Triple M, Catherine Haridy Management, Premier Artists & Offbeat Present
JEBEDIAH
OIKS Album Tour
with special guests: Purple Disturbance
FRIDAY 9TH AUGUST
THE HOEY MOEY
BACKROOM
DOORS 9PM
PURCHASE YOUR TICKETS HERE NOW!
It feels like it was just yesterday that Jebediah first coalesced as four music-obsessed youngsters stumbling out onto Western Australian stages, content with simply making noise as best mates do. Few could have foreseen that this shambolic quartet would not only go on to define an entire era of Australian music in their own way, but also become one of the country’s most beloved bands.
By now, their story is legendary in the music scene of their native Perth. Mostly teenagers when they formed in the mid-’90s, Kevin Mitchell, Chris Daymond, Vanessa Thornton, and Brett Mitchell paired their endearing and refreshing personalities with a penchant for writing alt-rock anthems that weren’t just catchy but resonated with their voracious fanbase.
Before long, their cheeky approach to the game began to pay off, and winning band competitions and headlining local stages was replaced by the courtship of labels and support slots for international bands. Almost overnight, the Jebs were on their way from being WA’s best-kept secret to becoming the country’s new obsession.
Early singles like ‘Jerks Of Attention’, ‘Leaving Home’, and ‘Harpoon’ quickly cemented their songwriting abilities, with 1997 debut Slightly Odway peaking at #7 on the charts, and scoring them two ARIA nominations. As the acclaim grew, so did the accomplishments. The Jebs became a staple of festival stages and car stereos, a permanent fixture of major venues, and impossible to escape when perusing any music lover’s CD library.
1999’s Of Someday Shambles would hit #2 on the charts and bring with it an attempt to conquer the US market thanks to singles like ‘Animal’ and ‘Feet Touch The Ground’, while 2002’s Jebediah and 2004’s Braxton Hicks continued to showcase the band’s innate ability to blend the crunchy with the smooth.
By 2005, a decade of being in one of the country’s finest bands had necessitated some personal respite. While the Jebs laid low for a few years, its members remained busy: Vanessa and Brett played in bands, Chris worked at a record store, and Kevin moved to Melbourne and focused on his Bob Evans project. But, their familial and musical bond was never too far away.
Ultimately, the Jebs made their triumphant return in 2011, re-emerging with Kosciuszko, which not only hit #6 on the charts and nabbed an ARIA nomination, but boasted the APRA Awards’ Song Of The Yearshortlisted single, ‘She’s Like A Comet’.
They were back, firing on all cylinders, and showing no signs of losing that youthful energy and wide-eyed optimism that endeared them to so many in those early years.
As time marched on, so too did the Jebs, with retrospective reissues of Slightly Odway and Of Someday Shambles, being paired with 20th-anniversary shows, and gigs alongside luminaries such as Midnight Oil and You Am I. Though they were never absent from stages or the collective consciousness of fans, the question of new music did arise periodically.
It was in 2018 though, that Jebediah first hit the studio again. They weren’t going into the process intending to make a new album, but rather, to channel that formative focus and see what arises out of the pure joy of collaboration.
“It was different; it’s the most experimental situation we’d ever been in,” remembers Kevin. “But it felt natural because we realised, ‘We’ve got absolutely nothing to lose here’.”
Working again with Dave Parkin (Red Jezebel, Spacey Jane) at his Blackbird Sound Studio in Perth, as well as recording sessions with Anna Laverty (Camp Cope, Screamfeeder), the band entered the process feeling free, uninhibited, and open to experimentation. They didn’t bring any ideas in with them, and nothing was finessed in the rehearsal room, rather, Dave would press record and capture the Jebs at that very moment in time.
“There’s nothing contrived or manufactured about it,” adds Kevin. “It’s a pretty honest reflection of where we are now.”
From those early jams, to fleshing out new ideas, and to reflecting on their new music throughout COVID, the result is Jebediah’s long-awaited sixth album, Oiks. Named for a Victorian-era descriptor of the group from You Am I’s Tim Rogers, it’s a fitting title for a record such as this, with its relation to uncouthness helping to underpin what is the most freewheeling and unrestrained album from the band.
“I think this was the most excited I’ve been while writing and working on new songs since those first couple of records,” recalls Vanessa. “I drove home from that studio every night feeling like a kid who’d been learning to play their instrument while all this amazing stuff was happening.”
Though the Jebs might have since evolved and matured from being the little gang of oiks that endeared themselves to Tim, that same energy remains. Oiks is experimental without alienating, frenetic without overwhelming, and reflective without insincerity. Most importantly, it’s Jebediah moving into the future without forgetting their past, and crafting a record whose spirit is even more rooted in the punk rock
ethos than the band’s earliest days.
Alongside the release of Oiks, the Jebs are also taking the chance to look back upon their storied history with a feature documentary directed by filmmaker Arlo Cook. Having joined the band on the road since 2015, it’ll be a chance for fans to reflect upon almost 30 years of history from one of Australia’s most beloved rock bands, with Cook having been given access to all manner of footage – ranging from home
movies to pro-shot videos – in pursuit of documenting Jebs.
Even as Jebediah look back to the earliest days as they break new ground, it’s abundantly clear that the energy, drive, and familial bonds that have united them for close to three decades are still as strong and
as powerful as ever.
“A lot of that naivety of youth is gone,” Kevin says. “I think there’s a spirit that we are able to conjure up that only ever really happens when the four of us are in a room together creating music together.”
“We’re essentially those same four people,” echoes Vanessa. “We’ve got different lives, we have other interests, obligations, and priorities, but we’re still the same four kids that used to jump in a rehearsal, get stoned, and make whacky music.”
When?
August 9 @ 9:00 pm
Where?
The Hoey Moey,
84 Ocean Parade,
Coffs Harbour NSW 2450