Interview with Feeder ahead of Milecastle 66
Headlining Milecastle 66 festival this summer, Feeder have been at the forefront of the British rock scene now for 24 years. Famous for massive hits: Buck Rogers and Just a Day amongst others, they show no sign of slowing down having just finished recording their latest album All Bright Electric.
Niall Spence caught up with Feeder front man Grant Nicholas to talk Feeder: past, present and future.
NS: You’re just about to release your 9th album, how does this fit in with some of your earlier albums? What makes it different?
GN: Good question, All our albums are different it just naturally happens. I think it’s important to keep it fresh but also to keep our identity as a band and not to change things up too much and stick to the same formula. I think having a four year gap was really good for us, we have come back feeling really: fresh, positive and making good new music. We weren’t planning on stopping, it just kind of happened, I think it helped as it allowed me to bring some parts of my solo album through into the Feeder sound.
Hand on heart I’m really proud of the record I think it’s one the best ones we’ve worked on.
NS: You came to Cumbria last year to Kendal Calling as a solo artist, this is your first time in Cumbria as Feeder. What brought you to the area?
GN: It’s such a beautiful area even when it is raining. We’ve had the tour planned for a while and originally we didn’t want to do any festivals this year but we were given the chance to do Milecastle and we decided we really wanted to do a more intimate festival. It makes sense as it kind of eases us into the festival circuit again after some time out. We’re really excited to be coming to Cumbria and to see all the goodwill and it’s great to be coming to a new area. It’s a really small country but you’d be surprised how many places you don’t get to see so it’ll be good to come back to Cumbria and see a new area.
NS: The album is released after Milecastle 66 and Milecastle 66 is listed on the All Bright Electric tour, what can we expect from your set list?
GN: We have a massive history as a band, so we’ll be playing a real mix of our tracks. Of course there will be some of the new album in there as well but I don’t think it would be fair on the fans to go out there and just play 12 tracks from the new album. I’ve seen bands do it in the past and even if the album is fantastic it doesn’t always work so I hope we can go out and give everyone a real mix of: our new stuff, our hits and some of the old school Feeder stuff as well.
NS: Looking to the future, what’s next for Feeder?
GN: We are going to continue to make the best music we can. We’re going to keep working on new stuff at the moment. I think if the time comes when we can’t do that anymore then we will probably pull things together with a hits collection and see what happens but I feel really inspired with Feeder. The whole nineties sound people have really missed it and we’re still flying. We’ve been really working hard and it’s good to see people appreciating it, we have a great fan base and long may it continue.
NS: You’ve been performing in various guises for 24 years now, what has been your career highlight?
GN: I’m really proud of the entire career, I’m proud of firstly being able to secure a record deal in the nineties with a different sound when it was all about Brit Pop. I’m proud to still be doing what we do 24 years on and having not really compromised on our sound. I think performing at Reading festival in 1997, that was up there we had just started to really realise how big we had become.
NS: Who was the greatest band you have toured with?
GN: Some of the greatest times we had were in the nineties touring America with Everclear. But in terms of the best bands we’ve toured with U2 are up there just in terms of size, we’ve also toured with the Rolling Stones although their fans weren’t too excited about the support, they were just there for The Stones. Touring with REM was really good; we were worried we would be a bit too heavy for REM but they really looked after us and the audience seemed to love it and it went down really well. We toured with Coldplay as well which was really good we kind of had to amend our set to support Coldplay but it was around the time when we had released Comfort in Sounds so it was more of a softer sound anyway.
NS: What is it going to take to get bands back into the mainstream and back into the top 10?
GN: I honestly don’t know what it’s going to take to get bands back into the mainstream, there are loads of great bands out there at the moment but back when we were starting out bands had more time to evolve and I don’t think they are allowed the time and budget to tour and do that anymore. The internet is great for bands starting out because the costs to get records out there is so low but that means that everyone can do it so it makes the competition so much harder.
NS: What does a rock god do on their day off?
GN: I’m not very good at switching off really because music is just such a huge part of my life, I go running, but I also have two young kids, my daughter is just starting big school so we have all that to sort out at the moment I’ve just been shopping for school uniform, I’m the rock and roll dad knocking around in a band t-shirt with everyone looking at me.
Milecastle 66 runs from Friday 23 September – 24 September at Bitts Park in Carlisle. Tickets are £42.99 and are available from www.milecastle66.com, Threads (Whitehaven), The Kings Head (Carlisle), Alauna Vapour Store (Workington, Maryport, Cockermouth).
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