Foo Fighters guitarist talks new side-project
Would you believe me if I told you that the countrified looking man in the picture is actually the guitarist for one of the world’s biggest bands? My guess is you probably would because you already know who he is….way to spoil my set up, prick.
Chris Shiflett, who handles guitar duties along with Dave Grohl in Foo Fighters, has a side project that veers away from rock n’ roll and leans towards an Americana/country sound. His band, The Dead Peasants, has their self-titled debut coming out on July 13th. You can hear some of their music on their Myspace page.
Shiflett recently spoke to NME and admitted that some of his favorite music “is old country and old rockabilly and modern Americana like Sun Volt, Wilco and Ryan Adams, I love all that stuff.” He added that the album’s sound “is so far from anything I’ve been a part of with Foo Fighters and it was just really fun to do.”
The album was recorded between December of 2009 and January of 2010 at the Foos studio in California. Shiflett said he got the idea of putting songs down on tape after doing a few Americana shows with some friends “and that kind of evolved into recording some demos. We did that and I thought, ‘Well I’ve got this studio at my disposal, let’s go make a record and see what happens.’”
Shiflett also said that the material on the album, lyrically, is kinda moody for an Americana record. “I always write from personal experience so there’s a lot of love songs on there and there’s a lot of songs about death because a few friends and relatives of mine have died over the last few years.” One of the songs on the album is actually a rare cover of a Joe Strummer song “Burning Lights” from the soundtrack for the movie I Hired A Contract Killer.
“I’d never heard that track before but I instantly fell in love with it and thought that would be a good cover because no one is going to know it.” But he does admit that he should have listened to the original while he was recording the song because “there were a couple of parts where I totally fucked up the melody. I was like ‘Argh I didn’t do that, I should have done that, it sounded so much better the way Joe did it.’”
Tags: Chris Shiflett, Foo Fighters, The Dead Peasants
