One particular gig in rural Victoria sticks in Watson’s memory for band-audience interaction. “We played this gig at a restaurant in Warrnambool, and we basically played on the floor,” Watson recalls. “I got on the table and started playing guitar, and the bouncer came up and was basically telling me to get down. When I’d got off the table I went up and started playing guitar in his face, and he started getting into it and dancing. It turned out he was the owner of the place, and he got us beers, so that was pretty cool,” Watson laughs.
Sheriff formed in mid-2008 from the ashes of other, now discarded local outfits. The band took its name from Watson’s propensity to wear a sheriff’s badge he’d bought from a local second hand store. “It’s not a very exciting story,” Watson concedes, “but I suppose the idea of a sheriff’s badge does fit with the southern influence that we have.” Watson is aware that there is another Sheriff on the rock’n’roll block, namely a Canadian arena band from the early ’80s. “They were pretty big in the ’80s, basically a one-hit wonder,” Watson says. “If it ever came to a head, we’d probably just add a hyphen between ‘she’ and ‘riff’.”
The band’s riff-heavy aesthetic derives from classic rock bands of the calibre of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Queens Of The Stone Age. “Our guitarist is really into big riffs,” Watson says. Along with the riffs comes Sheriff’s exuberant and occasionally confrontational on-stage attitude. “I’ve always had the philosophy that people don’t want to see some guy sitting down and going on about his love life or political issues,” Watson says. “I like to wander into the crowd and get into people’s faces. Sometimes we get into so much that we end up vomiting at the end of the show – just after we’ve left the stage, usually,” he laughs.
Sheriff played its first show at Revolver in Prahran; the gig was the catalyst for a run of shows. “After that show we basically gigged constantly without ever having to book a show ourselves,” Watson says, “because we kept on being asked by other bands to play with them.” The enigmatic reputation of Melbourne audiences proved no obstacle. “We don’t really want to give people the opportunity to drift off and start a conversation with the person standing next to them,” Watson says. “And even if the crowd doesn’t really know who you are, it’s great to get off the stage and play a solo in someone’s face.”
Last year Sheriff went into the studio to record a four-song EP, including Simon Young, based around a Frankenstein-inspired narrative. “Our past drummer wrote the lyrics, and he was big into those classic old horror films,” Watson says. While Sheriff bills itself as ‘southern-psychedelic-horror-blues-rock’, Watson knows the challenges of assuming the mantle of a ‘horror’ band. “We’re still not sure whether we’re worthy of the ‘horror’ title,” Watson says, “especially when you’ve got Graveyard Train, who’ve got a whole catalogue of horror songs.”
Watson describes the three-piece Sheriff as a ‘functioning democracy’, with a recent change in drummers presenting no problems to the prevailing democratic harmony. “Our original drummer retired last year, we ended up recruiting the bouncer from our favourite pub,” Watson says. “He’s a pretty intimidating guy. He used to kick us out from the pub, so then we asked him to join the band,” he laughs.
BY PATRICK EMERY
