Jebediah play their first major WA show since the release of their second album, Of Someday Shambles, as part of the Rock It festival this Sunday, December 5, at the Arena Joondalup. BOB GORDON reports.

It's about 4pm on January 31 this year. The sun beats down brightly on a sea of heads, hands and wristbands as Jebediah leave Stage One at the Perth Big Day Out.
Having been moved up the bill to follow The Living End, they've played a 45-minute set bursting with hometown energy. While the likes of Korn and Marilyn Manson would be proven memorable for different reasons, Jebediah's performance would be remembered for its sheer entertainment value and for the fact that the set they just played was quite literally the end of the Slightly Odway era. The band's September, 1997, debut LP, was made, toured and done. Slightly endway, one might say.
Vocalist/guitarist Kevin Mitchell sees some merit in this romantic view of their history. "The Big Day Out was like the big celebration at the end of wrapping up the record," he says down the line from his new semi-temporary home of Melbourne. "When that Perth show finished we pretty much wrapped that record up with it and moved on from there.
"It was kind of good to do that. We all felt good to be able to put it on its shelf to put it straight in the pool room and look at it every now and then as something that was a really good part of our lives and something that was really, really cool. But it also felt really good to move on from it as well."
As historians would never seem to cease suggesting, the beginning of one era is the start of another. With 1997's double-platinum selling debut LP happily hanging in the trophy room, Jebediah had to think in earnest about not only recording their second album, but making it a worthy follow up to such a huge and somewhat unexpected success. It's pressure, that Queen and David Bowie once pondered with questionable syntax, that no man ask for.
Guitarist Chris Daymond sitting with the rest of the band at the Sony offices in Perth is unconcerned by such matters.
"It's never been the nature of our band to be stressed about what we're doing or to feel under any pressure," he says. "It just doesn't come into it."
Drummer Brett Mitchell: "We've never really been put under much pressure, by Sony or whoever. They've pretty much let us do our thing. Especially when it comes to recording."
Bass player Vanessa Thornton: "I think it's `cause we got so many singles off the last album and we were still touring it right up until pretty much when we went in and recorded this."
Kevin Mitchell concurs, Slightly Odway definitely had its own set of legs. There seemed no point in forcing the band back to the studio when albums just kept walking out of the shops and the band gradually, though assuredly, established themselves as a headlining national touring act. So, putting the pressure of commerce aside, was the band itself at all daunted by the thought of assembling an album of new material, after the first one found its way into the hearts of so many?
Kevin Mitchell: "It wasn't daunting at first, no matter how much everyone was saying`the pressure's on now, you've got to follow up Odway'. It never really bothered me at all, but when started to make the record that's when began to see the whole `difficult second album' thing come to life, because it was a difficult second album to make.
"It took twice as long (two months) to record than we had originally planned. But all that outside pressure, I don't think any of us took that much notice of it. We just went ahead and did our thing, the same way we did the first time around."
The second time around Jebediah did their thing with the aid of American producer, Mark Trombino, chosen not only because, as Brett Mitchell laughingly points out, "he replied, he was available and willing" but for his previous work with Knapsack and Blink 182, though more the former than the latter.
Daymond: "It was the Knapsack thing in particular ...I knew he'd done Blink 182 but thought the sounds we were after were more the Knapsack thing. The difference between the Blink 182 record that came out before Mark did it and the one that he did is incredible, in terms of the production. So it was a good indication that he could come along and help the band out."

THE MEETING
Having secured Trombino as a producer all Jebediah had to do now was actually meet him. Having heard the band's early demos, he'd already suggested that they had pretty much 'only half a record' in the works. When the producer missed a specially arranged show in Perth due to being unable to fly a a result of the flu, Jebediah were hastily tapped onto the bill of the 20 Minutes Of Fame new band comp at the Grosvenor in March. Walking into the Front Room the stranger didn't quite now what to make of it all.
Thornton: "He was really weirded out by that. `Is this a regular thing?' He just couldn't work it out."
So it wasn't an ideal meeting of the minds?
Kevin Mitchell: "Not at all (laughs). Kristy (Pinder, of Naked Ape Management) was driving him back to the hotel after the gig and she told me afterwards that while they were in the car he said (adopts American accent) `so are all Jebediah gigs like that?' Kristy's going`no! they're not!'.
"It was weird, there was a fucking high school group, they were doing some music course and their teacher took them on this excursion and we just happened to be playing there and they all found out. It was a fucking weird, bizarre night. Luckily Trombi kind of forgot about that."
The somewhat awkward first meeting/audition was deemed a little irrelevant, as the band were soon spending a week in pre-production with Trombino, playing their songs over and again anyway.
All up the recording process sounds as though it could have been a mix of endurance and enjoyment, some band members stopping just short of alluding to friction.
Brett Mitchell: "I don't think it ever clicked completely."
Daymond: "No. I guess there were moments where it felt like it was ...often it felt like our cog and his cog weren't slipping into gear together."
Thornton: "I think once all the tracking was done and he was onto the mixing, we were coming in at different times to see how it was going and putting in our two cent's worth, I think then it got heaps easier. He's a .. solo flyer."
Brett Mitchell: "It was certainly a very different experience from the previous one. In lots of ways. But I guess it's always gonna be that way."
Either way, Of Someday Shambles is an album which seems to evoke a well-balanced mix of what Jebediah wanted to do themselves and what fans of the band might expect from Jebediah.
Brett Mitchell: "Hopefully (smiles). That really remains to be seen. I think it still sounds a lot like Jebediah."
Thornton: "Well how could it not? We're playing it (laughs)."
Kevin Mitchell: "I feel heaps more proud and confident about this one than the last. But then, it's a funny thing when we did Slightly Odway I guess I felt proud and confident (laughs). But I feel it's pretty obvious that this sounds better and it's written better and all that. But you know, I could be proven wrong.''
While the album still has the elements of upbeat attack that have now become a trademark of the band, there is a whole new flavour of diversity present, something that Thornton feels was very definitely aided by Trombino's style of production. Even so, the difference can be found at the very heart of the songs, notably in the tracks written in the month prior to recording, when Trombino indicated that ideally there was another half of an LP to be written. It is within these songs where one can find aspects of departure.
Kevin Mitchell: "Maybe it was just because we were in this period where touring for Odway was over and we had this time of being really free of our tie to touring that album. All the other times we got together to write, it was always in between touring for that album. You kind of go into rehearsals coming up with new songs but with those Odway expectations are in the back of your head while writing.
"I don't think that was there for us in that last month before going into the studio. I think that's why songs like Run Of The Company, Love At Last and those kinds of songs that were the biggest departures came then."
Across the board they're departures for many and varied reasons. Animal hit the airwaves and shop shelves as the first single back in September and immediately seemed a curious song in that it coasts along on one level, in an almost downbeat yet thoroughly infectious manner, until its 'constancy' creeps up on you.
Kevin Mitchell: There's a song called Raindrop on Tripping Daisies' record I Am An Elastic Firecracker, and it's just got that constant thing. It was always my favourite song on that record. It was one of those songs that just kept thumping along. It's what I dug about it."
Daymond: "It's pretty constant from go to woe. It has the same energy for pretty much the whole thing. Vanessa's always likened it to a train that's just going straight ahead. The other songs will have a verse/chorus and then a breakdown bit we didn't make a conscious decision not to have one, it just turned out that way, that there wasn't any bit in the middle for it to soften up a bit to come back with more of an impact at the end. We just went right at it."

ORCHESTRAL MANOUVRES WITH MARK
It was an approach that enabled the rock songs to rock and it proved to be one that bore fruit for Of Someday Shambles' cornerstone track, and the band's most significant departure thus far. The closing song, Run Of The Company, is epic through-and-through. Lent the musical and emotional weight of a 22-piece orchestra, an already moving song is taken to new heights.
Kevin Mitchell: "We wanted it to be an epic song. The original idea, instead of having the orchestra, was that the end was just going to be a big J. Mascis (Dinosaur Jr.) style guitar epic solo that goes on forever and ever. It wasn't until we were in the studio saying `it's got this Spanish kind of flamenco feel to it, it might sound cool with some horns in it'. Then once we started getting talking about horns and strings Mark was just like `fuck it, if we're gonna do this let's go the whole hog and throw in a big orchestra'. I think that was the American in him coming out `if ya gonna do it, make it huge!'"
Huge, granted, but it's a moving experience indeed. Tears are definitely an option.
Thornton: "There was a few tears from the orchestra guys, I'll tell you that (laughs). They got worked pretty hard."
Kevin Mitchell: "It was fucking amazing. Sitting in the studio, hearing that big orchestra playing out to one of our songs. It was one of those moments that sends tingles up your spine. It was probably one of the most emotional moments of making the whole record - hearing that behind our little fucking Perth rock band. It was quite overwhelming."
Having now created such a song and recorded it in such a grand manner, the conundrum now faced by the band is whether to tackle playing it live, given that the recorded version of Run Of The Company is so epic and so very definitive.
Thornton: "It's a bit sad now because no one wants to play it live well, a few of us don't want to play it live now that we've done that to it. I find that really sad."
Kevin Mitchell: "I want to do it live, but I think songs like that and Love At Last (another tender moment from the LP) are where we're gonna have to figure out how we're gonna do it. I don't think songs like that are ones where you can just get up on stage and bash them out like we would normally. I think they require something a little bit different."
Brett Mitchell: "I just think an upbeat set suits us as a band much more freely in the live situation, which is why we haven't revisited some of those songs. I personally think there are certainly songs on this new one that we will never play live. It's just that a song like Happier Sad (a slow, country tinged ballad which features pedal steel) would be so out of place in our set. They're just different mediums, especially for us. I mean some bands can merge them a little bit more but it's just not our style."

LIVE AT LAST
As the second album begins to make its mark, the call of the stage also beckons and Jebediah are now set to make such performance related decisions.
The band thrilled at the prospect of being an anonymous entity during recent visits to Canada this year and may very well face the same scenario in the US in 2000, but with mainstage slots again secured for the national Big Day Out run, and an album tour proper pencilled in for March the highway, as Daymond says, 'is stretching out'.
With Of Someday Shambles performing solidly a month after its release (it debuted at #1 in Perth and is still in the ARIA Top 10) Jebediah are very truly at the toppermost of the poppermost in this country.
Daymond: "It just feels the same as it ever did. It's weird to think of us and Frenzal Rhomb and all of the bands that are up there now as compared to three years ago when we opened Homebake and played to hardly anyone.
"It's just great to be able to come back and be popular enough to play at those sorts of things. It's such an amazing thing that so many Australian bands can play on the one day and it all goes really well and everyone has a lot of fun. We just hope that we can continue to do stuff like that now we're up there. But there's plenty of great bands coming up now that are gonna kick us off sooner or later."
Kevin Mitchell: "It's funny now, I think this record is a better record than Odway so I'd expect it to do better, but now that Odway has sold so many records I can't go into it thinking that it will. When your future's at the mercy of the public and the trends are changing all the time and things are quite fickle it's impossible to have any expectations, high or low. We're arming ourselves to be cut down, we're prepared, but we hope our fans will grow with us."
Brett Mitchell: "It's gone so much further than I ever would have dreamed. I guess while we don't have to hold a regular job which is awesome. So much of it feels like a holiday we can't complain."
You're just squeezing 9-5 into some other hours of some other days, surely?
Daymond: "Well I was talking a couple of my friends yesterday and one guy's saying `yeah, you'll be on holidays and Chris well, you're always on holidays'. I'm, like `yeah, you know, I can't disagree with you' (laughs)."

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