Chris Shiflett has played guitar in a number of bands over the last 15 years, including Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, No Use For A Name, Jackson United and of course the Foo Fighters, but now he is going solo.
Shiflett made a call across the Pacific to have a chat to us about his soon-to-be-released eponymous album."I didn't think of it so much as 'going solo', although I guess in a sense it is," he said. "I had a band before this called Jackson United and really they were solo records, but this time I just didn't have a fake band name attached to it. I thought just calling it Chis Shiflett would be a little uncomfortable."
Not being one to judge a book by its cover, or song by its title, I felt a little guilty skipping straight to 'An Atheists Prayer' after looking at the track listing, but rather than find a blasting of religion I found an open and honest letter to a friend.
"Lyrically it was motivated by a guy I knew that killed himself," Shiflett explains. "The title sort of comes from... well I'm an atheist and that's sort of my take on it. Believe you me I'm happy to blast organised religion any day of the week, but that's not what that song was, you know? Everything on the record is written from personal experience and it all relates to something that happened in my life at one point or another, so it's all just first person experience I guess.
Changing the subject he says "I really respect people that can write third person narrative as stories, but I've just never been comfortable with it."
When his ability to power through an emotional roller coaster of a song on stage is questioned he dismisses it by saying "I'm just trying to play the right guitar part while I'm singing it, so I don't get too wrapped up in [the emotions]."
Shiflett covers 'Burning Bridges' by one of the great genre-transcending musicians Joe Strummer. So does this set the bar for his own songwriting?
"I hope not because I don't think I could ever match that bar," he laughs. "That's raising the bar too damn high if I gotta compete with Joe Strummer. He's one of the best ever! One of the things that kept me from exploring songwriting for a long time was that I felt like you had to be that good to be a songwriter. If you're not Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen then how can you ever do it? But really you just have to let that go and be comfortable with putting yourself out there."
From country, folk, rock and even hints of dub, Shiflett's album is a vast library of styles.
"Hopefully when I'm a little old man sitting in a retirement home somewhere I would love to be able to look back at my musical career and have it run the gamut of different styles," he explains. "That's what my record collection is like, it's all over the shop. I love to try different styles and explore different sounds. It just keeps it interesting, you know?"
Shiflett says he hopes to make it to Australia "around Christmas time," but nothing is set in stone as of yet.
In the meantime, you can pick up 'Chris Shiflett and The Dead Peasants' by, strangely enough, Chris Shiflett and the Dead Peasants on July 16.
Check out his track 'Helsinki' below:
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