After the amazing success of their debut album 'Slightly Odway', it would seem that local heroes Jebediah would have a hard time topping themselves when it came to that 'difficult sophomore album'. Due to be released on November 1st, 'Of Someday Shambles' seems an appropriate name for an album that saw the band return to Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne and enlist the help of Knapsack/ Archers of Loaf producer Mark Trombino behind the desk. Brett Rowe picks up the rest of the story talking to guitarist Chris Daymond.

While their second album 'Of Someday Shambles' has been recorded for some time now, Jebediah recently returned to Canada for their second tour this year of the Maple leaf country. Daymond sounds more than happy with how it all went. "It was awesome. We went there and played about half a dozen shows, just to start ourselves off in another country and get the fuck out of Australia for a bit. We had lots of really cool shows, we were just the first band on the bill and that gave us a huge chance to make a good impression.
"We had a proper tour bus that belonged to Sarah McLachlan which had two satellite TV's and all this other wicked stuff. We should have them over here because it just makes more sense to travel during the night and spend the day adjusting to the new place you've arrived at. The best thing is travelling through the night and you can crash out on the beds and wake up in the next city."

As mentioned earlier, the Jeb's headed back to the breeding ground of 'Slightly Odway' to record 'Of Someday Shambles'. Why so?
"Well, it was a very comfortable studio to record in with 'Slightly Odway' and we hoped that would bring Mark in and make it sound a lot better too. It's a great studio and if we have to spend any decent amount of time away from home, then Melbourne is the perfect city for us. Kev's got his girlfriend there and we've got heaps of friends in Melbourne so it makes it really easy and homely for us. It would be ideal for us to record in Perth but as of yet, facilities are a little lacklustre as compared to over east." One thing that is already well known is the surprise the members had with how long the album actually took to record. Chris explains that there were many contributing factors to this.
"I think mainly the distractions were coming from within the studio. We started running out of schedule after about the first week doing the drum tracks. Trombino is a drummer and so getting all the drum tracks the way that they had to be took a long time. There were some things about the studio that Mark didn't expect or were different to his expectations and it took quite a while to adjust to the way Aussies work, what our work ethics are like and our attitude towards equipment. Mark is a perfectionist and if a machine goes bung, one of the engineers would say 'Yeah, it does that sometimes, just give it a bit' and I think that kind of got to Mark, you could tell he gets frustrated. "It took a long while for the ball to start rolling, I think it wasn't until we'd all put down our bits and we were mixing that it started to really go smoothly. The whole tracking of it took a while and we worked really hard on getting the tracking done right. It wasn't just a case of walking in there with our instruments, setting up and playing the songs. It took a long time to pull some of the sounds and get the right performances down. It was really cool and a great experience but it did take a long time and we hadn't expected it to be like that."

So what did Mark Trombino bring to the recording sessions that he specialized in?
"Man, that guy is fantastic. He's just got the best set of ears and his real talent lies in the mixing of it. Just being able to hear where everything should fit is his talent and we thought he'd done a little more of the producing side of things, but he's just keen to let the band put down their thing and he was so great to work with."
And did the band really feel any pressure from outside sources when it came time to record the new album?
"We had all of the songs written and had some ideas we were throwing around in pre-production which we did with Mark here in Perth at Magnetune. We never felt any of that pressure, we're not the sort of band that can be influenced and our record company has always let us put out what we want and do exactly what we wanted to do and so because we've never had to compromise before, we didn't feel under any pressure to deliver something for them. It was just us making the record we wanted to make.
"I can understand why there was a lot of expectation because Odway's done so well for us and was far beyond our expectations. So for this record, we've just gone back and thought to ourselves that 'we may as well not put any expectations on this one and hopefully naively get the same sort of surprise if it does well."
You never know, they just might...

- Brett Rowe

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