Latest Release: Black/Red
Label: Big Teeth / Townsend
Band site: http://feederweb.com/
Tour: https://thephoenix.au/
Long established Welsh alternative rock band, Feeder, have been prolific of late. After earning many music awards, delivering celebrated live performances, and having endured the restrictions of the pandemic, they have completed an album trilogy that commenced with the 2022 release Torpedo. This release sits alongside their first double album, Black/Red, from 2024 to wrap up the trilogy.
Black/Red marks their twelfth album, if considered as a whole, over a career spanning right back to 1997. Third album, Echo Park, released in 2001, increased their international profile substantially. Sadly, it also marked the last album to feature late co-founding band member, drummer Jon Lee. The remaining band members survived the turmoil and bravely carried on, channelling their grief in 2002 into the emotive Comfort in Sound album, which was widely praised.
Today, Feeder’s musical legacy is wide, and varied, with a vast discography to choose from for their upcoming set list. After 14 years since they last graced our shores, we caught up with co-founding frontman, and lead guitarist Grant Nicholas.
It has been 14 years since the last tour to Australia.
Grant Nicholas: Yeah, I know. I can’t believe it’s that long. Yeah, it’s taken us a while to get back.
Is that just the nature of the music industry and promotional offers and all that?
GN: I think so, and just timing. There were a few things that were going to happen, and we were trying to tie in with Japan shows and things like that. But, yeah, I mean, obviously, it is a long way to come as well, so it’s not as easy as us just getting on a tour bus and going over and doing a few shows in Europe. It’s a bit more work, but it’s somewhere we’ve really been trying to get back for a while. I’m so happy that I kept on our agent, and said to my manager, ‘We’ve got to go back to Australia sometime before we’re too old. Come on, get some shows for us.’ They put the feelers out and we had some really good interest this time and the promoters came forward with these dates. We said, ‘Yeah, we’ll be there.’
There was this thing called a pandemic as well.
GN: That didn’t help. But, yeah, it has been a while, and we’d love to come back and do more there. If these shows go well, then hopefully we won’t leave it so long next time.
So, with 12 albums under your belt, sorting out a set list must be challenging?
GN: Oh, yeah. I mean, I’m terrible doing a set list at the best of times. I’m always very last minute with them. They’re all asking, ‘Have you done the set list?’ No, but it’s so important to me, a set list, because it really can make or break a gig and sometimes when you try a random order, it can actually work really well, and you never really expected it. There’s a lot of things to go into doing a set list. Obviously having a lot of albums is great in some way, but you’ve always got a few too many songs to fit in the set in the time that you can play. So, it’s always a bit of a challenge.
Given that you’ve got Black/Red and that’s quite a mammoth album in context of previous material, do you find that the old material changes when you perform it live?
GN: Yeah, it probably does. Maybe when we go back and revisit an old sort of Feeder classic from the Polythene era, like the first two records, you have to sort of remember how to play them again, when we were a three piece, and I’ll try to think how to make that work. So, I try and go back, try to get as close as we can, but it’s difficult. I was a lot younger then as well. So, you change. I can still do most of that stuff. As you get older, you just find a place, you just find a sweet spot. I think that you haven’t really found that when you’re younger. It’s just about going out there and sort of screaming for an hour and then you go on, do the next show. As you create more music, it just becomes a bigger show. So, you just try to lock those ones in there. But yeah, I don’t try and change them too much because I want people who bought those records that remember those songs from their student days or whatever it was, to still be able to recognise them, and not be too far away from what they were originally. It’s nice to sort of jam them out a bit sometimes. You know, you might extend the section or something like that. But I think if they’re classics, I don’t want to mess with them too much.
True. I imagine as you mature, you change your emotional approach to older songs.
GN: Oh, yeah, definitely. For some of the songs you play from the early stuff, to give a good example, take “High” from Polythene, it’s sort of an anthemic song. It’s not a heavy sort of screamy song anyway. So, I think I approach it in the same way as I did back then, really. I’m not sure. When you’re a younger band, and that time when we started off when it was Brit Pop and it was the whole grunge scene in America, everything was a bit more, ‘Let’s make a bit more noise and be a bit more shouty.’ I think if I had that sort of approach now, or was trying to do that it would be very weird. So, of course, you know, I’ve experienced a lot since then, as you said, I’ve got kids and I’ve probably grown up in certain ways a bit more, maybe I haven’t, but I’ve certainly experienced a lot more. I am probably a very different person in some ways. But music brings out the child in you a little bit as well and that’s part of the fun of it. There is that kind of energy and that buzz you get from playing, and I think you’ve got to keep a bit of that there.
HM: You started out as a producer before the band and then you worked with Gil Norton for Echo Park and a bit later with Pushing the Senses, when everything changed. What was it like for you working with a producer when you had producer skills yourself?
GN: Well, I was sort of a tape engineer. I wasn’t like anywhere. I mean I’m a producer as in more of a kind of a wrangler. I used to engineer a bit like back in the day. Gil doesn’t engineer anymore. He has an engineer; he’s more of a song guy. He’ll get you in a room, he’ll go through the songs with you, the vocals and stuff. I’m more, as I grow, I’m more that kind of producer. So, I try and do that to Feeder, which is weird. I put my head in a different space, and I work with an engineer. We sort of co-produce because I make sure that he pushes me really hard and I push him really hard because when you do your own stuff, you can be too close to it. You need something to say, ‘No, that’s shit,’ or whatever. So, yeah, you kind of need that. You don’t want someone to just start blowing smoke up your ass all the time just because you’re paying them to be your engineer. I like to work with people that sort of challenge me, but I also have a really strong idea about how I just hear it, how I want it to sound or how I try and get it to sound in my head. I mean, I’m not a producer in the same right as Gil Norton was. I just ended up, you know, I just know how to make a song, sort of, sound good. Some people might disagree. I learned a lot from Gil as well. So, you know, a combination of my small experience of being in studios when I was growing up and then working with Gil, it was a real learning curve, because, you know, when I first worked with Gil on Echo Park, we didn’t really get on.
Wow.
GN: It was different. It was quite tough. You know, we’re really good friends now. I was, you know, maybe a bit naive in certain areas. I thought Gil would be very loose and sort of go with the real kind of Steve Albini approach, but he’s completely opposite to that. He’s very particular, very structured and very neat, and likes things to be really bang on. I was kind of at the time wanting to go for a bit more of a free thing, and we were working with Pro Tools for the first time. It just felt like it took forever, and I found that really hard. So, I got quite frustrated. But then when I saw the results and the way it worked, I actually took a lot of that on board. I think when we worked with each other after that, when we ended up co-producing. Gil doesn’t really co-produce. I mean, the fact he even let me co-produce with him is, I suppose, a testament to that he obviously liked some of my ideas as well. I guess a combination of what I learned from him and maybe what he understood that I was trying to get from the songs, and that the team just kind of like really worked.
That makes sense. But in light of that, how would you say that your songwriting approach has changed given the trilogy albums you just completed?
GN: It hasn’t really changed. You know, I’ve been sitting in the kitchen, where I’m just sat now, and it will be just on acoustic guitar normally. I’ve always kind of written a bit that way. But now I’m a bit more organised. So, I try to get lyrics really up front. Now, I may not keep them, as there may be some guide lyrics in there, but at least have a structure of a good verse, on to the chorus and the bridge and stuff like that. I try and get that much earlier than I used to do. In the old days, it would be the old classic, ‘Oh, yes, not the lyrics yet.’ I’ll be in the studio literally writing them, even singing them at the last minute, and that does happen a lot with bands. It’s very common for singers to say, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve almost finished it,’ trying to put off doing the vocals until the very end. When you get a vocal on the track, as much as I love doing guitars, that’s my favourite bit of recording. I enjoy doing all the keyboards and guitar parts, when you get a good vocal track early, even if you end up erasing it, it’s a massive part of the song. You tend to build more around that, and you realise some of the song doesn’t need as many things on it, if you’ve got a good vocal. That’s something that took me a long time to realise, and I think in the last five to 10 years since I started doing my solo stuff as well, that’s something I do a lot more now with Feeder. I think it makes the process better and it makes the songs better. So, yeah, that’s changed since my early, early days.
HM: Speaking of guitars, have you ever ventured from the signature Fender Jazzmaster to say a Telecaster?
GN: No, it’s still what I know, it’s all Jazzmasters. I do use the Telecasters. I mean, I love Fender guitars, but I’ve always played Telecasters and Jazzmasters. They’ve kind of been a bit of a team, and then around the time of the Silent Cry album, I used a bit more Telecaster than Jazzmaster live. But since then, I’ve basically been pretty much all Jazzmasters. So, my whole racket is all Jazzmasters now.
I was going to say that with your bassist, Taka Hirose, working at ESP guitars, you might have got some more Strat style guitars.
GN: Yeah, no, he worked there for a little while. I did my original Telecaster in the early Feeder days. I used to have three guitars. I had a Gibson SG, my original Jazzmaster, which is called Jesus. That’s the one that everyone knows before the other one I hold up early on, my sunburst, beaten up one. That was my first Jazzmaster and that’s probably my main live guitar. I had an ESP sunburst Telecaster that looked a bit like the Andy Summers one. It was a great guitar, and I ended up trading it in for something years ago. I wish I’d kept it, but that was an ESP. Then obviously when I met Taka, he worked at the ESP factory for a while. But yeah, I do actually have an ESP, as Taka’s friend, who used to make guitars with him, has his own custom shop in Japan. It’s like a very small kind of business called Kazu Guitar Village. I think he left ESP and set up this custom company. But when he was at ESP, they made me a really cool guitar. I’m a real Fender guy, but I like Gibsons, especially Gibson SGs. I said I want like a cross between a Gibson SG, a Jazzmaster and a Fender Mustang, and that’s what we came up with. This has Seymour Duncans pickups. It’s a really great guitar because it’s quite thick, it’s quite chunky. It’s not like an SG, and it’s got a bolt on neck. So, it’s quite tough as well because I broke the headstock off my SG about three times.
How have you coped with the digital age? SGs and stuff, are vintage type instruments.
GN: I’m a real vintage guy. I’m not great on digital, I’m not even great on computer stuff really. I’m old school. I mean, give me a tape machine any day already. Pro tool stuff is why I work with my engineer because I’m so slow on all that. I mean, I know what you can do with it all, which is great, but I’m not so good at operating it. I’d much rather have go back to the days, back to the late 80’s, early 90’s, when I was working the studio, the old two-inch tape. We went to Malta recently, and I had a new guitar tech. As soon as he walked in the rehearsal room, he was just, ‘Wow.’ He said, ‘I haven’t heard a band with real amplifiers for so many years, playing like us.’
He said there’s not many people doing it anymore, it’s all sitting away. I’m basically using the same rig as I did like back in the early days; just two combos, like the Vox AC-30 and a Fender, Hot Rod Deville. Yeah, and he loved it. I mean, it is old school, I quite like that. It’s just a different vibe.
In context of early sounds, how have you coped with working with session and live touring drummers given things that happened. How did you deal with it?
GN: Yeah, well, we had obviously Mark Richardson from Skunk Anansie. He was kind of full time for a while and then we sort of decided to kind of go separate ways and then he went back with Skunk, and things like that. So, we work with Karl Brazil, he’s an amazing drummer and he’s even played on some of Black/Red actually. But our live drummer is Geoff Holroyde, and he also played on some of the album; he has been with us yet for quite a while, for six years or something. It doesn’t feel like a session thing with us. Although, yeah, they’re not full-time members. It’s very much a band still. We hang out, we do all the same things. It’s not like me and Taka, and two session guys. It’s a band. It’s just that I think that after we lost Jon, we weren’t quite sure what we wanted to do. It felt we didn’t know whether we were going to carry on. It was only because I ended up writing Comfort in Sound, but I didn’t even know it, being a Feeder record that went on to be very successful, that we just, you know, we realised that we could still maybe have a career doing Feeder. Then we worked with Mark and then he joined. We’ve never really felt the sort of need to suddenly have permanent people. We just thought we’d just take each step at a time. But we do try and make it feel like it’s a band, though, and I think hopefully that comes across when you see us live.
Certainly. Finally, is there a particular track or a particular album that you’re most proud of from your discography?
GN: It’s difficult to say really. I mean, for a song that connected with people going back to when we first started, “High” was a really important song for us, and it is a very simple track. The simple ones are often the best ones. That song has definitely been a very loyal song. So, that’s a song I feel like was very important to our evolution as a band. If we hadn’t had songs like that, I don’t know whether we would have just been another sort of guitar grunge band. I think the fact we had, and I wrote songs like that was a big reason why we got signed. If I hadn’t written “High”, it probably would be “Just the Way I’m Feeling”. They’re not that dissimilar formulas they have that includes an anthemic chorus. When you write something yourself, you are your own worst critic. But there’s a song on Comfort in Sound called “Forget About Tomorrow”, which has got the big orchestra on it. For me, just the way that came about and the way that song has something about it, I think just as a writer and just the string arrangement on it, that’s the song I’m most proud of in the Feeder catalogue. Otherwise, it’s some songs on my little solo thing [Yorktown Heights] that’s sort of under the radar, but I think that’s got some of the best songs I’ve ever written on that record. But other people may disagree.
Fair enough, I can understand that.
GN: It’s a different vibe to the heavier Feeder stuff, but it’s not that dissimilar, really. If you throw a few heavy guitars on some of those songs, they would probably sound like Feeder tracks.