KASU Bluesday Tuesday Concert to Feature Live Wire Band
JONESBORO, Ark. — The Live Wire Band, known for playing classic rock hits as well as the blues, will present a concert, Tuesday, Nov. 12, as part of the KASU Bluesday Tuesday series. The concert gets underway at 7 p.m. at Newport Country Club, 703 Walker Drive, in Newport. KASU is Arkansas State University’s public radio 100,000-watt station.
The Live Wire Band, based in West Helena, Ark., and known for playing classic rock hits of bands like the Bee Gees, Bachman Turner Overdrive, Steve Miller Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd, to name a few. Coming from Phillips County, home of the King Biscuit tradition, Live Wire also plays some blues numbers.
The band’s leader, Troy “Skeet” Seaton of West Helena, comes from a musical family. At the age of eight, Skeet started playing house parties with his dad A.G. Seaton and other local musicians. Skeet’s grandfather Adler Seaton was a trumpeter and violinist in an orchestra that played throughout eastern Arkansas in the 1930s and 1940s and was broadcast live on radio stations. Skeet’s father, A.G. Seaton, plays six different instruments, specializing in piano and accordion, and Skeet learned to play a wide variety of musical styles under the tutoring of his dad.
At the age of 15, Skeet began his career as a drummer for a band that played in West Helena’s famous Delta Supper Club. The Supper Club was a proving ground for musical legends such as Harold Jenkins (Conway Twitty), Ronnie Hawkins, Levon Helm, and Jerry Lee Lewis to name a few. Over the years Skeet has played with such rockabilly greats as Eddie Bond, Narvel Felts, C.W. Gatlin and Jimmy Evans. Skeet was inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame in 2011.
Citing inspirations that included jazz drummer Buddy Rich, the Dave Clark Five and the legendary Levon Helm (from Marvell, Ark.), Skeet said, “The most nervous I ever got was the time I played for a hometown festival in Helena with another locally grown boy standing right behind me offstage. It was Levon.” Helm, who died last year, was the drummer for The Band, an iconic musical group of the 1960s and 1970s.
The Live Wire band includes Seaton on drums, Henry Edgin on rhythm guitar and vocals, John Pope on bass guitar and Jimmy Rogers on lead guitar. Seaton noted, “This band has been together 10 years – that’s a long time for a club band. When I started playing in West Helena, we never had to leave town. Now a lot of those clubs have closed and we’re used to traveling 30 miles to 100 miles or more to play.” And then smiling, Seaton said, “ I’m glad that we’re playing in Sonny Burgess’s hometown of Newport — it has quite a nightclub history of its own.”
KASU Bluesday Tuesday concerts are held on the second Tuesday night of each month at Newport Country Club and are underwritten by ASU-Newport, C and C Distributors, and Harris Ford. KASU station manager Mike Doyle passes the hat for the bands, a KASU tradition. For more information, contact Doyle at (870) 972-3486 or through e-mail at mdoyle@astate.edu
