Thirty years on, Grinspoon embraces activewear

The band formed in 1995 and went down in history by winning the first ever Triple J Unearthed competition.

Now, almost 30 years later Grinspoon is back with new material and a 45-date tour; which has the potential to take more out of the band compared to their old days as a hard-partying act.

Bassist Joe Hansen admitted the band had become a tad more responsible with age.

"We generally try to drink the rider after the show instead of before the show these days," Hansen said.

"No, in all seriousness, you know, I do see Pat and Phil returning in the morning with their activewear on having just been to the gym and stuff like that.

"So it's a bit different to the early days when I'd see them returning early in the morning, with the same clothes they had on from last night's show."

While a 45-date three-month tour through plenty of regional centres might take it out of the guys, Hansen was pushing for a few more shows to get the number to 50.

"This tour is probably quite relentless, but we haven't done a full-on driving regional style of tour like this for a fairly long time," Hansen said.

"So, it's gonna be fun. We're all looking forward to it.

"We first started, we were in Lismore and I remember bands travelled through Lismore quite a lot during those days and it was just awesome.

"You've got international bands or Australian bands coming through and playing at your local pub. It was great."

A large part of the reason for the tour is the first new music from the band in 12 years, in the form of recently-released single Unknown Pretenders and new album Whatever Whatever in August.

Hansen said part of the reason for the new material was that they couldn't just keep touring on the back of their old hits.

"I think we've got a pretty good, strong back catalogue that we've built up over the years and that's awesome. And I think people will always love the old stuff," he said.

"But at the same time, it's nice to have some new stuff, be able to present some new material. You can go on milking the old stuff for as long as possible - which we will, don't worry about it - but it's cool to be able to throw in some new stuff.

"And I think this new material is gonna go across really well with our fans."

The single isn't new - it was written back in 2020 but has only just seen the light of day.

"Yeah, I'm blaming COVID, basically," Hansen said.

"In February of 2020 we recorded a few tracks and we were pretty vibed on it. We were pretty excited and we thought, 'oh, we could release this as an EP or something'.

"And then of course COVID hit and it's just like, 'well, okay, we'll put that plan on hold'. Then as time went on, we started thinking we could add a few tracks, we could build on this.

"It sort of just became an album. We were like, well, 'let's just do a full album and be done with it'."

Grinspoon will tour across the country from September to December. Tickets are on sale now.