Australian pop-punkers Jebediah are growing up. The previously unknown West Australians emerged as winners of the National University Campus Band Comp series in 1995 and were swiftly signed to Murmur Records, a subsidiary of multinational company Sony. They were in good company with the likes of silverchair and Ammonia.
The Perth band quickly harnessed a following which appreciated its edgy turn of melodic phrase, its kinky sense of energy, its Buzzcocks-like buzzsaw attitude. The debut album Slightly Odway nailed the band's dynamism onto wax and, especially in the all-ages domain, Jebediah's following grew and grew.
Now it's on to album number two - a notoriously difficult juncture if music-making legend is correct. But as far as that proof and pudding stuff goes, Of Someday Shambles is pretty darn solid - and consequently not a scrap under par from the Jebediah which Australia has come to adore over the past four years. On the flip side, too, it's a new direction for the band - maturer without forsaking any of Jebediah's adolescent drive; employing more space and warmth and understated charm than its predecessor.
Not bad for a band which, at the time of its signing, hadn't recorded any material.
"Someone had to actually join the student union so we could even enter [the National Campus Comp] in the first place," he confesses. He says the Jebs were at first just hoping to reach the Perth leg of the competition's semi-finals so they'd be able to get "a proper
pub gig, at Planet Nightclub or somewhere, so there'd be people there to see us play."
"It's really been a little bizarre for us, because we don't have anything to compare it to; we haven't been slogging it away in the industry for 10 years. We were sort of in it before we knew what was happening."
Making up the rest of the Jebediah crew are bass player Vanessa Thornton, Chris Daymond and Kevin Mitchell (brother of Brett), both on guitar and vocals. The four all attended the same high school and the gestation of Jebediah dates back to an end of year school function when the two guitarists so impressed the school population with their grunge era cover versions that they were asked to form a band to play at the graduation ball.
Thornton and Brett Mitchell were enlisted and, in what seemed the blink of an eye, the band's breakthrough single Jerks Of Attention was all over the airwaves.
"For all of us, this is the first working band that any of us have been in," Brett explains. "I always thought I wanted to be in a band but when it fell into my lap I thought, hang on, what do I do now? Everyone had to quit jobs and leave uni and stuff, so that was a little bit scary. But we've all taken the attitude that this is probably the only chance we're ever going to get so it we don't try to make something of it we'll be regretting it for the rest of our lives."
For the recording of Of Someday Shambles, Jebediah enlisted Blink 182 associate Mark Trombino as studio director. "He's pretty straight," Mitchell says of the drummer cum producer. "We only got him to drink twice, I think." Mitchell adds of Trombino: "He had a very particular method. Neil King who produced the first one - he was more earthy - he'd say, 'Let's go with the vibe of the thing.' And next time [the band records an album] we'll do something different again, I'd say.
Mitchell admits that, while having faced a few tests and learned many lessons about being a working outfit, Jebediah is "still fairly green" when it comes to studio work. Of Someday Shambles took a hearty eight weeks to record, not including pre-production - the use of computers a sometimes bewildering addition to the recording repertoire. "Even some of our arrangements were changed after the fact," Mitchell explains.
"Recording seems to be in line with every other aspect of the industry," Mitchell elaborates on the process, "in that 80 per cent of it's waiting and trying not to smoke too many cigarettes.
Jebediah as, reckons Mitchell, "probably a bit more confident about what we personally wanted" with the recording of Someday, as opposed to Slightly Odway, and the band did use other albums as reference points - but more to avoid cabin fever than blatantly borrow sounds and structures.
Mitchell also laughingly admits that sometimes there might be just a hint of an ulterior motive when it comes to those musical reference points: "You don't want to go into the studio and say 'We wanna sound like that' . . . even if you do."
Vocalist and guitarists Kevin Mitchell adds a that "the first album was pretty much just a live band trying to put down what they were like on tape, whereas this time we were trying to be a bit different."
"Making the new album [the band grew accustomed to] putting instruments in, pulling some instruments out, going for big rock sounds, or making it really minimalist - trying to shape the song in the way that it was taking us," he says, suggesting an openness to space and dynamics that, with the constraints of pure naivety during the making of Slightly Odway, might not even have been fathomable to the band, much less gainfully employed.
In the past few years, music-making and general slogging aside, Jebediah have proved themselves an outfit with a strong affinity to the all ages scene, the members themselves having been fans of live music as teens. But Kevin Mitchell says he was never part of the autograph collector club which seems so alive - so bold - at under 18s shows these days.
"I didn't even approach people in bands, I have never asked for an autograph from a band person," he says. "It amazes me what the kids are like because they're just really full on. They wait to meet you and some of them meet you every time you come [to a particular place] and they'll hang around for as long as it takes and get your autograph five hundred different times on bits of clothing and CDs and stuff, and they write mail.
"And I think that's cool - that's good - it breaks down [barriers, and] it's good that they don't see us as being unapproachable or whatever. But it still amazes me how full on they are. I was going to see bands as an all ager but I wasn't into that."
Mitchell's reasoning for that behaviour is that "when you first get into a scene, when it's a new discovery, you don't really look outside it - I think it's just part of being young."
But now, a little older and wiser, Jebediah's members find themselves looking away from that scene to which they as a band are so crucial when it comes to furnishing their own musical experience.
Those two confess to a love of country - "new country" specifically - with Sydney band Love Me ranking alongside now defunct Pernice Brothers outfit Scud Mountain Boys and better known American rural popsters Wilco on the Jebediah stereo. Thornton is also a particular fan of Melbourne songstress Lisa Miller. Kevin says soul sneaks its way onto his stereo at times, while Chris Daymond might as happily be listening to dance as punk. "And Brett gets into ELO," teases his brother Kevin.
Joking aside, Brett's clued in when it comes to Jebediah's peculiar ascendancy and realises how lucky Jebediah were to have been hit upon by the business end of music-making at the precise moment they were, such is the fickle nature of that industry.
"I'm not sure [Jebediah's discovery and initial rush-on] could happen now, with any band. I suppose if you're good enough any time then that still happens, but I don't know - the tone of the industry seems to have changed a bit in the last four years. We were right on the end of the 'oh, we're looking for another silverchair' kind of wave. Which of course no one ever found because they were just freaks," he laughs of the band's superstar label mates, with whom Jebediah have played live.
He is also pragmatic about the advantages of being signed early on and being on a "development label" which falls under such a huge corporate banner. "The pros far outweigh the cons to us. We couldn't have done what we've done without a bit of money behind us early in the piece, especially touring from Perth."
And inevitably, this band which was and still is growing up in public, which was caught in the push-and-pull of industry considerations and hectic schedules before it had even decided exactly who it was, has found that its happy - quite simply - making energetic guitar pop music, without complaint, with feet as grounded as possible and with at least one eye on the outside world.
"But we would never really complain. We have the odd whinge now and then, but then I just have to think back to my days working in the hardware store to get a little bit of perspective."
- Tracey Grimson
"We hadn't even recorded a demo," says drummer Brett Mitchell. Mitchell still seems a little blown away by the band's initial breakthrough, nearly half a decade after the event.
"And two months later we were coming back from Lismore having won the nationals," he says. "That was probably the first kind of accolade, the first external sign that we might have something."
Then it was cross-country visits form record company reps who wanted to see that special "something" played on the group's home turf. And then contracts, touring, recording, more touring - and the result, even now at the release of the band's second album, is a quartet of still spinning 20-some-thing heads.
"By that stage we might actually be able to play our instruments so we can do something a bit more natural maybe - first take, no worries," he jibes.
"I guess we're used to it now - you play a fair bit of PlayStation. But you sill like to be there all the time [while the recording's going on]; you like to be around while the others are doing their parts.
"It's one of those things that once you start doing it yourself it really does demystify [the whole process]," he continues, reasoning. "In some ways it's a bad thing because you're always more critical of everything you see and hear after you've done it yourself. But then I guess the upside of that is that when you hear something that really is bloody awesome you recognise it straightaway and you just go, 'Wow, how do they do that?'"
"We did take some CDs in for reference. When you're in there you're so much in a bubble that you can lose any perspective on what you're doing. So we took an enforced one day a week break just to get into the outside world a bit and get some perspective back. You get to the stage where you don't know what you're hearing anymore - and that's probably not good."
"Playing music so much and being in so many pubs and being exposed to so much rock music, when you're in your own home you look for other things," reckons bass player Vanessa Thornton.
"We're surrounded by rock music every day," Kevin adds, "so it's not the first thing you turn to so much when you've got some time at home or on your Walkman or whatever."
"The band is the most important thing in all of our lives, there's no doubt about that, but we also all realise it's not the be-all and end-all," says Brett Mitchell. "Sometimes I think it's a shame that it takes up so much time that you really can't get into another hobby or something - the travelling is what makes it hared. Clinton our sound guy says it's like Groundhog Day.