You've probably never heard of Aucklander Kelly Sherrod — yet. Joanna Wane meets the Nashville-based musician whose reinvention as Proteins of Magic is as unexpected as her choice of adopted home.
The flag still flies for Donald Trump in rural Tennessee, where Kelly Sherrod lives in the woods outside Nashville, with rattlesnakes and coyotes for company and weird microscopic bugs called chiggers that bury eggs in your skin and make you itch until you bruise.
It's the kind of place where you think twice about flipping the bird if someone's being a jerk because they might have a gun in the glove box (the Bible Belt state is Republican-red, in a country where nearly one in five Americans believes mass shootings have been faked by groups trying to promote stricter gun-control laws).
The sprawling, tumbledown house where Sherrod has spent the past 13 years with her American husband, Matt Sherrod — a drummer who used to play for Crowded House — and now their young son Marlo, is surrounded by 12 hectares of forest.
"When I first moved there, Matt was away on tour a lot and I was in the house in the woods by myself," says Sherrod, a musician and multimedia artist who has reinvented herself as the solo performer Proteins of Magic. "I was straight-up scared some nights. I'm not anymore. I do feel a sense of protection in the woods."
The guy next door hunts deer on his property, which is three times the size. Sherrod is a vegetarian who has two pet pigs, Echo and Dolly, but if you're ever in trouble, she reckons you couldn't ask for better neighbours. Another local she collaborated with recently on a creative project turned out to be a conspiracy theorist and evangelical Christian. "It's kind of an unspoken thing where you know their politics are on the other side of yours. But those same people who have these very narrow views would probably die for you. They're really loyal in that way."
On the lower level of the house, partly underground, is the studio where she writes and records her visceral alt-pop art music, with its layered harmonies and powerful, surging intensity. A separate space, hung with her large painted canvases, is where she creates extraordinary multimedia videos that are projected onto giant screens behind her during live shows.
Lord knows what they make of her in rural Nashville, with her bleached-blonde buzz cut, ethereal chalk-white skin and preternaturally long fingers — so long that by the age of nine, she could play a full-length flute. "They probably think I'm pretty weird," she says, with a laugh. "And they do think New Zealand is exotic. It was a bit odd when Marlo's school bus driver started following me on Instagram."
It's been a breakthrough year for Sherrod, who headlined her first New Zealand tour last month and is on the verge of signing her first recording contract. Her latest single, "Lethal" — a searing take on temptation and embracing the power of the dark side — made it to number one on the SRN (Student Radio Network) Top 10 and she's just been announced on the bill for Splore. She's now back in the US recording a new EP and preparing for a UK/Europe tour supporting alt-rock Australian singer-songwriter William Crighton next year.
Sherrod was part of the duo Punches with James Duncan in the early 2000s and played bass in Shayne Carter's Dimmer. In September, she was back with the band as Proteins of Magic, supporting Dimmer's eight-show "I Believe You Are a Star" anniversary tour, which was close to a sellout. Carter, who's watched her evolution as a solo performer, describes her as a true artist. "I consider her in that lineage of female musicians with a completely unique voice and approach, in the tradition of Nina Simone, Nico, Patti Smith, Bjork, etc. She is the real deal."
Now 41, Sherrod doesn't just transform on stage, she almost seems possessed; this solitary, commanding presence at the keyboard, a bass guitar and flute within reach, a loop pedal at her feet creating hypnotic sounds that build to a pulsating crescendo. A "bellowing siren song", is what one reviewer wrote about her voice, which spontaneously dropped from a sweet, light tone to a deep, powerful roar after she started working with a vocal coach a couple of years ago to improve her pitch. The contrast is disorienting when you hear how gentle and softly spoken she is between songs.
Six months ago, she shaved her head — "a part of me has always been anti-establishment, not wanting to fit into the mould of what other people think I should be" — and she doesn't feel comfortable in dresses. So she ain't Tammy Wynette. In their rural community, husband Matt probably raises as many eyebrows as she does. "He's the only brown guy around for a few miles."
How they ended up on the outskirts of America's country music capital is a story in itself. Matt grew up in Los Angeles — his father developed California's state-school curriculum in African American studies before becoming a Hollywood stuntman — and wanted out. Apparently, the choice was between Nashville and Detroit.
The couple first met on a tour bus in the US when Matt was drumming for Crowded House after Paul Hester's death (Sherrod, who briefly dated Liam Finn, had been at the Texas music festival South by Southwest with Dimmer). Then in 2008, they bumped into each other again at a bar in Auckland. Creatively, they have what Sherrod calls "a very special glue". Matt co-wrote "Lethal" and they work alongside each other in their home recording studio.
Nashville's music scene is legendary and despite the poisonous snakes and political tensions, there's a part of Sherrod that's thrived creatively on living with an element of danger, away from New Zealand's softer edges. "Every famous artist comes through here. I guess it's like you're on the edge of opportunity and I think America just has that feeling for me."
Being an outsider is something she's become used to. Growing up in Auckland, she never quite fitted in, either. Not as an awkward loner at a private school like Dio, where the other girls mistook her extreme shyness for being aloof and the school didn't know what to make of it when she set up her first band at the age of 16 — the same year she won most promising female musician at NZ Rockquest after playing a slap-bass solo she'd learnt from listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Not as a fine arts student at Elam, either, where she lacked direction and exasperated both herself and her tutors. And not when she's back home from Nashville and staying at her mother's house in Remuera, overlooking the sparkling inlet at Hobson Bay (her father died in 2008). "I've always felt a bit out of place," she shrugs. "So it's okay. I guess I've gotten comfortable with that."
In 2013, she toured the US and Europe with Oscar and Grammy winner Ryan Bingham, but for a long time after moving to Nashville, music largely took a back seat. Holed up in her art studio, she concentrated on painting and picked up lucrative work retouching digital food photography for restaurant menus that often changed on a weekly basis. "I kind of hid in the woods for 10 years," she says. "I don't know how that happened, but it did."
The name Proteins of Magic came from former Mars Volta bassist Juan Alderete, a friend of Matt's, who dropped the phrase into a conversation one day. It struck a chord with Sherrod, who asked his permission to use it. (A couple of months later, that took on extra significance when Alderete suffered a severe brain injury from which he has never fully recovered.)
For her, the words symbolise the genesis of her emergence as a solo artist. Already a seasoned musician, she says having Marlo, and the sudden death of a close friend in Nashville, made her aware of her own mortality.
"That definitely pushed me forward. I had a lot to break through, just believing in myself, really. You have to make that decision to open yourself up and be really vulnerable. I've always wanted to do this for as long as I can remember but I was never able to untap the potential of the world of music. It's only fully opened up to me now."
Last year, Sherrod came back to New Zealand to release her first album as Proteins of Magic, honing her live performance by playing under-the-radar gigs at open mic nights, sometimes to just a handful of people.
"They were all really bad. And then at some point, it just clicked," says Sherrod, who brought Marlo out with her and ended up staying in Auckland for most of the year as Covid swept through the US. "At some point during that trip, I found something in my live performance. And when I went back to Nashville, it just kept growing and getting stronger."
Old band posters are plastered all over the walls at Nivara Lounge, Hamilton's hippest underground music venue with its low, dark ceiling and retro chandeliers. American soul blues singer Big Daddy Wilson (twice). Alt-country brother and sister duo The Acfields from Queensland. Reb Fountain. Someone called Lesbian Painter.
It's the birthplace of hip-hop in Kirikiriroa, according to the sound technician, who's a musician and DJ on the side. "This is where P-Money practised his scratching before he went off to the DMC World [DJ] Championships." Tonight, Proteins of Magic is heading the bill — the sixth stop in Sherrod's national tour.
At the back of the stage, a pair of white sheets are clipped up as a makeshift backdrop for her video projections. She's never played Hamilton before and the weather is miserable, so she isn't sure if anyone will actually turn up. At the end of the gig, she'll pack up her rental car and drive back to Auckland in time to catch an early-morning flight south for her final two shows. In Oāmaru, where the venue is artist Donna Demente's Grainstore Gallery, it's a sellout.
Back in Nashville, it's fall and the woods will be awash with beautiful fireworks colours. She's already bought pink smoker lollies (for Marlo) and Peanut Slabs (for Matt) to take back with her. By then, she'll have been away for two months. Life on the road can be lonely, travelling solo, but the economics make sense. The tour won't make money but she hasn't lost money, either.
"I might even be able to go back and buy some groceries for a couple of weeks," says Sherrod, who thinks giving up drinking alcohol has helped keep her head in a good space. "But breaking even is cool. I'm sowing seeds."
Gradually the rows of second-hand couches and chairs begin to fill. Sitting right up front are a local couple who stumbled across Proteins of Magic on YouTube. By the end of the show, they're buzzing. It's like they've discovered a secret and can't wait for the rest of the world to catch up.
Being signed to a record label will take some of the pressure off Sherrod who's operated completely independently until now, giving her more time to write and exposing her music to a much wider audience.
Particle Recordings label manager Margot Didsbury spent 16 years immersed in London's music industry before moving home to Aotearoa with her young family in January to run the new imprint for Bigpop, an Auckland-based record label and music publisher that has a central-city recording studio. Proteins of Magic is one of her first signings.
Didsbury went to art school with Sherrod — "I've always seen her as quite otherworldly" — and has followed her career closely for the past two decades. She's always been a believer in Sherrod's work and says the chemistry is potent in her live performance.
"That's where the power lies; the audience sees her magic and they're hooked. Everything is surprising about Kelly; it's very hard to put her in a box. But even if she finds a more avant-garde niche, if that world knows about her, they'll be with her forever."
