Not The Sheep

"It's like a beach party – it's happy, it's fun, it's catchy,” says bright and bubbly 22-year-old vocalist Amy Sheppard of the Brisbane six-piece outfit named after the three siblings at its core. “I think we're really lucky that everyone received our music so well but I think it's because it's got that happy feel and no matter what language it's in, everyone can get involved and have a good time with it.”

Sheppard's singalong hit, Let Me Down Easy, broke through on commercial radio this year with adds to the Nova and Austereo networks, not a bad result for an independent band with humble beginnings. “The band started off in 2010 – it was just my brother George and I as a duo. So ever since then [we've] been writing songs and recording and when we recorded some tracks we realised that we needed a band to perform live, so slowly we just added in members and did a few gigs around Brisbane.” Little sister Emma was added to the mix alongside friends Jay Bovino, Michael Butler and Dean Gordon.

“Then we started taking it really seriously and… we got an audition with Michael Chugg, which was just the scariest thing of my life because it was just an acoustic performance with the three of us – George, Jason and myself, and we're the three songwriters. We thought it was just gonna be a really intimate acoustic session with Michael Chugg but he brought in his whole office... So that was really intimidating but it was like sink or swim at that point and I think we swam. So ever since we signed management with Chugg he's just been giving us gigs and touring us around. We were lucky enough to go on a world tour in 2012 and we went to South Africa, we went to the UK and New York and LA. Since then we've gone back to the US because we've been getting some radio play over there in Portland, Oregon. We were lucky enough to play a show with Atlas Genius, which was a 1500 [capacity] sold-out show, so that was insane to have all those people singing Let Me Down Easy; it was a really surreal moment for us.”

Having just finished an 11-date national tour that coincided with the Rock The Schools program, gaving them the opportunity to play to school halls packed full of their target demographic by day, Sheppard have a host of local shows on the horizon before they head off overseas again.

“When we got picked up by Nova we were jumping around the room screaming – everyone was really excited. And to be having overseas success as well is really, really exciting. We've still got a lot of room to grow as wel. At the moment we're writing and producing some more songs, and we're off to Sonic Bang, which is a festival in Bangkok in August. Pitball is headlining so we're very excited! And we're doing the Teneriffe Festival on July 6 and then we hope to release another EP in August and do some more overseas touring.”