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On a drizzly afternoon in late October, Sami Serrano sat at a wrought-iron table in the back of Wake the Dead, sipping coffee and making plans. The 20-year-old San Marcos singer-songwriter-guitarist and sound engineer has a ton of them, and they’re all beginning to coalesce.
Serrano’s big plans included playing 2019’s ACL Music Fest with the Pop Queen of Austin, Kady Rain, and will continue this November with her first-ever tour to Arizona and the West Coast.
But they all started right here in her hometown of San Marcos.
“We lived in the neighborhood back then,” Serrano said, gesturing with her coffee cup to the area around Wake the Dead. “There were some free guitar lessons happening, so my grandma signed me up for it. As soon as I was able to get that tool under my belt, I was able to start performing and writing songs. So I joined Cheatham Street Warehouse’s Songwriting Workshop back in 2011.”
At the time, 12-year-old Serrano was on a mission to learn the basics of writing music. The Songwriter’s Workshop contributed to that goal by teaching Serrano how to transform an idea into a song.
“There’s this whole theory on how to write a pop song, or how to write a country/folk song that tells a story, or just a sing-along song. It’s like a calculated thing. They were teaching me that structure,” Serrano explained.
She immediately took what she learned in the Songwriter’s Circle and applied it to her craft. Once she started writing songs, she moved right into performing. She joined a few bands, playing local bars and clubs, and before long, she decided it was time for even more.
“I had a good amount of songs written and I was like, ‘You know what? I kind of want to make an EP,’" Serrano said. "So I found out what an EP was and what I needed to do in order to get my music out there.”
This led Serrano to book time at Fire Station Studios, which subsequently broadened her entire music horizon.
“There was a female [sound] engineer there,” Serrano said. “I didn’t even know what an engineer was, but I saw her, doing her thing on the board, making, like, good-quality, industry-standard stuff, and suddenly, my song wasn’t just an idea any more. It was like something that was packaged now, ready for the world to consume.”
Serrano performs at a show in Salado, Texas. Photo by Christopher Winston
Serrano said this experience brought her an entirely new perspective on the music industry, allowing her to focus from writing and performing to actually making music as well.
“I fell in love with the process,” Serrano said. “Especially seeing a female engineer. I thought, ‘Oh, girls can do this, too?’” That example of representation inspired Serrano to save up her money to buy a Mac and microphone so that she could begin experimenting with recording at home.
Serrano attended San Marcos schools throughout her formative years, graduating from Phoenix Academy in early 2016. It was there that Serrano learned how gratifying it could be to record other people’s music as well as her own.
“When I was at Phoenix,” Serrano said, “I was recording other students who had projects and stuff. It brought me just as much satisfaction to bring other people’s music to life as my own. Then I started looking into schools because I realized that’s a profession you can do.”
Serrano’s search for music schools brought her to The Recording Conservatory of Austin, where she became involved with a collective of musicians all learning the industry and working on projects together.
“All the opportunities that have come in the past year, getting into the Austin music scene, just getting to know everyone, was all because of TRCOA,” Serrano said. “As long as you see it as an opportunity, and you’re the first one there and the last one to leave, you’re going to end up getting to know people.”
Which was how Serrano connected with Kady Rain. As the music engineer on Rain’s music video for the TRCOA’s Artist Grant, Serrano was the right-place-right-person choice to play guitar with Rain’s band at ACL.
“It was a dream come true,” Serrano said of her two weekends at ACL. “I don’t ever want to do anything else except music for the rest of my life. It was really like the stuff you see in movies.”
Rain’s manager liked what he saw in Serrano and offered to represent her as well, including Serrano in Rain’s touring schedule, starting with the Mesa Music Festival in Arizona and then continuing on to Seattle to play with R&B pop/ synth artists Corey Kendricks and Johnny Jukebox. Further afield, Serrano has a selftitled EP set for release next year, as well as recording projects through TRCOA with EDM artists like Bronze Whale.
In addition to learning the ropes as a sound engineer, Serrano works as a music teacher at the Austin School of Rock, something she said gives her immense satisfaction.
“It’s Hogwarts for music,” Serrano said. “The work we’re doing with School of Rock is like magic, because it’s all the misfits coming together. If someone says to me, ‘you really helped me with what I’m working on,’ that is what I live for.”
And at her heart, sharing that experience is what it’s all about. Because of her soulful vocals, raw emotion, and unapologetic message of truth, Serrano has been compared in the past to Amy Winehouse, though she credits a blend of everything from Stevie Ray Vaughn to Ariana Grande as primary influencers of her style.
Serrano plays guitar during a set at a Tribute To Scorpio Pop Stars show hosted by Kady Rain and Kim Trails. Photo by Sara Petees
But Serrano also said that two other factors further define her an artist.
The first is her connection to Texas, which runs beneath it all, anchoring her to her roots.
“Austin really is the place to be,” Serrano said. “I forget, sometimes. When I go to other places, I’m like, ‘where’s the music?’ Not everywhere’s like Austin, where you walk down the street and like Joan Jett’s going hard up in Stubb’s. Even in Gruene or on the Devil’s Backbone, there’s some guy wailing on a guitar, saying, ‘I played with Willie Nelson.’ Everyone has this unique story that’s all Texas. There’s something in the air out here.”
The other factor that defines Serrano’s music is her identification as an LGBT artist, something that resonates strongly within her songs.
“I like being a gay musician,” Serrano said. “I don’t feel like I want to limit it to being gender-neutral. I’m talking about a girl, I’m saying she and her. I want it to connect with other LGBT people because we don’t have enough of it. That’s why I want to put a lot of gay into the pop music I’m playing because young gay people can relate to it. I needed that when I was coming out of the closet,” she elaborated. “I needed to hear it, to know that it’s okay, that other people feel that way, too.”
With so much passion and devotion to her craft, it’s easy to understand how Sami Serrano has come so far, so fast. And it’s not just about performing, though Serrano clearly loves that, too, but the science and skills behind the music, the things that take a good song to something great.
“I love how I feel when I hear good music that connects,” Serrano said. “It makes me feel like I’m not alone. It makes me feel included. I want to make other people feel like that. You just want to speak truth.”
And that’s exactly what she plans to do.
Sami Serrano’s music can be found on streaming platforms such as Spotify and Soundcloud. After her tour, she’ll return home, so look for her EP release in early 2020. You can also check out her production company online.
