How an artist’s expansive puppet world helped beat her sense of stage anxiety

Since its earliest days emerging out of the garage rock scene of the 1960s and into its most canonised 1970s peak, punk has always been innately intertwined with a DIY spirit and a sense of scrappy aesthetic transgression. Many of the most famous results have been provocative ones: ideas such as Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McClaren’s era-defining boutique SEX, with its bondage and safety pins. But for Blair Tramel of Nashville quintet Snõõper, the pairing of punk and art is something far more wholesome and inclusive.

Aside from the relentless energy and moshpit-ready riffs that populate Snõõper’s output (their second LP ‘Worldwide’ is set for release this week via Jack White’s Third Man Records), the band have become known for the playful and world-building nature of their live shows. Tramel – who double-majored in art at college – is both the band’s vocalist and unofficial set designer, populating Snõõper’s stages with colourful and idiosyncratic paper-mâché characters and props that have become increasingly adventurous over time, growing in scale and ambition as their self-coined ‘Snõõperverse’ has expanded.

Tramel’s current roster of paper-mâché pals includes a beloved green mosquito-like bug, a be-suited, globe-faced album mascot they’re calling Mr. Worldwide, and a pair of sunglasses-clad silver Floridians – one with mop-like blond hair, the other looking like a spikey radioactive ball. Most don’t have names, but many have stories. ‘When we were on a West Coast tour, we brought out the silver puppet for some video stuff and pretended that he’d left us to become a DJ in LA,’ Tramel laughs of her latter creation. ‘It turns into its own lore. Now whenever we post him on something, people think it means the song is going to be electronic because he’s the DJ.’

The original idea for the Snõõperverse began almost out of necessity. Having never played in a band before, when Tramel accepted the invitation to sing with Snõõper, she knew she needed some extra tricks in her arsenal. ‘I was so insecure about it that I thought, if I make stuff and have it on stage then it’ll be less about me and what I’m doing,’ she explains. ‘The props made me feel like I could connect with the crowd because I made them. I’m a naturally anxious person, but I do want to honour the fact that the crowd came to the show and keep that loop of energy between us.’

Readily admitting that she ‘sucked’ at painting and drawing, but feeling a natural pull towards creativity and tactile art, Tramel had begun using paper-mâché as a medium, initially creating character heads to populate the stop motion films she was making in class. The act of physically crafting something with her hands felt right. ‘I feel like I have really good control over my hands in a way that I don’t have with a pencil or a paintbrush,’ she says. ‘I loved stop motion because I could use my hands to physically manipulate things, and I thought it was so funny to have my friends come over and make these weird videos with the heads.’

Having always gone back to art as a means of quelling her lifelong anxiety and ‘making stuff as a way to make me feel good about myself’, she decided to create a stack of fake TVs to climb for the band’s first show; a skit nodding to the then-viral ‘crate challenge’ that would give the audience something additional to focus on other than just her performance. Then, she began integrating the heads into the show – donning the eyehole-less sculptures and heading out blindly and chaotically into the delighted crowd. When she realised the impact and the joy they created, Tramel started working out how she could include more people, looking to Bread and Puppet Theatre and their Cheap Art Manifesto for tips on how to elevate her creations above eye level.

‘Bread and Puppet are a political theatre in rural Vermont that make these giant puppets that take 10 people to work,’ she explains. ‘Everything is made from recycled materials and they’ve made protest puppets sending messages out about all kinds of things that I feel so politically aligned with. They printed this thing called The Cheap Art Manifesto, which had this awesome schematic for a puppet backpack: it’s just a piece of pipe with backpack straps from Goodwill and a belt put through, and the person can wear it so the head can then fit on top.’

Tramel also takes her DIY, make-do spirit from places like Bread and Puppet. All of her characters are made from found materials including old plastic bags and party hats while, she explains, the resourcefulness of working in this way has become her biggest inspiration. ‘All the coolest stuff happens when I find something random and put it together,’ she says. ‘My friend was over when I was doing some photos and she was like, ‘You’re kind of a sustainability queen!’ But it’s just a cool byproduct of using what’s around you.’

What started off as a particularly inspired coping mechanism has now built up its own dedicated following. Alongside being a practical tool for navigating some of the difficulties of being in a band (‘It’s so hard to get five people together to do anything so I started making puppets for promo where, instead of having all the band here, I’ll just invent a friend and he can be there instead,’ Tramel laughs), the Snõõperverse has helped people to connect with the band on a completely different level. Fans regularly go all-out in their dedication, getting characters tattooed on them, creating video games with the puppets at their centre, and making wildly elaborate fan art. At one show, the vocalist recalls with a grin, she was presented with ‘a renaissance painting Last Supper scene with all the puppets on it’.

The whole thing has been a wildly positive exercise in the connective and inclusive power of her art – not just for Tramel, but for her audiences too. ‘I’ve had a lot of girls come up to me after the show saying they never felt punk enough to be at a punk show but they had the best night ever,' she smiles. ‘And that was part of my experience in music too. I’ve been going to punk and hardcore shows forever and I remember sometimes thinking, “Do you guys even want me here?” So Snõõper has definitely been a jab at that: if this giant green puppet can be here, then we’re all good. We’re all welcome.’