Interview by Steph Edwardes, Rockus Online Magazine.
Rockus: Where are you at the moment?
Vanessa: I’m at home.
Rockus: Ah ok, so you’re in Perth.
Vanessa: Yes.
Rockus: What has the band been up to lately?
Vanessa: *pauses* What have we been up to? I guess just this sort of stuff, been sorting out artwork, trying to put a tour together… We’ve played a couple of shows, been rehearsing a bit, just going over these new songs and old songs - making sure we know them. Other than that, just hanging out. A few birthday celebrations, you know, that sort of thing. Been pretty cruisy, taking it easy, hanging out. Been spending a lot of time at the beach.
Rockus: It’s good weather at the moment.
Vanessa: Yeah. Actually, the other thing, Chris has taken up surfing.
Rockus: When did he start that?
Vanessa: One of our friends is a mad, keen surfer and I think he started going out with him and hitting the beach and getting some wave action.
Rockus: Is he alright?
Vanessa: Yeah, well he’s standing up. So that’s good when it comes to surfing.
Rockus: Ok, about the album. Generally, there seems to be different reactions depending on what number album is being released. You’ve got the anxiety of the debut or the frustrations related to the ‘second album syndrome’ perceptions. Do you personally feel a difference on the eve of your third album release compared to previous releases?
Vanessa: I guess we’re doing a hell of a lot more promo and press and publicity then we did on the last record and I think we’re feeling a bit… The last record came out at a time where it had just been non-stop for us. The first record wasn’t even anxiety - that was just naïve excitement *laughs* From then on, it didn’t stop. After the second album, we’d just be in it for a while and not had much of a break and we were a little bit… not that we didn’t want to share it with anyone but we were saying ‘No’ to a lot of stuff that was suggested to us. You know, ‘You should play this show or that show’. ‘Nah, nah we don’t want to do it.’ I don’t know if that’s a ‘We’re too cool for mainstream rock’ type thing. I don’t know what it was. A few of them had personal problems at the time and just situation and circumstance… we didn’t really feel like we wanted to be that open with the world. This one - everything’s just been so exciting. From the time we started writing songs for this record which would have been 2000 I guess, it’s just all been so exciting. I guess now we’re at a point where we just want to tell everyone about it. *shouts* ‘Yeah bring it on! We’ll do anything, yeah!’ *laughs*
Rockus: It seems the new album has managed to capture the energy of ‘Slightly Odway’ and the emotion and maturity of ‘Shambles’. Was it your intention to combine the good points of both albums or was it just a natural evolution?
Vanessa: I think it was just the natural thing. I guess the frustrations and difficulties about the last album… a lot of that was to do with the actual recording process, which we certainly wouldn’t complain about, but it didn’t really suit us and wasn’t as easy going and laid back and carefree as the way we would like to work ideally. That’s something we managed to do really well on this record. I think the similarities between the first record probably come in just the feeling and the vibe of it and in a lot of ways it is really similar because the songs we wrote for the first album were written when we hadn’t even thought about making a record - we were just writing them for the sake of writing songs. We played a lot of them heaps and heaps in shows before we actually recorded them and that happened with this album as well. We knew that there’d be a long time before we recorded and we were at home for so long that we just didn’t feel any pressure to say ‘Oh, we’ve gotta write this many more songs for the record.’ They were just being written and we weren’t even thinking about putting the album together. I think about 7 or 8 of the songs were actually written before we went away to America, so for 3 months we were playing a few of those songs and then when we came back at the end of 2000, all the shows in Australia we were throwing in a couple of new songs here and there. When it came to recording the album, we were like ‘Well, we’ve actually played a fair few of these songs quite a bit live.’ Something we didn’t really do for the second record - it all just happened too quickly to really think about doing anything like that.
Rockus: Has the songwriting process for Jebediah changed much over the years?
Vanessa: Absolutely not at all *laughs*
Rockus: I guess in the very, very beginning when you guys were still playing covers and stuff that would have been slightly different.
Vanessa: Yeah, actually because there were times where Kevin would come in and go ‘hey, I’ve got this progression’ or ‘I’ve got this verse and a chorus’ and we’d all go ‘oh yeah, yeah’ and work on it. Pretty sure it was the song ‘Puck Defender’ off our first record that was the first song where we were in the rehearsal room and we just started playing and someone said ‘right, I like that. Let’s go with that.’ Someone went ‘well, in the verse, let’s drop the fourth chord off and do the third one for twice as long every second time’ and everyone just threw ideas and it kind of happened and before we knew it we had a song and we’re like ‘Ahhh.’ There doesn’t need to be a person coming in with bits and pieces. ‘Jerks’ sort of started that. Kevin came in with the original thing and we just started messing around with that and realised that it’s more fun when we’re all just in there and making noise and picking out the best bits.
Rockus: Do you find over time that it gets easier to write material because you’ve gained more experience at songwriting or is it harder because a lot of your ideas have been used already?
Vanessa: Both *laughs* It’s easier because it just comes out and we’ve played together so much - you get a feel for what the other guys are doing. At the same time it’s like we come up with stuff and I think ‘we’ve done this before. A lot of our songs start in B’s.’ How do you come up with something new? Then you get something and it sounds like nothing you’ve ever done before and you go ‘hang on, it sounds like that song by such and such’ and we go ‘shit, can that. Start again.’
Rockus: I read that Magoo had teatowels draped over Brett’s drums during the recording sessions. What were the motives for this?
Vanessa: Apparently they used to do that for Ringo Starr’s drums with the toms.
Rockus: What other things did you guys experiment with? Vanessa: Nothing else crazy.
Rockus: I guess the bagpipes.
Vanessa: Yeah, yeah well that started as a joke really *laughs* Just different guitar sounds and different pedals and bits and pieces. Nothing major, nothing too crazy. Nothing that didn’t seem not Jebediah, you know?
Rockus: Why did you choose to release ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’ so close to the release of the album?
Vanessa: I don’t know, I don’t know.
Rockus: That’s why you’re doing so much promo.
Vanessa: Yeah! I guess we just figured everyone might be getting sick of those bloody bagpipes by now. We just figured that people might take more notice of the album if there was actually another song on the radio and another video clip on the tele and whatever. We figured it might give people another reason to by the album if they didn’t like the first single. You know, just to let them know ‘the whole album’s not bagpipes!’ *laughs*
Rockus: One of the tracks on the album ‘Yesterday When I Was Brave’ you’ve actually got the sheet music tattooed on your left arm. You’ve obviously got a close attachment to that song. Is this due to some sort of personal experience you’ve had?
Vanessa: No, not at all *laughs* I mean, that was a unanimously favourite song since the day we wrote it. I just like the opening lyric. I thought it was a great opening line of a song and also, I was really hanging out to get another tattoo. All my tattoos are artwork done by friends and I just thought I’d get one of my friends to draw another tattoo for me and then she took off and went somewhere or whatever - went travelling. ‘Hey, I’ll get some of Kevin’s artwork on my arm’ and then that turned into some of Kevin and Chris’ and my own artwork and I’ve got Brett’s drum line drawn up but we ran out of days off. I haven’t got that one done yet but I’m thinking about doing that as soon as summer’s over. You can’t swim or go in the sun if you’ve got a tattoo for like a week and I can’t stay away from the beach for a week. I have to wait till winter *laughs*
Rockus: You’ve got your ‘State Of The Nation’ tour starting in a couple of weeks. Are there plans to go overseas again at the conclusion of this?
Vanessa: Not any solid plans at the moment. Nothing concrete and we’re not even thinking if we should go over there in this month or that month but we’re definitely thinking that we’d really like to get overseas before the end of the year.