Bob Evans: Spawned from the Vague Traditions of Rock and Roll

By Dan Hutton on October 28, 2016 in People

Bob Evans, the folk-pop alter ego of former Jebediah frontman Kevin Mitchell, is back on the scene again with his latest album, Car Boot Sale. With a Sydney show slated for December 9 at the Factory Theatre, we were lucky enough to catch up with Mr Evans during the month…

If I had to describe my sound in one sentence… I still wouldn’t, unless for some crazy reason my life depended on it, in which case I would say that is spawned from the vague traditions of rock and roll.

My latest album, Car Boot Sale, would be best described as… an exercise in simplicity and directness; an attempt to do what I do best without any preconceptions about where it might fit in the grand scheme of contemporary fashion.

My first memory of music is… doing bedroom concerts with my brothers, miming to the Kiss song ‘I Was Made For Loving You’ with plastic tennis racquets for guitars and wearing the masks (I was the cat, Peter Criss).

Growing up my parents listened to… not much that I can remember. My mum liked classical music and musical theatre stuff. Dad liked the Four Tops, I think.

My dream gig… is any full room of people that own my records. I am at my happiest playing to a small room packed to the brim with people who know my music intimately.

If you come to see me play, you can expect… lots of talking interspersed with the occasional song.

There was one time when I was starting out… that I wore my hair in pigtails and performed a new song that I didn’t have any lyrics for yet so I just made them up as I went along.

If I could have chosen one song to have written it would have to be… ‘Let’s Stay Together’ by Al Green. I just think it’s perfect in every way.

My favourite song to perform would have to be… ‘Ron Sexsmith’. It’s off the new record. It’s one of only a few songs of mine where at shows I can tell the story of how the song came about and then play the song afterwards like the punch line to a joke.

The best thing about the local music scene is… its live culture. The live music scene still seems to be the breeding ground that so many of our best artists move through and blossom from, and it scares me to think what would happen if our thriving live scene was squashed by outside influences.

One person I’d still really like to record with is… Luke Steele. He lived around the corner from me in Perth many years ago and we used to hang out a bit and jam on stuff. It was fun.

My biggest fan has got be… at least 6 foot, 7 inches tall.

I knew I’d made it when… I wrote my first song, because everything that has happened to me since has come from that moment.

To find out more about Bob Evans, please visit www.bobevans.com.au.