. Because if we don't feel good about what we're doing, then how are they going to feel good about it? We put “Ready for Love” on the album to honor Mick Ralphs [guitarist for Bad Company and Mott the Hoople who passed away in 2025 – Ed.]
FD: You cover “Make it With You,” and people make fun of Bread. They think it’s mushy soft rock. But…
SC: No, people love that. That's a great song.
While I'm singing, I will walk out and dance with people. I like to involve everybody. I know that the audience likes to be participants in this. And so it's my job to make sure that happens. And that's what I love to do. I will walk out there with my harmonica. I will dance with people. We do “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay.” And it's fun to see how many people can whistle [the part at the end of the song]. So we make it fun for everybody; we’re not just some, like you said, bar band in the corner.
We were at a gig, and played “Danny's Song” (by Loggins and Messina), and a woman came up to me and said, “thank you so much for dancing with my husband. You just made his whole night. That meant everything to him because he has stage four cancer and you actually got him to dance.”
JH: [Music] is supposed to be something that makes people feel something.
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