Bob Evans aka Kevin Mitchell on sex toys and rock ‘n’ roll podcasts
From fronting Jebediah in the 1990s to stripping it back as Bob Evans and more recently hosting a podcast, Kevin Mitchell is nothing if not versatile.
For the first seven or so years of his public life, Kevin Mitchell had just one identity: he was the frontman of Perth rock quartet Jebediah, singing and playing electric guitar to the hundreds of thousands of young Australian listeners who climbed to ride the alternative rock wave of the 1990s.
A few years on from Jebediah’s 1997 debut album he began to dream of a quieter, solo life in music; fewer distortion pedals and noisy drums, more acoustic guitar and his distinctive voice, just as it had been when he began learning to write and play music in suburban Perth as a teen. Thus was born the alter ego Bob Evans, whose debut album was released in 2003.
More recently, Mitchell has adopted a third identity, and while it’s lesser known than the guy who has alternately stood or sat behind a microphone while strumming a guitar for the last 25 or so years, it’s perhaps just as essential to understanding who he is and how he sees the world today.
In 2016, the singer-songwriter became a podcaster, and in the five years since Good Evans, It’s A Bobcast! began, Mitchell has published 47 episodes featuring interviews with fellow artists including Clare Bowditch, Tim Rogers, Sarah McLeod and Paul Dempsey.
Of its origins, Mitchell says with a laugh, “I was really craving having adult conversations with somebody that wasn’t my wife. Going back five years ago when I started it, my kids were still really little, and when I wasn’t touring and doing music, my role was a stay-at-home dad.”
As well as offering a way to stay in touch with his creative friends and have grown-up conversations – often over a couple of drinks once his children were in bed – the podcast has also allowed him to stay in the public eye outside of touring and album cycles.
These days, Mitchell finds he’s approached by strangers complimenting his podcast almost as much as they do his music, including one fan who expressed their enjoyment while they both browsed the aisles at his local Bunnings.
As the intermittent schedule indicates, averaging 10 or so episodes per year, it has been far from a full-time endeavour; instead, he has tended to fit the podcast around his usual professional commitments of performing, songwriting and recording, as well as being a dad.
Both of his musical identities remain productive entities: the sixth Bob Evans album, Tomorrowland, is soon to be released, and it sees the artist stretching beyond his folk-pop roots toward a polished, layered indie rock sound, complete with a full band and beautifully arranged backing vocals.
And while Jebediah’s fifth and possibly final album was released a decade ago, the quartet continues to play live and remains a strong draw at festivals such as Spring Loaded, which trades heavily in 1990s alt-rock nostalgia among fans now approaching middle age – as well as their children – who grew up adoring Grinspoon, You Am I and Regurgitator et al.
Last year, though, the podcast returned to the foreground when COVID-19 threw the schedules of all performing artists into turmoil. On March 22, Mitchell published a conversation between himself and fellow singer-songwriter Josh Pyke, as the pair grappled with the implications of the early days of the pandemic; the host recorded at his home studio in Ocean Grove, a seaside town in Victoria, while his guest did the same in Sydney’s inner west.
In several more episodes through to December 23, Mitchell and Pyke sat down for a further five conversations about their experiences with navigating album releases, rescheduling tours, homeschooling their kids and applying for JobKeeper, among many other subjects.
“I would be having those phone conversations with Josh anyway, so I thought we may as well record them,” says Mitchell, 43. “He’s someone that I would reach out to and be like, ‘F..k man, what are you doing about this?’ It was really important for me, just to be able to talk through stuff with someone and get their opinions and advice.”
Taken together as a six-episode package, it formed a fascinating real-time document of two headline-tier Australian artists navigating the most uncertain and emotionally taxing year of their careers. Viewed with a little more distance today, it’s the sort of unguarded, unvarnished document that historians will relish when tracing the contours of 2020 and how it affected those who work in the creative arts.
If that all sounds a bit heavy, rest assured that there were plenty of moments of levity in between; the two firm friends have an easy rapport and a predilection for gleefully ripping the piss out of each other.
Between those infrequent COVID check-ins, meanwhile, Mitchell continued to remotely record episodes with musician friends including The Living End frontman Chris Cheney and Patience Hodgson, singer-songwriter in Brisbane indie pop band The Grates.
The latter episode ventured into uncharted territory for Good Evans! It’s A Bobcast, thanks to the willingness of his newly single guest to frankly and graphically discuss her hands-on research into self-care through self-pleasure. “Who did I think I was, getting a glass dil-dong? I’m not at that level; I don’t have a black belt in masturbating!” said Hodgson at one point.
“I loved the way that it ended with her talking about sex and sex toys – and then my wife came in, and she joined in,” says Mitchell with a laugh. “That was awesome, and for me that’s the stuff that I love the most: when a really unexpected topic comes up that’s funny, and that the other person is really excited about, and wants to share.”
Toward the end of last year, Mitchell’s record label Dew Process – which also released the last Jebediah album, Kosciuszko, in 2011 – issued Born Yesterday, the sparkling and reflective first single from the upcoming sixth Bob Evans album.
This release occurred at Mitchell’s urging, so that 2020 wouldn’t be seen as a complete write-off as far as his creative output was concerned, even though the album had actually been finished prior to the lockdowns of March last year.
Soon after its release, something strange and unexpected happened with Born Yesterday. “That song ended up doing the best that a song of mine has done for ages,” he says. “It got played on commercial radio, which is the first time that’s happened for years. I couldn’t believe it. That just does not happen.”
Mitchell isn’t overselling the significance of this fact: getting a new song by an Australian artist played on Triple M is one of the most difficult things to achieve in the domestic music industry, owing to the inherent conservatism of station programmers, who tend to assume that listeners only want to hear what they already know – which is why Oz rock of the 1980s and 90s tends to dominate the daily airwaves, but for occasional outliers such as Triple J crossover act Amy Shark and world-beating pop star Tones and I.
“I’m so glad we did that,” says Mitchell of the single’s pre-Christmas release. “It was a small bit of light at the end of the tunnel, and I ended the year on a high. I’m sure many people would say the same thing: last year was a f..king grind to get through.”
Attached to that unexpected glimmer of success was another smaller, but no less significant achievement, at least on the home front. “I don’t want the rest of my career to feel like a slow, gradual fade-out into complete obscurity,” he says with a laugh. “I want to feel like there’s still some relevancy.
“I guess that’s part of the reason why that commercial airplay with Born Yesterday was exciting, because just a couple of years ago, my daughter was asking me if I’d ever been played on the radio,” he says. “She’d never heard it, because so much of my airplay happened long before she was born.”
There’s a beautiful circularity at play there: the song itself is all about looking back at one’s past, but for his daughter, it represents the first chapter in the future untold story of her dad.
Tomorrowland is released on April 16 via Dew Process. Bob Evans will perform at Riverboats Music Festival (Echuca, April 17-18) and April Sun festival (Melbourne, April 28) with a national tour to follow; Jebediah will play at some dates on the Spring Loaded tour from May 8 in Sydney.
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