Having put the capstone on his Suburban Trilogy with Goodnight Bull Creek, Kevin Mitchell aka Bob Evans is ready to move on with his fourth record Familiar Stranger out this month. But the WA native still has time to reflect on his past and where spending his entire adulthood in the music industry has left him. Kevin Mitchell spoke with Amelia Parrott about ageing, the future of Jebediah and why he’s such a shit rock star.
Quickly closing in on his third straight hour of interviews promoting his fourth album under his nom de plume Bob Evans, Kevin Mitchell is certainly in an introspective mood as he speaks to me from his new hometown of Melbourne. “Three hours of talking about myself – it’s been brilliant,” he jokingly moans. “Sometimes I’m my own favourite subject and sometimes I just hate myself.”
Mitchell’s self-depreciation is confronting at first. You’d expect a musician with platinum and multi-platinum records, an ARIA Award, multiple WAMi Awards and International Songwriting Awards under his belt, to be keen to sing his own praises but Mitchell’s feet are firmly planted to the ground. It’s all part of his persona as the anti-rock star.
I quiz Mitchell about a recent blog post he wrote on themusic.com.au after being recognised by a fan at his local supermarket. “It doesn’t happen as much these days as it perhaps did in the heady days of the late 90s when I was in a multiplatinum grunge rock band,” he quips. “You know, it’s not anything that I’ve ever gotten used to or been comfortable with. And that’s what makes me such a shithouse rock star…well, that’s why I’m not a rock star and why I’ve never been capable of being one I’m too uncomfortable with recognition.”
While he may not be comfortable with public recognition, Mitchell has never had qualms about revealing himself on tape and his new record Familiar Stranger is no exception. Mitchell has described the record as being as much like a soundtrack to his life between 2009 and 2012 as it is an album. “It was a really eventful three years. I moved – I relocated from Perth to Melbourne. I became a father for the first time. I experienced the loss of a family member, I spent a lot of time away from home making those two records, the Basement Birds record [Basement Birds] and the Jebediah record [Kosciusko] and I travelled a lot so it was a really eventful few years and I guess this record documents it. In that sense it’s kind of autobiographical I suppose.”
The album was recorded at Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne, a studio Mitchell says he hadn’t visited since recording the first two Jebediah records Slightly Odway and Of Someday Shambles in the late 90s. “I never ever expected to be making a record there again,” he reveals. “When you walk through the door of the studio they’ve got all the gold and platinum records across the walk and the first plaque is Slightly Odway. I never asked but I always wondered to myself, ‘I wonder if what they do as a rule, they see who’s coming into the studio to make a record and if they’ve been there before they quickly move their plaque up along the wall.’ – constantly changing! But it was really great going back there because I have such fond memories of the place and I mean, it had changed a little bit but not much. It was very familiar and cosy and to be completely honest with you it’s a pretty big studio and I never thought that I’d be making a record in such a nice studio ever again so I really kind of tried to take it all in and make the most of it and enjoy it.”
The theme of revisiting the past seems to have made it’s way into the tracks on the record as well. Familiar Stranger’s lead single ‘I Don’t Want to Grow Up Anymore’ sees Mitchell reflecting on his past and growing older. I ask Mitchell if ageing is something he is concerned about. “I think I feel like it’s something I should be concerned about,” he laughs. “I don’t know. I mean I guess you can look at those references and do a bit of psycho analysis and come up with all sorts of things but look, I feel like sometimes I look at where I am in life and question whether I’m doing the right thing or question whether I’m making the best decisions and perhaps the older I get the more pressure I feel from society to conform and you know, when I was a teenager or in my early twenties I didn’t feel any pressure to conform and as I get older and I watch all the people around me conforming I feel like it’s in my face more now and that I feel like I have to act to resist it. Just because everybody is earning lots of money and buying houses and conforming to a conventional kind of life it doesn’t mean that I have to. I guess I feel like I have to actively fight past that [now] when I never used to have to.”
As well as reminiscing about his past, Jebediah fans will be pleased to know that there has been talk of Jebs future and the possibility of another album. “Kosciusko really just breathed new life into the band. It was successful beyond our expectations and we just enjoyed it. It was just such a positive experience on every level. I’d love to do it again but I’m very conscious…I don’t want to force it. I don’t want to try and capitalise on it and I guess I’d rather not make another record and go out on a high than make another one for the wrong reasons, you know?”