Oktoberfest, tours, album and more

Hey there Jeb fans,

As I type this I am slowly decompressing from Sunday’s Oktoberfest celebrations in Perth where we did our thing in front of lots of drunk people, many of whom were dressed up like German “beer wenches”, (the ladies) or wearing lederhosen, (the gents). 

Earlier, during the afternoon and on completion of a midday sound check, we did our first photo shoot in five years in a little studio in Mount Lawley.  Five years between photo shoots is a long time, especially for a band like us who have always found them to be quite strange experiences.  I, for example, have developed some kind of bizarre reflex action where I start acting like an idiot the minute a camera is pointed in my direction and blink just as the flash goes off.  Brett seems quite fond of crossing his arms in front of him.  Fortunately Chris’s hair looked amazing and Ness has obviously been drinking from some kind of fountain of youth as she looks exactly the same as she did 15 years ago, the only changing factor being her hair style.

After the shoot we piled in to Bretts car to head back to Oktoberfest in Northbridge.  Earlier in the afternoon Brett had devised a cunning plan to try and secure his parking spot for our return that involved grabbing some nearby witch’s hats and placing them around the car space on the road.  Unfortunately it didn’t work and someone had moved the hats and parked there.  Oh well.

The place was heaving and it was only 5pm!  I was truly impressed with how many people went to the trouble of dressing up. Backstage there was even more fancy dress going on but of a more scary kind, with members of KISS wandering about in full make up, spandex and massive heeled boots.  Given that is must have been around 30 degrees that is some effort!

We were up on stage some time around 7ish...I can’t quite remember.  The place was packed by this stage and the mood rather jovial.  We had a good set, playing all the old faves and a couple of new ones, “High Horse” and “Under Your Bed”.  Speaking of “Under Your Bed”, we hope everyone is enjoying the free download of that song!  If you don’t have it yet, sign up to the mailing list!  Unfortunately we are not quite ready to play “Lost My Nerve” yet, which is the song that is being played by Triple J at the moment.  We haven’t quite had a chance to work it out yet but we will get there eventually.  I know that might sound strange, afterall, we wrote it and recorded it so what is there to work out?  Well, the truth is, that was written and recorded more than a couple of years ago and we haven’t played it since so some re-learning will be in order.

For those of you on the East Coast, we will be coming to play in December on our Summer Nerve Therapy Tour, with dates in Brisbane, Sydney and a big gig in Adelaide.  Tickets are on sale now but they are going mighty quick so please buy them now or you might miss out altogether.  For those of you in Melbourne we are playing Pyramid Festival on New Years Eve, so that will be our Victorian show. 

In the mean time we are busy getting the art work together for “Kosciuszko” as well as coming up with the perfect running order for the songs.  The record’s due out in April next year by the way.

Here’s cheers to everyone who was in the crowd at Oktoberfest and also to everyone who has snapped up tickets for the tour in December.  We can’t wait to get out there again....it’s good to be back!!!

Cheers

KM