Voice star Beverly McClellan has no fears

Beverly McClellan’s brand new album, Fear Nothing, features the sort of scorching blues-based rock you just don’t hear on Top 40 radio.

The Fort Lauderdale musician has surrounded herself with musicians from bands led by the likes of Etta James, Bonnie Raitt and Robert Cray, and she shares a songwriting credit with Keb’Mo, all to give her music that authentic, timeless rootsy rush. Oh, and she’s also out and proud, bald, adorned with tattoos (an orca and a bear) that speak to her part-Native American heritage, and she’s been gigging around Broward bars for some 20 years, playing her blend of raw Etta-Janis-Bonnie inspired music ever since she bolted from her job as a dental assistant. So what was she doing on NBC’s mainstream singing competition, The Voice? McClellan, 42, not only agreed to try out for the reality series when it held auditions in Miami last year but also vaulted into the first season’s Final Four under the mentorship of judge Christina Aguilera.

“That experience came by chance,” McClellan says of her unlikely stint on The Voice. A friend had sent her an email urging her to try out for the program. The email read: “I know you won’t do it, but at least consider it.” McClellan sent the casting staff a YouTube clip. “They called me and told me to come down to Miami and ‘Do that live for us like you did it there, and we think you’re going to Hollywood.’ I went down there and did it live and popped a guitar string, and they said, ‘You’re going to Hollywood.’ “I never thought I’d get my start off a TV show, but it is a good platform for musicians. I went to my tattoo guy and told him to put ‘Fear Nothing’ across my chest because I’m going to go for it.”

This story was originally published December 12, 2011 at 8:12 PM with the headline "Voice star Beverly McClellan has no fears."