Sherrie Veronica Krenn (born 28 August 1970), known professionally as Sherrié Austin (formerly known as Sherrie Krenn), is an Australian actress and country music singer. Active as a singer since her teenage years, Austin initially recorded as one half of the duo Colourhaus, which also featured Phil Radford. After leaving Colourhaus, she moved to the United States in pursuit of a solo career. There, she recorded five studio albums, and charted several singles on the BillboardHot Country Songs charts. Her highest charting single was the No. 18 "Streets of Heaven" in 2003. Her most recent album was released on 15 November 2011.
Career
Early career
Austin got her start in music opening for Johnny Cash in Australia at the age of 14. She later moved to the United States where she took up acting. She is most known in the United States for playing the role of Pippa McKenna on The Facts of Life during its final season.[1]
In 1991, she appeared as "Lady Penelope" on episode No. 20 of the first season of the television comedy series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.[2] In the 1990s, she started a singing career, teaming up with Phil Radford in 1992, to form a duo, Colourhaus, which released one album, Water to the Soul.[3] The song "Innocent Child" taken from that album was issued as a single, with "We Talk to the Angels" on the B-side, and it peaked at No. 50 on the Billboard Hot 100.[4] The Colourhaus song "Colour Me You" was on the soundtrack of the "Rookie of the Year" episode of the television series Baywatch on 5 October 1992.
Nashville move
Afterwards, Austin moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a career in country music. Her first solo contract was with Arista Nashville, with the album Words being released in 1997. It produced singles in "Lucky in Love", "One Solitary Tear", "Put Your Heart into It", and "Innocent Man". "Lucky in Love" and "Put Your Heart into It" both reached Top 40 on the country charts with a peak of No. 34 each.
Her second and final album for Arista was 1999's Love in the Real World, led off by the No. 29 "Never Been Kissed", which was followed by "Little Bird". After RCA acquired Arista Records, Austin's publishing company, Reynsong Publishing, formed Wrensong Entertainment and signed to Madacy Entertainment for her next album, Followin' a Feelin', which produced another single in its lead-off single, a cover of Dolly Parton's "Jolene".
Austin moved to New York City in 2005 and appeared in the New York Musical Theater Festival's production of Bonnie & Clyde. The New York Times commented that she was "a sultry young country music singer who plays the notorious criminal Bonnie Parker and does for this musical what Reba McEntire did for the 1999 revival of Annie Get Your Gun. That twang in her voice provides some much-needed authenticity in excellent pop-country numbers like "Ain't Goin' Back." And it's easy to tell by her hip-swiveling poses that this is a woman who knows how to hold a stage."[5]
The following year, Austin performed in Ring of Fire – The Johnny Cash Musical Show[6] at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. She also performed in the production of Warrior, a musical about the American-Indian athlete Jim Thorpe, where CurtainUp.com described her as "outstanding".[7] She returned to Nashville in 2006.
Austin's most recent album, Circus Girl, her first in eight years, is described as a series of stories interpreted by a strong woman, about women, and for women. Austin feels it's something her female fans have been clamouring for, for quite some time.[12]
"The last few years I had been complaining about that fact that there weren’t any females speaking to women above the age of 30, so I started thinking about how I was writing my songs and came up with the idea for "Friday Night Girls"... I wanted to write a three-minute song with every Sex and the City episode that had ever existed, so I did. I quickly noticed that the women in my audiences loved it and so I switched my songwriting focus for a while to concentrate on that audience, who are my peers, to speak to them", says Austin.[12]
Circus Girl was released independently on 15 November 2011.
^"Put Your Heart into It" did not enter the Hot 100, but peaked at number 4 on Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles, which acts as a 25-song extension of the Hot 100.
^"Streets of Heaven" did not enter the Hot 100, but peaked at number 13 on Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles, which acts as a 25-song extension of the Hot 100.
