Jebediah Dig Into Epic New Album 'Oiks'

Today, Jebediah release their first album in 13 years, the epic Oiks, and have announced an incredible 22-date national tour from July through September with special guests Magic Dirt. You can find all the tour dates below.

Oiks was preceded by the release of three singles: the scorching Gum Up The Bearings, the acoustic, quirky Rubberman, and the rocking Motivation.

Earlier this year, The Music shared a video premiere for Motivation. The track has been described as a “band favourite”, with Jebediah explaining: “Motivation was a song that came from the initial in-studio jam sessions that kick-started the process of recording OIKS.”

In September, Jebediah were inducted into the WAM Hall of Fame. Oiks is the follow-up to 2011’s Kosciuszko.

To celebrate the release of their new album and tour announcement, Jebediah have shared a track-by-track exploration of Oiks, which you can check out below. You can listen to/buy the new album here.

Bad For You

In 2018, the four of us convened at Blackbird Studio with Dave Parkin. The basic idea was that we would set up in a room together, jam for a few days, record everything we did, go over all the sessions, and see what ideas we wanted to develop.

Maybe we could make a new album like this? We didn't know but were all willing to try. We hadn't even been in a room together to write songs for many years, so there was a bit of apprehension, but the magic of it all was that everything clicked into place pretty fast.

Bad For You was the very first song we started to play when we first got together, literally the sound of a band making new noise together again after the best part of a decade. So, it seemed an apt song to open the record. We've never opened an album with a sombre song before, and there is something a little world-weary about it that perhaps genuinely reflects where we are at in our lives now and that whilst we are still Jebediah when we get in a room together, we are older and different now.

Gum Up The Bearings

Chris would often ride his skateboard to the studio, sometimes with fresh injuries, to show us all after falling off. This song was written with tongue firmly in cheek, and we all thought it was a bit of dumb fun.

Anyway, the lyrics came about from Chris [Daymond] mentioning gumming up the bearings of a skateboard, which apparently might be a thing. It sounded like such an unusual expression, and it just fitted perfectly, lyrically with the song, in so far that it means something, but it could mean anything.

Motivation

I have carried this memory with me since a Jebediah jam session in 1996 or 1997 of a song we started writing but never finished. All I could remember was that it just stabbed away on an E chord repeatedly, and it went from there. I always felt like there was something in it, but it was just one of those songs that fell by the wayside—a lost song from our past if you will.

For some reason, I've just held on to that memory ever since and thought I would try and revive it again all these years later, and it just sort of worked out once everyone joined in with it. It's probably a much better song than what we would have written with the idea in the 90's.

Don’t Stop!

Sometimes, when I would be recording guitar overdubs to a song, I would come up with a new idea, and we would just get totally distracted and start writing a new song. Don't Stop! is one of these. We didn't really jam it together at all; it came about in reverse to how we would traditionally put a song together. That's probably why it sounds so different but also represents one of the great joys about making new Jebediah music with a spirit of experimentation and nothing to prove or to lose.

Rubberman

This one also came about by accident. Whilst setting up a guitar for overdubbing, we accidentally recorded the sound of it with really loose strings. This sound was turned into a loop and became the bedrock of a new song, a sort of weird, melodic, rhythmic loop track. The whole thing was built on top of that.

Again, it reflects an experimentalism in the studio that we have not really embraced before, and so it sounds different from anything we've ever written or recorded. I was staying in a little Airbnb near the studio, and after every recording session, I would go home to my little house, drink wine, and write lyrics. These all fell out in a single night, which practically never happens for me anymore.

IWANNAGETOUT

This song was written in about ten minutes and recorded about fifteen minutes after that. Very off the cuff and unedited and capturing a moment. Sometimes, in the studio, if no one was around and there wasn't any particular song to work on for that minute, we would just start writing a new one on the spot.

Doing this captures an energy in that exact moment. These recording sessions were strung out over a few years, and there were a lot of stumbling blocks and hurdles that had to be overcome, and this song seems to have captured that sense of frustration.

April Slumber

This came out from an early jam session at the start of the project and, in some ways, feels reminiscent of very early Jebediah songs, particularly in the verses. There's something very innocent and naive sounding about it. This was one of the last songs to be finished for the record, and I was staying at my mum's house at the time and I think taking a walk through my old neighbourhood late at night brought back lots of memories of my youth, particularly teenage years preceding the formation of the band.

The Slip

The Slip is another bit of fun from one of the early jam sessions and one of the first songs that was finished. I think for me personally, being middle-aged, I swing between feelings of romantic nostalgia and fuck you defiance. Some days, I feel like reflecting peacefully on the past and then other days I feel like fighting anything remotely to do with getting older.

Okay, You Win

This one came from a jam session but was always an unwieldy beast that we didn't really know how to tame, so it was a bit of a puzzle trying to finish it. In some ways, it reflects that tension between the music we have always made and then trying to push it somewhere new.

Start Again

This chord progression had been kicking around for a little while, and so it was thrown into the mix at some point during the album's recording and managed to make it through. Another song of defiance and renewal at a time when you find yourself questioning how much you have left to give.

Aqua-Lung

This one we reverse engineered using the DNA of Rubberman. It started off as a sort of Rubberman Part 2 but then morphed into more of its own thing, and like Bad For You, was the first song we wrote and opened the album, this was the last one, so it felt natural to close the record with it. In some ways, it sort of cycles back to Bad For You in the way that it sounds so we end up back where we began in a way.

Oiks is out now. You can find tickets to Jebediah’s national tour with special guests Magic Dirt on the band’s website.

JEBEDIAH

OIKS ALBUM TOUR

WITH SPECIAL GUESTS MAGIC DIRT

THURS 4 JULY | CLEVELAND SANDS HOTEL | CLEVELAND SANDS

FRIDAY 5 JULY | MIAMI MARKETTA | GOLD COAST, QLD

SATURDAY 6 JULY | THE TRIFFID | BRISBANE, QLD

SUNDAY 7 JULY | KINGS BEACH TAVERN | CALOUNDRA, QLD

THURSDAY 11 JULY | THE GOV | ADELAIDE, SA

FRIDAY 12 JULY | FREO.SOCIAL | FREMANTLE, WA

SATURDAY 13 JULY | THE CARINE | DUNCRAIG, WA

THURSDAY 18 JULY | LABEL | BROOKVALE

FRIDAY 19 JULY | MANNING BAR | SYDNEY, NSW

SATURDAY 20 JULY | KING ST BANDROOM | NEWCASTLE, NSW

FRIDAY 2 AUGUST | TORQUAY HOTEL | TORQUAY, VIC

SATURDAY 3 AUGUST | CHELSEA HEIGHTS HOTEL | CHELSEA HEIGHTS, VIC

SUNDAY 4 AUGUST | HABA | RYE, VIC

THURSDAY 22 AUGUST | UOW UNIBAR | WOLLONGONG, NSW

FRIDAY 23 AUGUST | DRIFTERS WHARF | GOSFORD, NSW

SATURDAY 24 AUGUST | THE BASO | CANBERRA, ACT

FRIDAY 30 AUGUST | TANKS ARTS CENTRE | CAIRNS, QLD

SUNDAY 1 SEPTEMBER | MAYBERRY | DARWIN, NT

THURSDAY 5 SEPTEMBER | DU CANE | LAUNCESTON, TAS

FRIDAY 6 SEPTEMBER | FORTH PUB | FORTH, TAS

SUNDAY 7 SEPTEMBER | GOODS SHED | HOBART, TAS

FRIDAY 20 SEPTEMBER | THE CORNER HOTEL | RICHMOND, VIC