HOLDING HER OWN
Sherita Perez says her story is one of “absolute suffering and rising up out of the ashes.”
“My life was really awful,” says Perez, a musician who grew up in Texas City inside what she calls a cycle of violence and poverty.
“I was always sick. I would be covered in hives and itching. I had crazy problems. My digestive system shut down. Everywhere I went, there was just drama and craziness.”
And it wasn’t an easy circumstance to escape, as Perez likens the situation to the crabs in the bucket mentality.
“One tries to get out, and the others pull it back down to try to get out themselves. That’s what I was encountering,” she says. “I just had to leave. I didn’t know what was coming, but I just couldn’t grow.”
After high school, Perez was accepted to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, but couldn’t afford tuition, despite a small scholarship. So at 21 years old, she instead moved to New York City and honed her performance and people skills.
“I kind of left here a little hippie, country girl. I didn’t even know how to hold a conversation or look people in the eye,” she says. “I got a job at a club, and the girls taught me how to do my hair and makeup. I learned how to hold my own, to be strong, to be a salesperson, all the skills I would need to succeed.”
She returned to Houston five years ago but still wasn’t in great health. Perez says she’s slowly built herself back up through a variety of practices, including hot yoga and colon hydrotherapy. She doesn’t drink and maintains a largely vegan diet.
Perez also has been building a name in the city’s music scene alongside drummer and boyfriend Nick James Melcher. Perez calls her sound “high-vibe, post-genre,” which really just means she draws from various styles and sounds. As a teenager, she says she was exposed to everything from Nick Drake and Jeff Buckley to black gospel music and Gregorian chants.
Singles “Htown Love” and “Under the Sheets” are gentle nods to honkytonk. “Blue Skies” is straightforward pop. “Wait” has the elegant, lyrical flow of a Björk tune.
She credits Mark Austin, fierce local music champion and manager to The Suffers and Tontons, with much of her early success.
“Mark Austin pretty much paid our rent for six months by offering us constant shows and really practicing what he preaches. He really has been a wonderful friend,” she says. “So many people have gone truly out of their way to help our music scene and me personally.”
Perez says she’s now slowed the pace down to one or two shows a month and is working on a full-length album that encapsulates everything she’s learned, and overcome, in the past several years.
“You just have to work your ass off. And that’s what we’ve done,” she says. “I used my anger, and I got past it all. Nobody is gonna tell me who I am or what I’m gonna do.”
SHERITA PEREZ USES HEARTACHE TO FUEL HER HOUSTON SOUND