Rhythm magazine caught up with Taylor for a Q&A to celebrate their 25th anniversary. Post-Coattail Riders and back demoing songs with Foo Fighters he had this to say;
Dave has lots of songs – as he always does – and I’m telling you that one of them is up there in the top five songs he has ever written. We did a quick demo and just knew in our hearts that it was special.”
In January this year Q magazine named Dave one of their ‘Artists Of The Century’, then in May he was #35 in the list of ‘100 Greatest Frontmen’ & now he’s back on the cover of the October issue as one of “The 10 Most Exciting People In Music Now”.
The ‘What I’ve Learned’ Q&A covers heroin, looking like a cock and the benefits of being the ‘nicest man in rock’.
As of yesterday (August 16th) Foo Fighters have started a few weeks of rehearsing and demoing in preperation for recording album number 7 in September.
You can follow progress in the studio through the Foo Fighters & Dave’s twitter accounts (and although he hasn’t yet, maybe Chris will post an update ot two in the near future).
FooArchive is now also on twitter, follow us for news & notifications on site updates - it’s a little quiet at the moment but as we get closer to the release of FF7 I’m sure things’ll change.
In a recent interview Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears recently spoke to news.com.au and revealed an unlikely fan of the band is Dave Grohl, who sent Shears an email which he says almost made him cry.
“He just wrote us the most amazing, long email just about how happy he was for us – it was incredible, and it made me think, ‘you know what, Dave Grohl fucking likes us, he thinks we are cool. It’s like there you go. Fuck all y’all’.”
“He’s a fucking straight rock’n’roll guy that’s a total music nut who’s in it for the passion and nothing else and isn’t a douche bag. From him, it just made me really happy.
If a fucking 40 year old straight [rocker] man can get into our shit – even though it is unabashedly gay, and sexual – then I think anybody can.”
FooArchive have 5 copies of the newly released debut CD by Chris Shiflett & The Dead Peasants. If your in the UK & want to be in with a chance of winning one, e-mail fooarchive@gmail.com with the subject line ‘SHIFLETT’ and I’ll pick 5 at random on Saturday.
Yesterday (July 20th) Dave posted the following message on the Foo Fighters official Twitter account;
Dear Twitter, I take back everything I said before. I didn’t have a new album to promote. Love, Dave
Over the next couple of hours the tweet was followed with the posting of 10 photos from the studio. (See the photostream HERE)
This coincides with Chris talking this week with Total Guitar about the upcoming recording schedule;
“We’re supposed to start really recording at the beginning of September. We did about a week and a half of rehearsals already, we’re about to do another week or so starting tomorrow, then we have a couple more weeks of rehearsals and demos starting in August. Then in September we’ll start recording it for real.”
Chris Shiflett & The Dead Peasants will release their eponymous debut album on July 12, 2010 on Columbia Records UK
Chris Shiflett & The Dead Peasants is a new project from Shiflett, already known as the lead guitarist for Foo Fighters and the frontman for Jackson United. Steeped in his love for classic country artists (Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings), rockabilly (Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran), and deep-rooted rock bands (The Rolling Stones, The Replacements), this new album is packed with soulful pedal steel- and twang guitar-accented songs. The album highlights his talent and versatility not only as a skillful guitarist, but also as a songwriter. These infectious Americana-laced rock songs are some of the best he’s penned, from the chiming keys and buoyant, ringing guitars of “Get Along” to the pedal steel- and mandolin-lined heartache of “Bandaged,” and from the spry, Old 97s-ian “Baby, Let It Out” to the rueful country swing of “Death March.”
Shiflett wrote the songs on Chris Shiflett & The Dead Peasants over the course of 2008-9, inspiration first striking when a friend asked him to perform at Orange County’s punk-rockabilly Hootenanny festival in 2008. After re-immersing himself in his Americana and old country music collection to prepare a short set – and then playing a brief acoustic tour with friend Joey Cape of Lagwagon – he began writing what eventually became the new album. Recorded at the Foo Fighters’ Studio 606 in Los Angeles, CA, this past December and January, the core band on Chris Shiflett & The Dead Peasants is Shiflett (vocals, guitar), 606 house engineer John Lousteau (drums, in addition to engineering), and Derek Silverman (keyboards). The album’s additional instrumentation was performed by an array of fine musicians, including Davey Faragher (Elvis Costello and The Imposters, Jenny Lewis, John Hiatt) on bass, Greg Leisz (Wilco, Lucinda Williams, Whiskeytown) on pedal steel, Stevie Blacke (Beck, Weezer, Colbie Caillat) on violin and mandolin, and Audra Mae on backing vocals.
Track listing for Chris Shiflett & The Dead Peasants:
Helsinki
Get Along
Bandaged
God Damn
Burning Lights (Joe Strummer cover)
An Atheist’s Player
Not Going Down Alone
Baby, Let It Out
Death March
European Summer tour news will be announced soon.
The August issue of Q magazine is on shelves now and features the ‘Hot List – 50 Reasons Why This Summer Will Rock’. Number 2 on the list is ‘Dave Grohl: what’s next?’
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On Monday May 31st @ 15:00 BBC 6 Music broadcasts ‘The John Bonham Story’ narrated by Dave Grohl.
Rock superstar and lifelong Led Zeppelin fan, Dave Grohl, celebrates a man who the Encyclopedia Britannica describes as “the perfect model for all hard rock drummers that have followed.”
Get more info (and listen to the show once it’s aired) here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00slsdw
BBC Two presents ‘I’m In A Rock ‘n’ Roll Band!’ a new six-part series investigating what makes the perfect rock ‘n’ roll band and Dave is among the many musicians contributing to the show (and he even gets animated in the title sequence).
I’m In A Rock ‘n’ Roll Band!, a multi-platform project featured on BBC Two, BBC Radio 2 and bbc.co.uk, dissects the traditional band and looks at what makes each of the individual members tick. It culminates in a live studio show in June, in which industry experts discuss their favourite rock ‘n’ roll musicians and create the ultimate fantasy band.
Each episode focuses on a different role in a band, starting with ‘The Singer’ on May 1st, followed by ‘The Guitarist’ on May 8th and ‘The Drummer’ on May 15th which also features contributions from Taylor Hawkins; Tommy Lee; Jason Bonham; John Densmore; Nick Mason; Phil Collins; Stewart Copeland; Stephen Morris; Carl Palmer; and Samantha Maloney.