Exclusives

From underground punk to authentic country outlaw via the biggest band on the planet, Chris Shiflett gets back to his roots. Having rocked some of the biggest stages on the planet, including a recent triumphant headlining performance on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Festival, Chris Shiflett’s day job as guitarist in Foo Fighters is a pretty sweet gig… but just how many of the devoted Foos followers are aware that while Shiflett riffs out the solos to some of the world’s biggest and most recognisable anthems, they are also watching a devotee of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens? The native of Santa Barbara, California a full-time Foo Fighter since the turn of the century, came to the renowned rockers via the much-missed punk outfit No Use For A Name. Projects outside The Foos in recent years include two albums with his band the Dead Peasants, which dropped subtle hints of Shiflett’s fondness for country and rockabilly. But on his rather splendid new release, West Coast Town, Shiflett dons the Stetson and heads down to Nashville to make a record with über-producer Dave Cobb. A couple of weeks before The Foos’ blistering Glasto headline slot, Chris stopped-off in London for a couple of one-man acoustic shows. As he played selections from the solo venture at his Water Rats gig, his outlaw country credentials were seen by all to be entirely authentic, especially when opening guest Sam Palladio joined him for a turn at Waylon’s Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way. West Coast Town is country with the edges frayed, with an ultra-traditional twang alongside an indie-rock edge. “When I was a kid I had older brothers that had great record collections,” he says. “So in my house growing up that was all we did, listen to music, talk about music, play music. My oldest brother Mike gravitated towards The Stones, The Beatles and Elvis, then as time went on Sabbath, Kiss and Aerosmith. We were a total classic rock family. I didn’t even have to buy records much until I was a teenager and my tastes started to diverge from my older brother’s.” Country was there, in the corner of Chris’ eye, but not the mainstream version. “For me, it kind of started through rockabilly,” says Shiflett. “The Stray Cats were a big deal with me when they first came out, then through that, people like Robert Gordon, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent and Johnny Burnette. So I really viewed it like that was what started me listening to older music that had that twang to it.” Then the influence of a storied California punk band took a hand. Chris said: “Somewhere around my late teens, Social Distortion started to draw from some of that, and I was, I am, a huge Social Distortion fan. When they started throwing old country covers into their set — and there was a certain look, they would rock that old-fashioned style with the pomade hair and all that – that was really appealing to me, I started going down that road. “Probably like most people, I just started with the obvious stuff, Johnny Cash and people like that. Then when I was in No Use For A Name, Tony Sly [frontman] was really into all the alt-country stuff that was kicking off. To me those bands like Son Volt and that early Wilco stuff, and Ol’ 97s, they were drawing from a lot of that Stonesy rock’n’roll thing, which is totally in my wheelhouse anyway. It made sense to me musically and appealed. So that’s what really led me back.” What If I Say I’m Not Like The Others It was the scenic route, but Shiflett has planted a flag where all those genres intersect, even if he’s pretty sure that his bandmates in the Foos don’t fully empathise. “I would say most definitely not,” he chuckles. “Everybody in the band, just like all musicians, has a pretty wide range of musical tastes, and it’s all different. But no, I don’t think I have any comrades in the twangy country department. “When I first started going down this road, I remember I was out at 606, our studio. I was recording something and a pedal steel player I know was laying down a track. Dave [Grohl] stopped by for something and he walks into the control room, and I’ll never forget the look on his face was classic. He looks at me and goes, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ He’s not going to be putting his cowboy hat on and joining with the country band with me at any point.” Nevertheless, that sense of musical inquisitiveness is a prerequisite to be part of the enduring rock institution that Foo Fighters have become. Shiflett has that to spare, not just in his music, but via his excellent, fortnightly interview podcast series Walking The Floor, of which he’s now made some 90 episodes. As you’d expect from his résumé, the shows have Shiflett jumping with ease from one touchstone to the next, but recent guests have included time-honoured country frontiersmen like Rodney Crowell and Marty Stuart as well as emerging Americana flag-bearers such as Sam Outlaw, Courtney Marie Andrews and Jaime Wyatt. Indeed, it was via that series that he met Dave Cobb (the man behind records by Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell, A Thousand Horses and so many more), who would give his album its final coat of Nashville bona fides. “I just cold-called him,” says Shiflett, “because so many of the records I’d listened to over the years were records he produced, and I had this trip planned out to Nashville, because my podcast is pretty much country-Americana, alt-country, roots music-themed. I’m on the west coast and sometimes it’s hard to connect with those artists. “He was one of the interviews we’d lined up and he was like ‘Totally man, come on by, no worries.’ He’s a pretty laid back guy, that’s one of his qualities in the studio, you never felt

As he prepares to take to the stage at C2C, Marty Stuart looks back on his career touring with fellow icons Lester Flatt and Johnny Cash, and tells Ed Mitchell about his groundbreaking surf/psychedelia/country road trip record Way Out West. It’s early February when we finally hook up with Marty Stuart. The four-week countdown to his appearance at Country 2 Country has begun and it won’t be long until his new album Way Out West bursts into life. The new record – a love letter to the American West, cut with his loyal band the Fabulous Superlatives – has already set the standard for the best record we’ll cherish this year. Yet, as this interview was taking place, the album was in limbo, recorded and mixed and out of Marty’s hands but still frustratingly far from delivery for the faithful who knew it was in the post. “It’s like flirting with your favourite girl,” laughs Marty. We finish his sentence: ‘Yeah, you know you’re gonna get something good, eventually, and it’ll be worth the wait…’ We have to confess to a tingle of excitement when Marty Stuart picks up the phone. This is the man who toured with Lester Flatt and Johnny Cash and counted the likes of Merle Haggard and Porter Wagoner among his personal friends and collaborators. He’s the keeper of the flame of true country music, a scholar and archivist and formidable singer, musician and writer. He even got to marry country royalty, the singer Connie Smith. If you want to know where country music has been or where it’s going, no one is better qualified to guide you than Marty Stuart. While his new album testifies to his fascination with the West Coast, as he explains, his resolve to remain in Nashville was only tested once. “In the late 1970s when Lester Flatt died, I considered going out West to live,” Marty recalls. “I was thinking about getting a job with Bob Dylan. At that time of my life, I saw the fast paced world of Hollywood. I thought, ‘you’ll probably go out there and kill yourself. You’re a knucklehead, Marty Stuart!’” In the end, however, Nashville prevailed: “I got a job with Johnny Cash. That made an easy decision even easier.” Q. Where does your fascination with the American West come from? A. I was raised in the South of the United States, down in Mississippi. The first record I ever owned was a Johnny Cash record, it had Don’t Take Your Guns To Town on it. There was another song on there called One More Ride, it was about going out West. Then, of course, I heard the Marty Robbins Gunfighter record. I was enchanted. Those songs took me on a journey in my bedroom when I was a little kid down in the South. To this day when I travel to the American West, I’m still awed by it. Q. Do you remember the first time you made it to the West Coast? A. It was 1974. I was in Lester Flatt’s band. He played a series of concerts; and the California show was in a town called Norco. It was a bluegrass festival. I woke up and we were coming into California and all of a sudden there were palm trees, there was a blue sky, and a ‘sandiness’ that I’d never experienced before. I’d only read about it or seen it on the silver screen or on television. So, I finally got to see it in person. I fell in love with it the very first time. Q. Way Out West feels like a soundtrack to a lost road movie… A. I tried very hard to take the listener on a journey. I like themes. I like having a bullseye, a destination. It’s wonderful to know what the project is about. Therefore you can write to the subject matter. Q. The title track is a powerful piece of work. When did the inspiration strike for the song? A. I was riding in the front of my bus with a guitar in my lap and a piece of paper. These words just kinda started coming out of the sky. I thought it was comedy… like, this is crazy. I kept writing silly words. I actually wrote to sleep and when I woke up, I looked at the words again and thought, ‘well, that ain’t half bad.’ Q. You cut a couple of covers for the new record… A. The second Johnny Cash record I owned was called The Sound Of Johnny Cash, on Columbia Records. Lost On The Desert was in there. I remember going down the street to my friend’s house and The Beatles were really popular at that moment in time. They were blowing up, lighting up the planet. He said, ‘Come here man, listen to this’ and it was a Beatles track. And I said, ‘Well, listen to this!’ and I played him Lost On The Desert. I was just taken by that line in it: ‘black wings circle the sky’. Those images just captivated my mind when I was a kid. I thought Johnny Cash wrote that song but I found out it was Dallas Frazier and a guy named Buddy Mize. Dallas Frazier is one of my friends – my wife Connie Smith has recorded like 73 of his songs. I called him up one day and asked if he remembered writing the song and he said, ‘Yeah, I think I was in high school when I wrote it.’ So it was one of those songs from my childhood that fit this project. Q. You’ve got Airmail Special in there, too… A. I love that line in it about ‘carrying mail to California.’ It was an old bluegrass record that I heard Jim and Jesse and The Virginia Boys do and I just thought it was a great song. Q. Were the original songs plucked from the archives or written specifically for the record? A. A