‘I Will Never, Ever Forget That’: The Ghost Inside’s Jonathan Vigil Reflects on Favourite Australian Tour Memories

Ahead of their Australian tour kicking off this weekend, The Ghost Inside frontman Jonathan Vigil sat down with us to look back on his favourite memories touring down under.

The California metalcore collective will kick off the run this Sunday in Fremantle with special guests, Scottish metal outfit Bleed From Within.

Here, Vigil reveals his favourite touring memory ever happened in Australia, as well as gives his honest take on local coffee, Vegemite and what he loves most about touring on our shores.

Check it out below.

—

My favourite Australian tour memory, and my favourite touring memory of all time, actually, was years ago when we played this show in Melbourne. I can’t remember the exact name of the venue we were at, but it had this pier out the back of it that backed right out onto the ocean.

During the show, I joked about jumping off it after we played and invited people to join us. I genuinely didn’t think anyone would actually show up. But when we got outside afterwards there were like 200 or so people there. I couldn’t believe it! We all just spent ages jumping off the pier with people who had been at the show. It was so surreal, and to this day it still stands out as one of my favourite memories, just all of us hanging out together in that moment. I will never, ever forget that. I don’t even know how we could reach out to people who were there, it was such a long time ago. But Australian crowds are the best, and it’s honestly one of our favourite places in the world.

Love Music?

Get your daily dose of metal, rock, indie, pop, and everything else in between.

We’ve been so fortunate with how many times we’ve been able to get to Australia. And when it comes to Australian memories, there’s a big contrast from that high I just mentioned and a personal low for me. Obviously that Melbourne show memory was amazing, but also another time that I won’t forget was when I was in Brisbane on tour years ago and I found out that my father had passed away. I ended up writing a song about it. It was definitely a tough moment. And it’s a contrast to the best memory for sure, but we’ve had so many amazing moments collectively over there. I think we’ve been there six times at this point, so we’ve seen a lot over the years, and we all love getting back over there.

What I also really love about Australia is the food. You guys have so much good food there. I remember one time we were in King Street in Sydney, and we found this row of vegan and vegetarian restaurants. I’m not even vegan, but we went to this one place there and I seriously had the best food ever there, you wouldn’t even have known it was vegan. And your coffee! You guys have some of the best coffee in the world. I can’t say it enough. I’ve been to Colombia, and had coffee in so many countries over the years, so I’ve definitely tried enough coffee around the world to say that. I usually drink my coffee black with no sugar or anything like that. But when I get to Australia, I’ll have a flat white, a bit of milk in there, and it’s just the best!

When it comes to Vegemite… I don’t want to say the wrong thing here or upset anyone in Australia, but we’ve all tried it and we just don’t like it. I know people will say, “oh, you didn’t put the right amount on” or stuff like that, but it’s just such a confronting taste. Maybe it’s something you had to have grown up with to appreciate, and look, we did give it a shot, but it’s definitely not for me at all. I don’t want to get anyone upset with me here, but I will say this: Vegemite is better than Marmite. If I had a gun to my head and had to choose between Marmite or Vegemite, I would choose Vegemite every time! But I don’t love either of them if I’m being completely honest.

Australian crowds are just so special to us, it’s always so much fun, and the thing I love the most is how much you all live and breathe metalcore. You guys were one of the first places to really get what we were doing way back in the day, even before we’d officially released our first album, actually!

There are so many amazing bands over there in the scene, and we’ve actually been able to tour with so many of them as well. Bands like Alpha Wolf, it’s so exciting to see what they’re doing, and of course Parkway Drive who have become so massive and such a force to be reckoned with. We got to get back to Australia with Parkway last year, and it was so wild to be part of that with them. We’ve toured so many continents with them, they’ve taken us out on some huge tours, and we were so lucky to be with them in Australia last year. Luckily for us too, we were able to book that sideshow in Melbourne and it was so wild, and so much fun. There was no barrier, the crowd was having the best time, and it was just mayhem!

The Australian scene just feels like it’s thriving so much there, and for us to be able to come over from the other side of the world and feel close to that connection with those crowds – it’s something so special and we definitely don’t take it for granted. We’re so excited to come back. I love Australia!