MERCURY SHOT

This is MERCURY SHOT's story

  James "Sonny" Freitas frontman for MERCURY SHOT was born and raised in East Los Angeles. During Sonny's early years, Sonny found interests from a wide range in great music styles. Blues, Jazz, Metal, Progressive, and alternative Rock as well as movie scores and soundtracks. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Sonny played in bands that typically had no edge, focus or just wanted to stay in the garage. But Sonny wanted more out of the music. 

So he sought out to build his own band and image. 

Somewhere around 2003, Sonny was given some inspiration that ultimately would become the core scope of what was to be MERCURY SHOT. MERCURY SHOT's origin came from an idea on a piece paper drawn by Sonny's father. 

The drawing depicted an epic interstellar rock band led by a legendary star hero named Sonny James Mercury. The concept and alter ego was there, but the idea didn't come to fruition until late 2004. 

When Sonny began recording on a simple 4 track recorder. The songs he wrote were dreamy heavy rock ballads, inspired by his life and his loved ones. 

  During 2004 -2007, Sonny wrote and performed in a few friends local band. Doing covers and performing some of his own songs when he could. Yet something was missing when he played in these bands. Sonny felt that there was any drive or originality when is came to the bands played in. So Sonny sought to make his own band. 

 At the end of 2006 Sonny auditioned guitarist, but none of them real felt right, until she walked in.  

Lalaine C. a charismatic and creative musician who was also raised in East Los Angeles. Lalaine grow up on Rock n Roll and Classical style music all her life. Lalaine and Sonny jammed out, and Lalaine saw that Sonny had a inspiring way of creating and expressing life through his songs. So the following year Lalaine became the bands official rhythm guitarist and co-writer. Sonny and Lalaine also agreed on MERCURY SHOT in dedication to Sonny's father.

Upon the official band name, Sonny decided to go by the alter ego stage name of Sonny James MERCURY. 

 During the next few years, the band auditioned numerous drummers and bass players while playing small gigs acoustically and with a cheap drum machine.  

In the summer of 2015 Sonny James and Lalaine put an ad out for a bass player on social media. A few players answered but again none of them shared the same ideas as Sonny James did. A month later Sonny received a message on Facebook from a friend that he hadn't seen or heard from for almost 15 years.

Sergio Ramirez or Serg was a rough, in your face metal head drummer that played with a few well known bands throughout Los Angeles. Serg still playing with a progressive rock, wanted to a change up from playing the drums and wanted to pick up the bass again. After a few jams with Sonny and Lalaine, the duo knew that Serg was the right one 

for MERCURY SHOT's lineup. 

MERCURY SHOT was almost complete, now all they needed was a drummer. The band went through numerous drummers throughout early 2015. But in August of 2015, Serg mentioned that he might know a potential drummer. So Sonny and Lalaine agreed to meet the potential drummer. 

Albert Ruiz also known as Beto was a native to Los Angeles. So Serg asked if Beto would sit in on a couple of rehearsals to see if he liked what MERCURY SHOT had to offer. 

MERCURY SHOT jammed out with Beto and found that Beto had a style of drumming that was different from the previous drummers. A rhythmic blunt trauma beat none of the drummers had. His style was a mixture of Buddy Rich's precision and Neal Peart's power. Sonny James, Lalaine, Serg and Albert all felt that they were a great fit.  

So on August 19, 2016 Beto was made the official drummer for MERCURY SHOT.

MERCURY SHOT now complete, they began working on bring back real music to the masses.