Bob Evans: A Suburban Jedi?

By Tom Norton
(Article I wrote for Fasterlouder)

Today, Perth is grey and cloudy. Kevin Mitchell, the man who calls himself Bob Evans, is getting ready for a cold winter and massive tour, but that’s not a problem. It’s these past couple of weeks that have been trying for him. He’s been fighting a very serious and ongoing problem with penis enlargement spammers. That, and he has recently been crowned *Rolling Stone*’s ‘King of Pop’. A crown he still hasn’t received. Bob’s not impressed!

“All bow before me!” he laughs down the phone.

Photo ABC TV

Recently, readers of Rolling Stone magazine voted him as this year’s best male artist, beating some bloke called Justin Timberlake. He would love to say to it was good thing… “But the crown hasn’t come,” Mitchell says. “I haven’t received anything. Nothing. I’m really quite shocked and appalled by that, actually.” You can hear the mirth in his voice. “I didn’t even know Rolling Stone readers knew who I was. I’m surprised because they never asked me for an interview, but after my manager told me about it I thought they’d at least send me a copy of the magazine in place of a crown.”

He’s not going out of his way to make a big thing of it. “I haven’t mentioned it to [ Jebediah and they haven’t mentioned it to me. There’s some things have to just go unspoken, alright. Me winning the best male artist for Rolling Stone is something I don’t think they know about and, I suspect if they do, they’re not going to mention it. They don’t want my head to get that big.”

What’s big is the amount of penis enlargement spam hitting his Bob Evans’ MySpace site. “It all comes from America. It’s just given me another reason to hate America, like I needed any more, but now there’s these fucking penis enlargement adds. I’m fucking sick of it. Every day I’m deleting these comments and it’s the same ones every single time.”

The rest of his life seems pretty good, with Suburban Songbook being short listed for AMP (Australian Music Prize) and a J Award Nominee, he’s now taking the Songbook on the road. The Sadness and Whiskey tour is literally going all over Australia with so many stops it hurts your head to look at.

“I think there’s only one place I’ve never been too on this tour before, and that’s Bernie in Tasmania. I’ve never been to Bernie, but with Jebediah I’ve pretty much been to every other place.”

If Suburban Kid, his first release under the Bob Evans name, was quoted as being inspired by the sexual frustration from his misses being away, then Suburban Songbook is about love. If it were a picture he says, as opposed to a landscape, he sees it as a skyscape. “It’s a really light blue sky, that Australian summer washed out blue with a few fluffy white clouds.”

So we’ve got Suburban Kid and Suburban Songbook, what’s next? Anyone could guess that his next album is going to have the word Suburban in its title. Suburban Bible, perhaps? He laughs, “Yeah, it might be called the suburban enlightenment, which will be the final part of the trilogy.” Or possibly a Suburban Jedi.

Songbook was produced in Nashville, USA by Brad Jones (Josh Rouse, Yo La Tengo, Sheryl Crow, Jill Sobule) and Mitchell would love the opportunity to go back. “It’s the first time ever I’ve experienced making a record and I’ve wanted to exactly the same all over again,” he says. “Every time with Jebediah, we’ve had a different producer and worked in a different studio and we’ve always wanted to things differently, but this time I want to repeat the whole process over gain because it was that good.”

The sound is good too and features drums by Ken Coomer (ex Wilco) and there are some parts on the album that have a beautifully layered quality that you could imagine would be quite complicated and difficult to replicate in a live performance. You can’t help wondering if he’s going to be up to this on the tour.

“Live is really a different beast, but I’ve always kind of liked that, you know?” he says. “Because in some ways I’m always disappointed when I’ve gone to see a band sounds exactly like the record. It just gets a bit boring when it sounds too perfect. I’ve always dug bands that when you hear them live, you hear all the songs you know and love from the record, but they’ve either done them in a raw kind of way or they’ve messed with the arrangements.

“So with the band I’m touring with it’s going to be a rock and roll version of the record.”

Suburban Songbook is out now, catch Bob Evans on his Sadness and Whiskey tour at the venues here.