Canberra festival to remember slain punk rocker The Ginger Ninja

As he slipped through the sleeping house, he spotted a lone figure, headphones on, listening to "the loudest music you could imagine".

"It's little moments like that that stick out in my mind, he just never wanted the fun to end," Griffis said of his mate Nicholas Sofer-Schreiber.

"He never wanted to say goodbye. He just wanted to have fun forever."

Nick was stabbed to death on Boxing Day 2013 at his Lyneham home.

His former housemate Christopher Navin was sentenced to 12 years jail in May this year for his manslaughter. He will be eligible for release from prison in less than four years.

But this story isn't about Navin.

It's about the ginger-haired kid who once deep-fried chunks of steak for the hell of it, who would clink his beer glass with you and cry 'Ted Danson!', an obscure reference to the lead actor in the sitcom Cheers, and who could quote Curb Your Enthusiasm verbatim.

It's also about his friends, who turned their own grief and Nick's dream of one day hosting his own festival into GingerFest.

GingerFest was an idea the 27-year-old Ginger Ninja had "nagged" his muso friends about getting off the ground for years, Griffis said.

"Even though he never played an instrument everyone knew who he was. He was that guy at the front of the show, having a good time and a good laugh and a good dance," Griffis said.

Aaron Gaffney met Nick when Gaffney's band, Lame Excuse, played at the Green Room in Phillip.

"I think he'd just turned 18. He'd started coming out by himself and didn't really know anyone, I think he needed some mates at the time," Gaffney said.

Gaffney and his bandmates Don McFadden and Josh Anderson took Nick under their wing and as time went on he emerged from his shell - so much so Nick even took himself on a solo tour of the US.

"Nick was actually legally blind, he wasn't completely blind but at night time he couldn't really see people's faces but despite that one year he decided that he wanted to go to America by himself to go to the annual punk rock bowling festival in Las Vegas," Gaffney said.

"The only people he knew at this festival were members of bands who performed at the event, bands such as Strung Out and Death By Stereo.

"Despite his vision he took himself overseas to the States, over to Vegas and he went to the Grand Canyon, he went to Niagara Falls and did this big tour by himself which was a pretty gutsy thing to do, I've never done anything like that. I believe he got a lift home one night with Stephen Egerton, guitarist of the legendary pioneering punk band Descendents."

Nick was orphaned by the time he fell in with the Lame Excuse lads and in Canberra's tight-knit punk rock scene, he found another family.

Kristy Morell, who met Nick through McFadden and Anderson, said while tragedy marred Nick's early life, he would not be defined by it.

"He'd lost both of his parents and somewhere from all that he really understood the meaning of life more than the rest of us," Morell said.

Confusion reigned in the days after Nick died.

"I think at the time I thought he'd had an accident, he'd fallen down the stairs. Your brain comes up with anything but what happened. It was very surreal," Morrell said.

As details began to emerge about the way he'd died and the police investigation plodded on, feelings of helplessness spurred Nick's mates, including Morell, Gaffney and Griffis, into action.

The first festival they organised in his memory, Dansonfest, brought hundreds of people to The Basement in Belconnen.

It also gave them the money to put on the first GingerFest, which has attracted huge crowds in Sydney for the past two years.

To mark what would have been Nick's big 3-0, they decided to bring Gingerfest back to his home town as a "massive 30th birthday party".

Morell said it was important to them Nick was never forgotten.

"Nicky was a gift to us, honestly, as a group of friends he really was like a brother," Morell said.

"That's why we want to make a big deal out of it, that's why we want to do something every year to remember him. That's what you do for your friends."

Gingerfest is on at Transit Bar, Canberra on Saturday, November 19. Tickets are $30 + BF. Tickets at oztix.com.au.