Feeder's Grant Nicholas Reminisces On Soundwave Festival & His Other Fave Aussie Tour Memories

Feeder are getting ready to pack their bags and return to Australia for the first time in 14 years. The multi-platinum selling UK rock act will be hitting our shores this April to reunite with fans at five headline shows across the country.

In honour of the long-awaited trip, Feeder frontman and guitarist Grant Nicholas took some time to reflect on some of his favourite Aussie tour memories with Feeder so far. Read his words – and suss all the dates and details of Feeder’s 2025 Australian tour – down below.

Feeder – ‘Buck Rogers’

Feeder’s Grant Nicholas: One of my first memories of Australia is when we toured with Muse. This was our first visit and it came about after we had given them the support slot on our second album Yesterday Went Too Soon Tour in the UK. I guess they re-paid the favour but letting us play with them later in Australia. They were starting to get very big in the UK and Europe by then so it was a great tour to be on and they made us feel very welcome.

I remember it started off in Perth and on our arrival the guys from Muse told us some guy had died after being mauled by a great white shark on his daily morning swim. They had been at the same beach only the day before, so we decided to give that planned band and crew beach trip a miss.

Our drummer Jon, who is sadly no longer with us, was getting married in Miami so couldn’t do the tour quite last minute. This was very tricky as we had already committed to it, so we had to get a replacement drummer to cover the shows. Not ideal but he understood as we had committed to the tour.

After the tour had finished, we then all jumped on a plane and flew straight to Miami to attend the wedding.

My other memory of Australia is a trip around Mosman and Manly Bay. My manager’s friend, who is based in Sydney, had a boat and showed us the sites. We later went to Bondi beach where our manager Matt and I went for a dip . He hadn’t brought any swimming shorts so decided to wear his white boxers. I’ll leave the rest to the imagination, and even the sharks kept their distance.

That was on our second trip to Australia as a band, and we joined the Soundwave Music Festival in 2011 as well as doing a few of our own small club shows. It was an amazing bill.

It was a great festival to be part of as it moved around various cities we got to see a lot in that time. I remember it being extremely hot, right in the middle of a blistering Australian summer. We played very early but on the main stage, we never knew what to expect crowd wise, we were just hoping doors opened early enough to let enough people in, in time to check us out. We did have a lot of fun though and the crowds were very up for it.

We were promoting our album Renegades at the time and did all the shows stripped back as a three-piece.

On that trip, we also did the tourist thing and visited a koala bear and kangaroo nature reserve. I ‘d never seen let alone held a koala bear before. It was a surreal experience.

Playing Australia has always been a lot of fun and the audiences have always been warm and up for it.

We’re really looking forward to coming back after 14 years as part of our Far East Black / Red tour to play to our Australian fans again .