KEVIN MITCHELL OF BOB EVANS
Dearly loved Australian singer songwriter, Bob Evans has today announced his new single Born Yesterday, a gorgeous, nostalgia-soaked rambler of a track, out now. Born Yesterday is also accompanied by a beautiful, glowing video clip which serves as an ode to touring during a year where it was impossible.
What better way to understand the nostalgia infused track than by delving deep into the record collection of Bob Evans and discover the defining records that helped shape his signature sound. Bob joins Musicology for an exclusive episode of Crate Dig'n as we find out more about his favourite albums.
Bob Evans, the ARIA-winning alter ego of Jebediah frontman Kevin Mitchell, has graced the Australian music scene for more than two decades and has written some of the country’s most beloved songs and Born Yesterday will not disappoint his loyal audience.
Born Yesterday is perfect for that classic Aussie drive to the beach – it feels like summer holidays. Glistening guitars spread luxuriously as Mitchell’s idiosyncratic vocal hits those brilliant notes in the hook-laden chorus – then the track hits unprecedented highs with a killer sax solo right in the middle of the song.
Produced by Steven Schram (Paul Kelly, Kate Miller-Heidke), Born Yesterday is a stunning addition to the Bob Evans discography, as Mitchell explains the inspiration behind the song, “I was backstage at a Jebediah gig when an old housemate from Perth messaged me with a link to our old share house we lived in that was for sale. We couldn't believe it when looking through the photos of the house that it hadn't changed at all since we lived there in the late 90's. What followed was a slew of messaging between us, as well as the other two friends I used to live with in that house. It was my first share house after leaving home and the whole exchange between us and seeing the house again just brought back a lot of great memories from that time and age, my late teens and early twenties. I already had the music for the song pretty much written at that stage so all I needed was the lyric to go with it. It's a deeply nostalgic song for me, looking back at a stage of my life that feels so long ago now, but at the time it felt like it would last forever.”
The clip for Born Yesterday captures this nostalgia flawlessly. Shot as though on a vintage super 8 camera, the viewer follows the Bob Evans touring party through gigs, travel, and recording, as the handwritten lyrics fade in and out as the melodies pass. It’s a perfect reflection of the mood of the song, as Mitchell describes, “My friend Arlo Cook has been taking footage of me at shows and in the studio for years and he came in to the studio while we were recording and took footage, not with anything in particular in mind. I knew the song would really suit a more abstract kind of video, because it's about memories, so lots of home made visual snapshots was how I imagined it and then as COVID happened and lockdowns happened, it became more and more obvious that we should make that kind of video. So it mixes footage from the last few years with footage from during lockdown. There’s even a couple of seconds of my two kids at the beach in there as well. It will forever be a document of this strange year we've lived through, which I'm really happy to have captured.”
