WHEN Jebediah frontman Kevin Mitchell created the stage name Bob Evans as a way to explore a different side to his songwriting, he had no idea of the success that was to come, effectively creating two separate, successful careers.

“Deep down I wanted to do something serious but I think it was like, by giving myself this name and distancing myself from Jebediah, and the way I presented it, kind of was a little bit tongue in cheek I think as a protective measure,” Mitchell said.

“I think I wasn’t fully confident in myself and by making it appear more casual and silly it was almost a way of beating people to the punch line of the joke or something. Gradually that went away over time.”

He started performing under the name Bob Evans at low-key shows in his hometown of Perth back in 1998 as Jebediah enjoyed the success of their debut album Slightly Odway but his first Bob Evans album, Suburban Kid was not released until 2003.

“I was just playing live gigs in Perth for years before I started making records and I would literally just be playing to my housemates and a bunch of friends and the bar staff on a Wednesday night. So it took a while for me to turn it into something that was serious and confident.

“I guess being on my own was a major thing because Jebediah became quite successful very quickly. Going out and doing the stuff on my own without the noise and the other people on stage to hide behind, obviously, that is very revealing, and also too, the nature of the music being very personal and quite emotional.

“It was totally different. I never presented those early songs to the band because I always felt with Jebediah songs, when I was writing lyrics, I was always very conscious of the fact that I was representing a band. So when I wrote songs I was always trying to write on behalf of the band.

“There are songs like Harpoon, which is pretty emotional and personal, but they are a rarity. Most of the Jedediah songs were either songs sung from the perspective of a gang or the lyrics are abstract.

“With the Bob stuff I was writing directly, personal songs, very much about me, so I never presented those songs to the band. I just didn’t feel like Jebediah was the right place for them.

“That’s why I gave myself a name and I never went out as Kevin Mitchell from Jebediah. It was like a disguise. Bob Evans was like being incognito.”

An early Jebediah promotional shot with Kevin Mitchell wearing the Bob Evans shirt he bought from a thrift shop which inspired the stage name.

While there was no manufactured image in Jebediah, Bob Evans was a deliberate persona manufactured to separate Mitchell from Jebediah and present a different style.

“Within two years of Jebediah forming, we had success. We had a really popular record and we were touring all over the country and playing festivals and selling records, we were on the radio. It all happened fast. It very quickly turned into this big machine really fast. And like anybody will tell you who has been in a band that has had a breakthrough commercially, it kind of takes on a life of its own and you almost aren’t in control of it anymore. It becomes this monster.”

For Bob Evans shows Mitchell refused to perform Jebediah songs until recently he included an acoustic version of Harpoon as an encore.

Mitchell said some fans would request Jebediah songs but he believed the majority were a completely different audience.

“There are Bob Evans fans that hate Jebediah. People that got onto the Bob Evans thing, Jebediah was too aggressive for them; too punky and noisy and then there are Jebediah fans that just find Bob Evans to be too easy listening, not rock and roll enough and would probably be happy if I didn’t do Bob Evans, just concentrated all my efforts on Jebediah.”

The success of his second Bob Evans album Suburban Songbook in 2006 took his solo career to another level. Did it create friction in Jebediah?

“Nah. The way it happened it was almost like it was planned, but it wasn’t, you can’t plan this stuff,” Mitchell said.

“Jebediah reached 10 years of being a band and we decided we were going to go on hiatus for a while. The idea was just to be a year and I was going to go to Nashville and make a Bob Evans record and then straight from Nashville I flew to Europe where my wife was working. And then I came back to Australia. That’s when I released Suburban Songbook and that was when the band was going to get back together again.

Suburban Songbook gave Mitchell his first ARIA Award, for Best Adult Contemporary Album and he was also nominated for Best Male Artist.

“All of a sudden, the Jebediah break turned into two years while I rode the wave of this thing.

“But no, there was no animosity. It had an influence over our relationship because it had such a big influence on me and my life. So of course it’s something that I brought my relationship with the band and something that they had no choice but to accept because things had changed.

“But there was never any animosity, there was never any jealousy, never anything like that. We’ve all been such good mates for such a long time that I think they were all happy for me. And also when we came back together and kept going with the band we had renewed success ourselves when we made Kosciuszko in 2011.

“I guess it feels like I’ve been very lucky over a long period of time and I have had these two different things that have just had lives of their own. This tour is my first taste of being able to really indulge in the success of the two things together. “

§ Kevin Mitchell’s anthology concert tour When Kev Met Bob comes to Brisbane on October 28 at the Old Museum.