Love What You Do: Foo Fighters' Chris Shiflett on Going Solo Again with 'Lost at Sea'
Tuesday, 24 October 2023
Written by Simon Ramsay
Photo: Joey Martinez
Humble, grounded and a man of many talents, Chris Shiflett is someone any level-headed musician should strive to emulate. He might be the lead guitarist in the world’s biggest stadium rock band but, whether he’s tearing it up with the Foo Fighters, riding solo or creating superbly insightful podcasts, ‘Shifty’ always puts his passion for what he does, and the people he does it with, ahead of the spotlight.
Although hailing from Santa Barbara, California, it’s no secret that this 52-year-old singer, songwriter and guitarist, who’d already served time in Me First and the Gimme Gimmes and No Use for a Name before joining Dave Grohl and co. back in 1999, is a devout follower of Arsenal FC. It’s safe to say no football team has ever become successful without a Shiflett in their ranks.
He isn’t the talisman who runs single handedly through the opposition to score. Nor is he the striker who hangs around the penalty area waiting to bag a simple tap in and grab the headlines. He’s a hard-working midfield general who unassumingly keeps his team’s engine ticking over with smart passes before, when the time is right, stepping forward to unleash a killer through ball.
As such, his hugely enjoyable solo outings have always been based on the interplay between himself and an equally talented cast of characters. Having previously made two stellar rootsy Americana-based records under the guidance of super-producer Dave Cobb, for his third solo record ‘Lost at Sea’, which was largely crafted during lockdown, Chris hooked up with The Cadillac Three’s Jaren Johnston and a host of first rate co-conspirators to continue that fine, extra curricular run of form.
Packing a variety of rowdy and soulful romps ranging from Eagles-esque rockers and trad country ballads to infectious Tom Petty-style anthems, every song unleashes enough punchy hooks and harmonies to make them equally at home on any classic radio station or roadhouse jukebox. With UK and Ireland solo shows in the diary for next spring, before the Foos’ latest summer of stadium spectacles gets underway at Manchester’s Emirates Old Trafford in June, we caught up with Chris to discuss the album, what fuels his work ethic and why he has his dream job.
Although ‘Lost At Sea’ is billed as a solo record, it seems that the real joy you get in making music comes from the interaction between yourself and the other musicians. How do you pick them and cultivate the kind of chemistry that’s been a key feature of all your solo work?
It’s all about the collaboration in the room and that transformation that happens when you go into a recording session with an idea and come out of it with a realised song. It’s beautiful. But I knew I wanted to work with Jaren and he assembled the players. I didn’t know Jerry Roe, the drummer, we’d never met or worked together so I got to know him through making the record. But Charlie Worsham I knew, Tom Bukovac I knew a little bit, but I trusted that Jaren was going to hire great players and these are guys he works with all the time and has a rapport with.
Stepping into that room for the first time, I hadn’t recorded in a minute, and it was an entirely different group of people I was working with than, say, the Dave Cobb records, which was a different studio, with a whole different crew of people. So I was real nervous in that first session until we got the first take of whatever the first song we did was. Then you relax and go, ‘This is gonna be great.’
You apparently wanted Jaren to push you out of your comfort zone for this record. So how did that collaborative relationship take your music into new territory and which songs might best exemplify it?
One of the first we recorded is a great example. The song Black Top White Lines, which we wrote with John Osbourne around a riff Jaren had. It just sounds like him and any time you’re writing with other people the songs become…it’s like everybody’s perspective on it which, by extension, takes you into different places musically than you would necessarily think to go. And when I first heard a mix of that song it was like, ‘Fuck, that doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever done, at all.’ I love it. Jaren is such a great songwriter, great singer, great producer and he just elevated everything.
You’ve previously spoken about getting into well worn patterns and how working with outside songwriters helps to bust you out of that. So what can you say about your co-writers’ influence on this album?
I wrote Carrie Midnight Texas Queen with Cary Barlowe and Nick Autry, who are both Nashville-based songwriters I had gotten introduced to. That was the first time we ever wrote together. I just had that hook line written down in a journal and always wanted to get to it. “Carrie midnight Texas queen,” I wrote that down one day, sort of had an image in mind, and then we had to figure out what the story was and write it.
It’s very loosely based around someone I knew from way back when, in another life, and is one of the more country-leaning songs on the record. It’s a pretty traditional country chord progression, but the first version we recorded was actually a little too clean. It was too nice. I had to take it back to my studio, rough it up around the edges and eventually got it in the right place. And then Jaren put all those gang chant vocals on it that just take it into the bar room. That’s what it needed.
You’ve intimated that writing lyrics was a bit of a culture shock when you first had to do it. So did becoming a lyricist subsequently make you go back and listen to your favourite artists differently, from a storytelling point of view?
Absolutely, that’s country songwriting in a nutshell. The songs are stories, there’s usually a narrative to them, and in rock ‘n’ roll there oftentimes isn’t. But as I got more into that, focused on that and thinking about that, I realised somebody like Bruce Springsteen, who I love and I’m sure is a huge influence, writes like that. There are people in rock ‘n’ roll that take that approach but a lot of times it’s more poetic.
That’s been a really interesting thing and it’s an ongoing evolution for me. I don’t always get it to where I want it to be but I definitely try to make each song its own little individual story with a point to it. I listen back to some of my older songs now and just think ‘What was I doing?’ But I know what I was doing. I was just writing lyrics because you had to, not because I necessarily wanted to.
The record’s built around tightly crafted songwriting but a number of tracks, like Where’d Everybody Go, could easily be turned into classic southern rock jams when you play them live. Do you have one ear on that when you’re writing and recording?
I definitely think about that. Going into making this record, I wanted it to be a little more unhinged in the guitar playing than some of my previous ones. I like sprawling guitar solos that go on for too long. That’s just my taste, but I rarely do that on my records because you don’t want it to derail a song. It’s great live, to extend sections, open it up and just noodle around. I love that shit but it’s not for everybody.
It’s interesting, though, because there are a couple of things I think about a lot when I’m writing songs. One of them is something Dave Cobb told me when I was making a record with him. He was like, ‘Man, everybody thinks they need that third verse and you almost never do. It’s just taking up space.’ So I think about trying to keep songs concise. Then I think about some of my favourite Merle Haggard songs that are literally a verse and a chorus and that’s it, which is really hard to pull off. That’s an economy that is challenging. It’s hard to condense things into a couple of verses and a chorus and a bridge. There’s not a lot of space to work when you’re working within a songwriting structure. So a big part of writing is slicing off shit you don’t need.
In terms of sprawling guitar breaks and your solo work, have you had to overcome any preconceptions that the lead guitarist of a rock band, who often talks about how much he loves Randy Rhoads, might just be making indulgent shred records when let off the leash?
Yeah, sometimes, and it’s not something that bothers me. You definitely get people in the room that are curious fans and people who are like, ‘Why are you playing a Buck Owens song? What the fuck is this?’ You can tell by the look on people’s faces sometimes. That’s cool. But I think there’s a lot more overlap in people’s musical taste than we assume. People, especially in a live environment, even if they’ve never heard your music before, at the end of the day they just want to come out, drink a few beers, have fun with their friends and get their boogie on. As long as you’re putting on a good show, delivering it with some energy and people in the room are having a good time, they’re open to it.
I have to ask about the ‘Shred With Shifty’ videos you’ve been doing. Do you have a dream guest, living or dead, and a particular solo of theirs you’d love to go through?
If it’s living or dead it would be Randy Rhoads. No question. Which solo? That’s hard. It’s tempting to say Mr. Crowley but I’ve always loved the guitar playing all through that S.A.T.O song on ‘Diary of a Madman’. That’s one of those songs where, if you keep turning up the fade out, you can hear shit’s still happening in there. I don’t know if you did that when you were a kid, when you used to have your headphones on and just keep turning it up as the song faded out, and it would go silent and then the next song would come on and blow your head off? But any Randy Rhoads guitar solos from those first couple of Ozzy records. It might not be that one but it would definitely be Randy Rhoads.
I believe you’ve interviewed Mike Campbell for a forthcoming episode too. He’s very much the consummate team player, like yourself, and someone I’ve always felt is very underrated.
I don’t know, man, when I interviewed him I told him, ‘Do you know your name is just constantly brought up in the studio for people like me?’ Every time you make a record, at some point in making that record, somebody says, ‘Do a Mike Campbell kind of thing.’ He’s such an influence and touchstone for all of us. Mike Campbell’s the guy that comes up with the perfect part to every song. Just the absolute, exactly-what-this-song-needs part, and he’s done it a million times over the course of his career. It’s unbelievable.
Looking at how creatively active you’ve been over the course of your career, do you need to keep busy, is it a compulsion or just something you absolutely love and that makes you happy?
It’s probably both. There probably is some compulsion element to it. I do like to stay busy but also feel like this is the dream job. I get to play and think about music for a living and like being in it. I like all its many tentacles. I like playing big, giant shows. I like playing in bars. I like rehearsing in rehearsal rooms. I like my podcasts and talking to other guitar players. I love it all.
Chris Shiflett’s ‘Lost at Sea’ is out now through Snakefarm.
Chris Shiflett Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Wed March 20 2024 - DUBLIN Whelans
Thu March 21 2024 - BELFAST Limelight 2
Sat March 23 2024 - GLASGOW QMU
Sun March 24 2024 - MANCHESTER Academy 2
Mon March 25 2024 - BIRMINGHAM O2 Academy2 Birmingham
Wed March 27 2024 - LONDON Electric Ballroom
Wed November 29 2023 - PERTH HBF Park
Sat December 02 2023 - ADELAIDE Coopers Stadium
Mon December 04 2023 - MELBOURNE AAMI Park
Wed December 06 2023 - MELBOURNE AAMI Park
Sat December 09 2023 - SYDNEY Accor Stadium
Tue December 12 2023 - BRISBANE Suncorp Stadium
Sat January 20 2024 - AUCKLAND Mount Smart Stadium
Wed January 24 2024 - CHRISTCHURCH Orangetheory Stadium
Sat January 27 2024 - WELLINGTON Sky Stadium
Thu June 13 2024 - MANCHESTER Emirates Old Trafford
Sat June 15 2024 - MANCHESTER Emirates Old Trafford
Mon June 17 2024 - GLASGOW Hampden Park
Thu June 20 2024 - LONDON Stadium Olympic Park
Sat June 22 2024 - LONDON Stadium Olympic Park
Tue June 25 2024 - CARDIFF Principality Stadium
Thu June 27 2024 - BIRMINGHAM Villa Park
Wed July 17 2024 - NEW YORK New York - Citi Field (USA)
Fri July 19 2024 - NEW YORK New York - Citi Field (USA)
Sun July 21 2024 - BOSTON Massachusetts - Fenway Park (USA)
Tue July 23 2024 - HERSHEY PA - Hersheypark Stadium (USA)
Thu July 25 2024 - CINCINNATI Ohio - Great American Ballpark (USA)
Sun July 28 2024 - MINNEAPOLIS Minnesota - Target Field (USA)
Sat August 03 2024 - DENVER CO - Empower Field At Mile High (USA)
Wed August 07 2024 - SAN DIEGO California - Petco Park (USA)
Fri August 09 2024 - LOS ANGELES California - BMO Stadium (USA)
Sun August 11 2024 - LOS ANGELES California - BMO Stadium (USA)
Fri August 16 2024 - PORTLAND OR - Providence Park Stadium (USA)
Sun August 18 2024 - SEATTLE Washington - T Mobile Park (USA)
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