The artist Sherwyn and his twin brother Kendrick were born in Brooklyn before their family moved to Nashville. It was here that Sherwyn got his first bass guitar, his dad would take him to see jazz shows at 3rd and Lindsley, his older brothers would take him to the club called Limelight and he and Kendrick started making music together. Opening for Amber Mark at Brooklyn Bowl back in February was a full circle moment. This was the first time he’d performed in his hometown as Sherwyn, with his parents in attendance. Back when he was coming up in Music City, his sound was different than it is now.
”While I was here, we were making more electronic music, like Flying Lotus, J Dilla type beats,” he said. “There was a beat scene here, so we would go to Exit/In to DJ and show our beats.”
Now Shewyn’s music is a blend of his influences, even some of the country music he would hear in Nashville. Groups like Kings of Leon, Talking Heads and Wu-Tang Clan inspired the musical direction of Sherwyn and Kendrick, in their solo work and production as well as in collaboration.
”You can’t put a genre on the stuff that I’m doing and stuff that me and my brother are doing,” he said. “We like to think of all the things that we were influenced from when we were a kid to watching our older brothers and MTV, put it all on one song. That’s how we approach all music. If it’s mine, Amber Mark or Duckwrth, we just want to make it feel new. We’re pulling drum patterns from some Nigerian funk, and then we’re adding some ’70s classic rock guitars. It makes a marriage of something new for everybody.”
Before the Brooklyn Bowl show this winter, Sherwyn spoke to us about his journey from Nashville that led him to Los Angeles, driving his musical development and attracting collaborations with artists like PawPaw Rod and Samara Cyn. He also spoke about his involvement in the new Pigeons & Planes compilation album See You Next Year 3, an annual spotlight on emerging artists and producers.
”They wanted me to be a part and they were doing a writing camp in Burbank at Rick Rubin studios,” he said. ” Every day there’s all these artists in the studio with three different rooms. They just match you up with people, and you make stuff. They put me in with Seago and I was very familiar with his music, but we didn’t know each other. But we just hit it off. Especially with the song ‘Green Light,’ it’s us going back and forth having fun.”
He continued: “Some people like to write lyrics down in their phone and there’s no right or wrong way. I just realized that my favorite process is I don’t really like to write anything down, I just like to just vibe. I like to just be in the room. Sometimes you got to say the wrong thing to get to the right thing, and I think that’s how I’ve gotten to it. Especially for the Pigeons & Planes stuff, I think all of us were on that same vibe of let’s put it down and edit it later. There’s a quote like, ‘Create like a kid, edit like a scientist,’ and I think it’s the same type of vibe.”
You can check out the full conversation here or search WNXP Podcasts, wherever you listen to podcasts.
