Jebediah are Spring Loaded
Jebediah
Empire Touring have announced two new massive Spring Loaded shows- Eatons Hill Outdoors (Brisbane) on Saturday 13 November and the Sidney Myer Music Bowl (Melbourne) on Saturday 4th December to the already packed schedule of shows, still set to storm around the country before the year is out. The 2021 line up brings the giants of Australian 90’s alternative rock, all to the one stage, including Jebediah, Grinspoon, Regurgitator, You Am I, Custard, Magic Dirt, The Meanies, The Fauves, Screamfeeder and MC Lindsay ‘The Doctor’ McDougall.
The Spring Loaded festival dates will be held with a commitment to a COVID Safe environment. Festival organisers will work closely with and comply with all requirements of the public health authorities. If any shows are required to be postponed, a postponement date will be announced and punters will be eligible for a full refund if they are unable to make the new date.
Kevin Mitchell, the man behind Jebediah and Bob Evans, took time out of his busy schedule to discuss the new album 'Tomorrowland,’ his varying identities and the upcoming Spring Loaded Tour.
Jebediah have had a colourful career spanning some 23 years, five studio albums and numerous ARIA nominations. Can you discuss this journey and some of your career highlights?
I started the band with Chris when we were 18 and on the way towards both of us dropping out from our second year at University in Perth. We wanted Ness to join us on bass. She was originally a guitarist but she agreed to switching to bass to be in the band and has never touched the six string version since! Then my older brother Brett joined us on drums after maybe 1 or 2 rehearsals. That was in 1995. By 1997 we had songs on the radio and were playing every festival and touring all the time and selling quite a lot of records. It was a very quick rise and we were only still pretty young. Things started to settle down by the early 00’s and by 2005 we were ready to take a break from each other. We came back together a few years later and released our last album in 2011 which ended up being quite popular and we were back playing big shows again and touring everywhere. I suppose the things that stand out the most are the touring we did internationally and being in a position all these years later to still be playing together at festivals and have such a rusted on audience. One of the great things has also been becoming friends with so many Australian musicians that we looked up to before the band started and in it’s early years. We were so inspired by the bands we would listen to and go and see play at all ages shows and wanted that for ourselves so all these years later to still be playing shows with those bands and hanging out with those people is a real joy.
I was in the Jebediah audience at Sydney Big Day Out in 1999 and it was one of the craziest mosh pits in my life. How have you enjoyed the evolution of music festivals in Australia through the years?
Well our experience of music festivals lately has been doing mostly 90’s themed line ups at wineries and things. Our audience has aged with us. So it’s pretty different to twenty years ago. There’s still moshpits and even crowd surfing sometimes but overall it’s less chaotic and dangerous, which is fine with me. Sometimes it would be scary seeing a tiny 15 year old girl for example at the very front of a mosh being squashed against the barrier by all these much larger people. Kids would get carried out by security injured or barely conscious. It could get quite extreme sometimes. I’m sure that stuff still goes on but I don't see it so much anymore at the festivals we play. I’m also a big supporter of the more recent pressure festivals have been put under to create diverse line ups. I reckon every festival should be putting diversity among its main priorities and it certainly seems like these days that’s happening, mostly because of public pressure which is fine, that’s always how change happens. Gender diversity, cultural diversity, genre diversity, all these things make for a more substantial experience at a festival.
Spring Loaded Line-up poster
What has it been like touring with your bandmates again and with an old school line up such as Spring Loaded 2021?
It’s been a joy and I think everyone on the line up feels the same way because we are all survivors from the 90’s y’know? We’ve all been hanging out and getting drunk and talking rubbish and acting silly together for years and I think it’s just acknowledged by everyone on the line up that yeah, it’s nice to see everyone is still around and we have all this shared history. I think everyone’s just enjoying the experience of having come out the other end of the cyclone together. It picked us all up, threw us around and now we’ve all been plopped back on the ground again and we can still do what we’ve always loved to do and it’s just simpler now.
What has been one of the funniest moments on tour?
Oh god I hate this question, sorry. Most of the really funny stories are honestly too incriminating to ever be made public. I don’t want to embarrass any of my friends. How about this. We were on tour in Canada in ‘99 I think and had a show at a university supporting a band we had been told had just signed a major record deal. We turned up to load in and there were 4 massive, shiny brand new 4 wheel drive trucks lined up. Clearly the guys had received a decent record advance and all had the same idea about what they wanted to spend their new found wealth on. After our show the headliners took to the stage. They played a lot of covers among some average originals and we all said to each other, “these guys are never going to be big, what were the label thinking?” That band was Nickelback and 2 years later “How You Remind Me” was the biggest song on the planet and that’s why I would make a terrible record company executive!
Can fans expect any new music releases from Jebediah in the future?
I hope so! We were in and out of a studio in Perth for about 18 months before the pandemic hit. We’ve barely seen much of each other since. I hope we might finish it some day soon.
Your Alter ego Bob Evans has seen similar career success with 6 studio albums and multiple award nominations including the 2006 ARIA Award for Best Adult Contemporary Album. Where did the name Bob Evans originate and what does he allow you to portray in music?
Bob Evans came from a t-shirt I used to own and really, I think what Bob Evans has always allowed me to do is explore musical terrain that interests me without having to convince 3 other people to come along for the ride with me! Jebediah do Jebediah and we do it well. No one does Jebediah like Jebediah! Which is why I never wanted a solo career that traded on that music or even used my name that is associated with it. I wanted to try playing country music and baroque chamber pop and folky stuff and things that Jebediah just were never going to do. So I created a vehicle by which if I wanted to try and write a song like Stevie Wonder or Gram Parsons I could.
In 2013, Bob Evans dropped a beautiful rendition of Santigold’s ‘Disparate Youth’ for like a version on Triple J. What does this song mean to you?
I’m mostly just a massive fan of Santigold. I only chose Disparate Youth because it was being played by Triple J at the time so people were familiar with it. It’s a great song but there are many others I would have loved to do. I just felt that I could present it in a really different way that hopefully still was a sincere celebration of the song and more importantly Santigold. It’s that old trick of stripping a big song back and revealing its bare bones and hopefully demonstrating what a great song it still is even without all the production. I also like to choose songs by female artists to cover. There still feels a subversive element to it, even though there shouldn’t be in this day and age.
Bob Evans - TOMORROWLAND - Official album artwork
Bob Evans new album ‘Tomorrowland’ was released earlier this year to immediate accolade. Can you tell us the story behind this album?
Well I guess the story was that I wanted to make a record that sounded different to anything I’d done before, something that pushed me forward a bit and strayed into new territory. I had done something like that for a while. So I decided to make a rock album, tracked live with my touring band and incorporate some aesthetic influences that I’d never attached to my music before. I felt like being brave and making a record that really represented me as I am right now in my middle age, rather than anything too cute sounding. I’m embracing my age and experience. I don’t want to forever be chasing the youthfulness of my past that I’m still so often associated with. I have Jebediah to do that!
What have been the challenges with releasing a new album during the current world climate and touring restrictions. What keeps you motivated?
Good question. The biggest challenge has just been trying to play shows really and trying to create any kind of momentum around the album because so many of the traditional avenues have been severed by Covid. I’m still motivated by the album though simply because I believe it is good and deserves a life. Motivation generally though has been sorely tested over the last 18 months. There have been times where I’ve felt like doing absolutely nothing at all and I have experienced some real cold stretches with my creativity and writing since last April. I still love music though and when I write something or demo something at home that excites me then it pushes all the bad stuff away for a little while.
How have you enjoyed the success of ‘Tomorrowland?’ What was the response from fans to this new release?
The response was great! The first song from it, Born Yesterday, received the best response a new song of mine has had in many years, which was really satisfying.
What’s next for Bob Evans and Kevin Mitchell?
Just trying to play all the shows that have been postponed since 2020, some of which are running now into 2022. There is also some unfinished Jebediah business to attend to.
What is one message you would like to send to your fans?
Thanks to everyone who has been holding on to a ticket to a show for months and months on end through numerous postponements and not getting a refund. It really helps alot. People have shown great patience and genuine concern as to how they can best support me as an artist over the last little while which really means the world to me.
Photo credit: Tajette O’Halloran