PLOTTING A SUBURBAN ESCAPE FOR BOB EVANS THIS WIND BACK WEDNESDAY
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The artist intermittently known as Bob Evans, when not called Kevin Mitchell, has announced a 20th anniversary tour (and of course anniversary edition vinyl!) in September and October to mark his “second” album Suburban Songbook, a collection of fine pop music that also won an ARIA.
If you’re wondering why “second” is so identified you may be one of the few Australians of a certain musical inclination not aware that Mitchell donned the Bob Evans moniker as a break from his day job in the groups Jebediah, where he’d released more than one or two albums. For you who didn’t know, and for those who did but still wonder where and why this jaunt began, Wind Back Wednesday is here to help.
Back in 2006 Mitchell/Evans, soon to be wed (under one of those names) patiently talked us through it, so politely that he even, alarmingly, opening the door for someone like me to make comparisons with a certain Australian comedian who’d probably be a hit on a One Nation fundraiser or Karl Stefanovic podcast, though probably still not dreadful enough for whatever Kyle Sandilands does next.
Who? What??? Read on, sing on, Bob on.
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THE SANDY-HAIRED MAN with the open face and the occasional Strine whine was born as Kevin Mitchell and recorded under that name for the Perth group he formed in his early teens, Jebediah. Indeed, when he marries later this year it will be as Kevin Mitchell. But on two solo albums and subsequent tours around Australia he is known as Bob Evans. Identity crisis?
"Call me Kevin," he says. "You can call me Kev if you have to." Then he adds with a warning chuckle. "But don't call me Kevin Bloody Mitchell because that would be like the millionth time I've heard it."
Most of us will manfully resist the temptation to link Mitchell/Evans with Perth's most famous/infamous "comedian", Kevin Bloody Wilson. After all, the often gorgeous melodies of Bob Evans' songs - with their roots in George Harrison, the '70s West Coast singer/songwriters and occasionally Bob Dylan - are a sophisticated league or three away from crass comedy. However there is still something of a connection: Wilson's questionable appeal is in the suburbs while the two Bob Evans albums, the debut Suburban Kid and the newly released Suburban Songbook, have their flag firmly planted there too.
"I like to think about my music as a stage musical because I've always liked the theatre, and this is a good background for the songs," Evans says of the suburban motif. "But it's also where I've lived. It's been in the background of my life and it's what the music speaks to. When I made my first record, Suburban Kid, I was saying I don't want to be anything that I'm not."
There is an irony in saying with a first album that you're not trying to be anything that you're not, while at the same time recording it under a different name.
"I can see the irony in that but there were very good reasons for that name," Evans says. "When I first started doing solo shows, a long time ago, around '97, '98, it was at a time when Jebediah were quite successful and I was very sensitive to that. I didn't want the other guys to feel that I was gaining something individually on the back of the success that four people had built up together."
So, did taking on the name and persona of Bob Evans influence the type of songs that were being written?
"You could say that name gave me something to hide behind because I was writing very personal, autobiographical stuff, more so than I ever did with Jebediah, but I think that would be making too much of it. I just gave myself a name and that's pretty much it," Evans says with the closest thing to annoyance he'll show.
"I think all the songs that I've ever written have essentially been what I classify as pop songs. That's what I like. There are many ways to dress them up but if you take all their clothes off and stand them naked they are all pop songs."
He thinks about this briefly and then adds with a hearty laugh: "On the other hand by definition pop is short for popular so you could say that none of the songs I've written are pop songs at all, because they haven't sold enough."
The other identity question with Evans is that it has to be said there is something worrying about him as a singer/songwriter. He seems altogether too happy and positive, his songs filled with a fair measure of sunny optimism.
"You know, who wants to hear another dude moaning and fucking whingeing about his life you know? I can't stand listening to that shit. It does my head in," he says. "If that was all I had to contribute I probably wouldn't do it."
Evans is getting married in November to a woman whose praises he can't stop singing at gigs, has a new record out on a major label and is picking up great reviews. If he wasn't happy after all that you'd want to slap him wouldn't you?
"Exactly, exactly," he says jovially. "The last year of my life has been fucking awesome, has been fantastic. I've had an exceptionally fortunate life and I'd be a fucking arsehole to suggest otherwise. It is not to say bad things haven't happened, it happens for everybody, but I am not going to dwell on that shit. Life is too good and too short to waste with that stuff."
True, no matter what your name is.
READ MORE
Put Bob In the Job – The Bob Evans Interview
HEAR MORE
Bob Evans – Suburban Songbook 20th anniversary edition is out September 4
SEE MORE
Bob Evans will play:
Rosemount Hotel, Perth/Boorloo, September 5
Howler, Melbourne/Naarm, October 16
Lion Arts Factory, Adelaide/Tardanya, October 22
Crowbar, Brisbane/Meanjin, October 23
Crowbar, Sydney/Eora, October 24