“Although it’s dark now, we’re going to make it to sunrise,” George Sheppard sings on “Dance on the Sun.”
To be sure, it’s a great song to put on if you’re wanting to dance; but more than that, it’s the thesis of Australian pop trio Sheppard’s new album, ZORA.
George and his sisters/bandmates Amy and Emma were feeling weighed down when they began working on the new project. Coming out of major life transitions and a global pandemic, the siblings knew they needed something to jolt their systems.
“Darkness can get overwhelming for a lot of people, and it feels like there’s no end to it,” George explained. “But if you can hold on and if you’ve got resilience, it’s not forever.”
“We just want to bring happiness and unity and take a weight off our listeners’ shoulders,” Amy said. “I feel like that’s what the world needs right now.”
For the siblings, there was no greater inspiration for fighting for joy than their grandmother, Zora. A Yugoslavian refugee, she fled her home country as a teenager and started a new life in Australia. Through hard years, she remained joyful, passing on that same spirit to her grandchildren. Naming the album after her was a reminder for the band, and hopefully their fans, that hard times don’t last forever.
It also got them thinking about their own legacy, too, and they set out to create an album that would honor their past while celebrating the hope they have for their future.
Ahead of ZORA’s release, Sheppard sat down with us to share more of their grandmother’s legacy, why it was time for them to shake off the darkness, and how they’ve discovered hope and joy in their own lives.
When did you start creating ZORA?
George: It was almost immediately after we released Kaleidoscope Eyes, our previous album. It was born out of frustrations with how closed off the world was and how dark times felt. We were trying to bring hope to ourselves, believing this would be over soon. The sun was coming, the dawn was coming to light up the darkness, and we could make it if we just hung on.
Amy: And I know we’re not the only ones who went through a dark time over the last couple of years. Even now, people are still feeling the effects of the pandemic, and everything can feel really heavy. In our show, we love to bring joy to people, our music as well. We just want to bring happiness and unity and take a weight off our listeners’ shoulders. I feel like that’s what the world needs right now. So we try to bring that in ZORA.
Is being intentional about joy something you’ve always tried to do?
George: Definitely. We love to bring a sense of joy, euphoria, community and togetherness to our shows. We want people to feel that energy and leave happier than when they got there. There’s plenty of artists that do the sad boy stuff, but our jam is to make ourselves feel better with music in a different way, trying to bring that positive vibe. The hopefulness is important; we don’t want to just say, “Hey guys, everything’s fine. Don’t be sad.” It’s okay to be sad, but be hopeful that it’s not going to last forever.
Darkness can get overwhelming for a lot of people, and it feels like there’s no end to it. But if you can hold on and if you’ve got resilience, it’s not forever. Even my wristband says, “Although it’s dark now, we’re going to make it to sunrise.” It’s a lyric from “Dance on the Sun.” That’s what we want to instill in our audience and listeners.
Where do you guys find hope and joy for yourselves?
George: In music and in each other, we can lift each other up when one of us is having a bad day. We have a strong family unit, which helps.
Amy: We also look to our grandma, Zora, and named the album after her because she’s had a tough life. She had to flee her home country. She ended up in a small mining town in Australia, couldn’t speak English, worked two jobs at 17 and never saw her family again. She met our grandfather, who died when she was in her forties, leaving her with seven kids.
She’s endured unimaginable hardships but remains the happiest person we know. She loves life and people. At 86, she still wants to ride rollercoasters with us.
Obviously, we draw a lot of inspiration from her. Naming the album after her feels like a great way to leave a legacy for her, embodying her positivity in the face of life’s biggest challenges. It feels like her legacy is coming full circle, which is really cool.
How did your grandmother react when you told her about the album?
George: She couldn’t believe it. I don’t think she quite understood the gravity of it at first. Her first response was, “You’ve written a song about me?” And we told her, “No, this is a whole album with your name on it, and it’s dedicated to you. It took her some time to fully realize it.
Speaking of legacies, what’s the last decade been like since you released bombs away in 2014?
George: Honestly, some days it doesn’t even feel like it’s been a decade. Some of it feels like a blink of an eye has gone by, but at the same time, there are kids coming up to us at shows telling us they were in primary school when Bombs Away came out, and now they’re adults. So it’s really hard to grasp that it’s been a decade. It feels like we haven’t aged, although we may look like we’ve aged.
Amy: I guess that’s the thing about aging is you always feel young at heart. We feel really honored that people are still connecting to that album and the song “Geronimo.” People still know it, so we really owe a lot to that song and that album.
Emma: Thinking about where we are now, we’ve all matured both personally and as a family and as a band. We’ve dealt with a lot, and a lot has changed in our lives. We’re all married now; since the last album, we’ve all gotten married and faced some extreme challenges. I think that comes through in the music. We’re using music more as our own outlet for therapy.
George: It just feels more authentic and real what we’re singing about. Musically, we’re constantly trying to experiment and find new sounds and new ways of doing things. There are tracks on the album that fans will recognize as Sheppard at their finest. Then there are songs where people might think, “This is a Sheppard song?” We wanted to balance those two, where it still feels experimental and new.
There’s always that warm, Sheppard-y hug of this anthemic, big, euphoric sound, which we enjoy making. it’s that beautiful balance between the two that we’ve tried to straddle.
Be honest, what is it like being in a band with your siblings?
George: We didn’t really grow up playing music together, but it started when Amy was in university. I was a bit older, around 23 or 24. We started writing music together and realized that Amy and I bounced ideas well in terms of songwriting. Amy wanted to be a singer, but I was more into acting, theater, movies and making cinema. That was my passion.
I came back for a holiday, and Amy and I wrote a song together and realized we were a great songwriting team. We come up with ideas and bounce them off each other really well. Emma learned to play bass for the band because she didn’t want to miss out. We went to the Philippines for a show, and Emma couldn’t come because she wasn’t in the band. She decided to learn the bass guitar so she could join us on stage.
Credit to her, but it’s Amy and I who write the songs. Emma learns them on the bass and plays live. We’re good with the democratic elements. If two of us like it, we use it. Being siblings, we don’t have to worry about offending anyone. We can just say it how it is. If we were in a band with friends, it might not have lasted this long because we would have to be careful not to offend someone about their art. With us, it’s straightforward. It’s good that there’s an odd number of us. There’s always one decider.
Amy: I think the older you get, the more you realize your siblings are your only friends. Moving to the U.S. together, mom’s back in Australia, and we brought our partners, but we really only have each other. So you really lean on each other and become even closer. We didn’t think that was possible. You learn to appreciate each other as you get older.
We’re in the same age bracket now. There’s a six-year gap between George and Emma, and then three years between George and I. So when you’re growing up, it’s a huge gap, but not as much as you get older. All your friends end up in the same age bracket, so we all just hang out together. And somewhere along the way, Emma became the eldest. I still don’t know how that happened.
Title: The Joy of Sheppard
URL: https://relevantmagazine.com/magazine/the-joy-of-sheppard/
Source: REL ::: RELEVANT
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Date: July 17, 2024 at 10:02PM
Feedly Board(s): Religion