After he regretted not playing more guitar on his solo albums, Chris Shiflett assembled a six-string dream team for Lost at Sea. The result is a treat for the ears.
BY JIM BEAUGEZ
Rock stars tend to get a pass for being all over the place, literally and figuratively. But no one can accuse Chris Shiflett of being anything other than dedicated to guitar playing. As Dave Grohl’s wingman in Foo Fighters for nearly 25 years, he’s wrangled a variety of guitars. But he’s also filled all of his free time from that band making music both with other acts and as a solo artist. “More and more, I just like to be playing all the time and working on music,” Shiflett tells Guitar Player from his home in Southern California, where he’s preparing for the October release of Lost at Sea (Blue Élan), his third solo album, amid another busy season with his day gig.
SHIFLETT IS WELL acquainted with juggling responsibilities. During his late-’90s tenure with speedy punks No Use For a Name, and for a number of years as a Foo Fighter, he also played guitar with the punk supergroup/cover band Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. Since those days, though, he has embraced the Bakersfield country sound and spun it into his own country-rock hybrid.
On Lost at Sea, he delivers it in spades, with a little help from a few hired guns. After playing all the guitars on his two previous solo albums — 2017’s twangy alt-country West Coast Town and 2019’s more rocking Hard Lessons — Shiflett chose to surround himself with a trio of Nashville’s top hired guns: Tom Bukovac, Charlie Worsham and Nathan Keeterle. With Jaron Johnston of country-rock trio the Cadillac Three producing, Shiflett and his crew let loose on 10 songs packed with layers of guitars, all of it recorded in Nashville and at the Foo Fighters’ own Studio 606 in L.A.
“There’s a lot of guitar playing that I’m proud of on this album, and not just mine,” Shiflett says. “Charlie’s guitar playing and banjo and mandolin are a big part of it, as is Nathan Keeterle and Tom Bukovac. All those cats really add a lot to the guitar-playing soup. I always look back at my records and go, ‘Why didn’t I play more guitar?’ And I don’t feel that way about this one.”
The guitar work on Lost at Sea feels loose, like you let yourself off the leash.
That’s always the goal, but it can be kind of difficult to pull off in the studio. Dynamically, I think this one sits in a slightly different place, but I also think the way we made it probably plays into that because we didn’t
