SKY’S THE LIMIT

Nearly five years after the infectious song Geronimo topped the charts, Brisbane band Sheppard are finally coming to Tasmania, as Kane Young reports

THROUGHOUT music history, countless acts have buckled under the pressure of trying to repeat the success of their big breakthrough hit.

But when that song was certified five-times platinum, spent three weeks at No.1 in Australia and made the top 10 in a dozen other countries — like Brisbane indie-pop band Sheppard’s massive 2014 single

Geronimo did — that pressure becomes even more intense.

“It’s really hard not to feel that pressure when you’ve had a hit that’s gone multi-platinum in 31 countries or whatever it is, and you’ve got to try to do it again,” singer George Sheppard admitted.

“We realised ‘Shit, we can’t just write the same song again’. We had to go through a process early on where we felt like we had to write something with a similar vibe, a similar BPM [beats per minute] — what was the secret thing in Geronimo that made it such a huge hit?

“We kept on throwing out what could have potentially been great songs, just because we immediately thought it wasn’t another Geronimo. That’s not a good place to write from, [not] a great place to exist in.

“So we had to take a bit of a sabbatical — we just left our phones, left our internet connections and went out to a little house on Stradbroke Island and lived by the beach for a week, and Jay, Amy and I reconnected as songwriters. That’s when we started writing music for us once again.

“We realised that’s what the secret ingredient was — we weren’t trying to write for the [record] label or the managers or even the fans, we were trying to write music that we enjoy, that we find fun. That’s where you get the inspiration from, and the creativity flows from there.”

It has been four and a half years since Geronimo made Sheppard — George, his sisters Amy and Emma Sheppard, plus guitarists Jay Bovino and Michael Butler and drummer Dean Gordon — a household name in Australia.

The group had already enjoyed some success with the track Let Me Down Easy, which was nominated for Best Independent Release at the 2013 ARIA Awards.

But Geronimo took things to another level, leading to seven ARIA Award nominations in 2014 and helping propel their debut album Bombs Away to No.2 on the charts.

These days, “there’s definitely a love-hate relationship” with

Geronimo, according to George. “I love the fact that it has taken us around the world, and given us opportunities that most bands can only dream about,” he said.

“The fact that so many millions of people around the world listen to that song and it brings them all kinds of emotions and memories and joys and highs and lows, that’s something that not a lot of people get to experience with their music, so I’m extremely grateful for that.

“But at the same time, [a hit song] can define you as a band, it can put those pressures on you. It comes with its own hardships, so it’s a love-hate relationship.”

So far, Sheppard’s second album Watching The Sky — which went straight to No.1 on the ARIA chart upon its release in June — hasn’t yielded a single as big as Geronimo, but Coming Home was certified gold and Edge Of The Night was a surprise hit with Latin American fans.

“We wanted to encourage people to dream big,” George said of the band’s goals for the album.

“That was the whole underlying theme of the album — Watching The Sky is sort of a metaphor for lying in the grass, looking up and making shapes out of the clouds. It’s supposed to encourage the dreamers.

“But for us personally as musicians and songwriters, we just wanted to better hone our craft. We made a lot of the production decisions ourselves and co-produced quite a few of the songs, so it was an evolution of Bombs Away in that sense — we just wanted the songs to be better written and the production to be a bit cooler.”

Sheppard have set aside the first six months of next year to write and record their third album, which they hope to release late next year. But before knuckling down in the studio they are touring Australia again to promote Watching The Sky — including their first ever Tasmanian shows, in Hobart and Launceston next month.

“We’ve been wanting to come to Tassie for ages, but it has to fit into the bigger picture,’’ George said.

“Touring takes a lot of money, and we want to make sure we’re getting the biggest bang for our buck. This time it worked out nicely — we get to go down to Launceston, on to Hobart and then straight to Adelaide, so it makes sense as part of a larger tour schedule.

“Every time the tour schedule comes out and Hobart’s not on it, there’s a couple of people who get increasingly pissed off, because they have to fly to Melbourne to see us, so we had to give it to them this time.”

Sheppard bring their Watching The Sky tour to Tasmania for two shows: at Club 54 in Launceston on October 12; and at the Granada Tavern at Berriedale on October 13. Tickets are $34.70, go to www.oztix.com.au for bookings.