DISGRACELAND - Bonus Episode: The Santa Barbara Punk Scene, Internet Guitar Tutorials, and Foo Fighters' Chris Shiflett Talks "Shred With Shifty"

Episode Date: June 15, 2023

This week on the After Party, Jake is sharing an interview he did with Foo Fighters' guitarist Chris Shiflett at this year's Boston Calling Music Festival. They're talking about how inaccurate guitar tutorial videos inspired Chris's new podcast, "Shred With Shifty", about Chris's beginnings in the Santa Barbara punk scene, and so much more.Leave your own message for Jake at 617-906-6638 or on socials @disgracelandpod and come join the After Party. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Hey, discos. Need a little more disgrace land in your life? Just a touch to get you through. Yeah, me too. This is the podcast that comes after the podcast. Welcome to Disgraceland, the After Party.

Hey, what's up, everybody? On this week's after party episode, we've got a special episode for you this week. A couple weeks ago here in Boston, I had the opportunity to sit down with a bona fide rock star and talk to him about, Not being a rock star because you can get that sort of thing anywhere these days, but instead about his new podcast because that's our side of the street here in Disgraceland.

The rock star is, of course, Chris Schifflett, guitarist of the Food Fighters. And you know, Chris, if you know, Chris, you know he's a serious guitar player. He eats and sleeps guitar and can shred with the best of them. And shredding is what his new podcast is all about. It's called Shred with Shifty. And I won't get into it too much here because we cover it pretty extensively in the interview. but if you're a fan of the guitar, if you're a guitarist,

or whether or not you're a pro, or you're a hack like me or an aspiring guitarist, or maybe you've got kids that are taking lessons, whatever the case, if you have any interest in guitar or any interest in guitar gods,

then you're going to want to subscribe to Chris's podcast, Shred with Shifty. Subscribe to Shred with Shifty, wherever you get your podcast. Did I mention that it's produced by us here at Double Elvis? I probably should have.

It is. All right. Anyway, without further hula blue here, is my interview with Chris Schifflett of the Food Fighters recorded live in front of an audience at the Boston Calling music festival a couple weeks ago. I'll be back with your voicemails and texts and recommendations and next week's after party. All right. Let's get into it. Boston Calling, how is everybody doing? All right. Another round of applause for Chris Schiflett. Thank you. So I have a list of questions. I'm going to try hard not to look at it once. We'll see. As an aging podcaster, I feel your pain.

I feel your goals. So Chris has a podcast to everybody. It's coming very soon. Chris Tome with the name of it is. It's going to be called Shred with Shifty. And it's a little bit of a departure from what I've been doing all these years on walking the floor. It's very specifically guitar focused and even more specifically lead guitar focused. So I heard about this idea.

we talked, I don't know, year and a half ago or something like that. Yeah, it was a while ago. And, you know, I make podcasts, I produce them, so we were chatting about this idea, and it was one of those things that just hit me immediately as a fan of music. As like, shit, man,

I want this in my life. I want to see this podcast. I want to hear this podcast. Me too. There's a video component. Let's get specific. Tell everybody what it is, because it's really fucking exciting. Well, it's, you know, sometimes you have, like,

the most obvious idea, like, wait, why doesn't that exist? And that's kind of what this show is. And you mentioned the video component. The video component is kind of the most in part, or most important part, because it's like guitar instructional. You know, because as a guitar player, I watch a lot of videos of people explaining things

like pretty close to right, but it's always a little bit wrong. So I thought, I could exhaust my Rolodex here and reach out to some of these people who I'm trying to learn, you know, how to play their widdly, whidly parts, and see if I can get the actual people to explain it to me and teach it to me, and by extension, teach it to you.

The people. So it's you. Yes. A guitar god in your own right. Well, let's not get care of it. With other guitar gods, going through their riffs and getting the real true lesson on how to play them.

Yeah, and you know what's funny, and this really should come as no. surprise it didn't surprise me at all but but it is funny because that's sort of the idea is like how did they really really play it and then you go and interview people and nobody knows how they fucking played it right you know what I mean everybody's like I don't know that's how he played it that day I didn't but I don't play it that that was 20 years ago I don't play it that way now so that's been super fun too it's sort of going through it and and watching the with the actual

people you know kind of stumble through it and have to figure it out too it's an interesting thing because unlike a normal podcast where it requires nothing of your guest except to show up and answer questions. Yeah. That has been an interesting part of this whole process, getting people to do it. And initially people like, oh, interview, sure. And then I'm like, well, here's the thing. You have to go back and relearn your guitar song.

And people are like, oh, wait a minute. Yeah. But I've gotten a really, really good. There's going to be 16 full interviews for this first season. And we've already banked 11 of them, and the lineup so far is just, like, exceeds my initial expectations. So, you know, you want me to tell them who's going on right? You know, with any of these things,

you have, like, your master dream list of the people that you want to interview. But as I'm sure you know, it's not that easy. You've got to get them to agree to do it, you know? Right, right, right. And learn their solo again. Yeah, exactly. So I have a really big long list of, people that I want to get to, but let me read you the names that I've got so far in the can.

I've got Alex Lifeson from Rush, explaining Limelight, which is beautiful. Rivers Cuomo from Weezer. Charlie Star from BlackBerry Smoke, my good buddy Charlie. Lindsay L., who's like a strat shredder down in Nashville by way of Canada. Richie Sam Bora. Yeah. Does one a dead or alive. Nice.

That was fun. Nile Rogers. Wow. And Nile Rogers was an interesting one because Nile's not really known for his lead guitar work. So we didn't really, we got into that a little bit, but it's more him sort of explaining because, you know, he's known as like writing these anthems that we all in producing. And as far as his guitar playing, it's like really cool, inversions of stuff. Did he go through a specific song? Yeah, we did, I'm coming out.

Oh, nice. Dina Ross. Yeah, which has, because the guitar playing's great. And he was just, he was the coolest, man. He was amazing. Blake Schwarzenbach from Jawbreaker. Also not a traditional lead guitar player, which was fun. Because I didn't want it to just be, I don't want the show to be pigeonholed in any one genre

or even anyone, you know, specific guitar style or anything. And I wanted to look at some folks like Blake Schwarzenbach who play kind of unorthodox. You know, there's like, you know, you could kind of think of them as guitar solo sections, but it's not really that. You know, it's almost like an additional part. But then we get back to the Rippage with Mike McCready from Pearl Jam. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

John Osborne from the Brothers Osborne, who if you don't know the Brothers Osborne, John Osborne is about the best guitar player out there in the world today. I just love the way he plays. And he plays with you with some of your solo stuff too. Well, we wrote a song together for my new solo record, the first one that we put out called Black Top White Lines. Yeah, yeah, right on.

Although, yeah, I should have had him play on it. it's just me Brent Mason who is again a Nashville legend session player who you may not know his name but you definitely if you listen to country music especially country music from like 90s and 2000s

you've heard him all over the place he's a huge influence to a lot of other folks and then just the other day the day before we left for tour I interviewed Brad Paisley which is absolutely incredible too so that's who we have in the can right now we have

we have to do that's like 11 people we have to do find another 5 and we've already got confirmations from like another 10 so I'd you know probably have to wait

until the second season or whatever to get them all done but I mean there's just like a never ending list of guitar rippers out there to get you love that so this is like a utility as well it's like a tool that I imagine you wish you had

when you were a kid oh yeah you know it's funny because growing up I took a lot of guitar lessons early on, but I never was one of those players that really learned stuff exactly like the record. I wouldn't even have known how

or what I mean? You didn't have YouTube and all that stuff. You didn't have things to slow down the track but keep it in pitch and all that sort of thing. So I really started kind of getting into that more later, like much later. Like when I started playing, I saw somebody had a Chevy metal shirt

or hat or something out there. Yeah. When I started playing with Chevy Metal, and I had to sit down and really try to figure out, like, well, how does Eddie Van Halen play that? And then that's when I kind of got turned on to, like, there's 8 million people explaining how to do the guitar solo from Panama online, but none of them are actually right, you know? So you just kind of like take a bit from here and a bit from there. Yeah, well, that's the nature of how these solos are done in the studio, too. A lot of times they're comped. It's like you run through the solo five or six times, and then it's actually edited. did together. And that goes back. That's not a new thing with technology. That's

since I've been splitting tape. Big time. So as a kid, you never sat down in your room with your headphones and dropped the needle and learned smoke on the water. Like, what was the first song you actually learned out of play on guitar that wasn't yours? That was the, well, the very right. Yeah, no, the first thing I ever learned on guitar, I mean, my first guitar teacher when I was 11, and I'm so lucky I had a great guitar teacher starting out because he taught me, all the cowboy chords, you know? And he taught me like a, you know, Panatonic scale.

And once I got through those couple of lessons, he got me a Beatles songbook. Beatles, and I still haven't. It's called like Beatles songbook for beginners or something like that. So it's all really kind of like simplified versions of Beatles songs. Yeah.

And the first one I ever learned was Hey Jude. Wow. Which I still pretty much know the course. And you don't realize it when you're learning Beatles songs, but you're just accidentally learning, theory. Yeah, and how chords flow into each other and all that stuff.

So, yeah. That's amazing. I remember when I joined No Use for a Name, which is the band I was in before Food Fighters, the singer, Tony, was also played guitar. And he goes like, man, no one in our band's ever played like full chords like that. Because I was like not just playing the power chord. I would play all the, you know, the real shapes. Yeah, yeah.

It's sacrilege in punk rock. I totally. I was in like, you know, like power chord land trying to play like, you know, seven chords and all that kind of stuff, which I think might have been his way of saying, like, can you stop doing that? So let's talk about that.

We're on the Tivoli local stage here at Boston Calling, and you and I both come from different scenes, but both the sort of punk and hardcore DIY scenes. You're on the West Coast. I'm on the East Coast. What did you learn from your local scene growing up? What are some of those lessons that you still carry today? My local scene in Santa Barbara, California when I grew up, was fantastic.

But at that time, at that age, when I first started really playing in bands a lot, I thought it was like Nowhere'sville. You know what I mean? I just thought, oh, God, I hate this place. I just want to get down to L.A. where there's, like, poison, and guns and roses are playing, and it's cool, and blah, and blah, blah, and that sort of thing. But what I didn't realize was the beauty of where I lived was, like,

just far enough away from... any kind of major metropolitan area that it was all just the sort of home-spun, home-cooked version of other stuff. Plus we had a big college. Yeah. So there was always an influx of, you know, students out there with their weird records and stuff that you'd go to parties and get turned on to all kinds of like weird indie rock and punk rock and stuff that that wasn't really, you know, it wasn't in my record collection at home. But yeah, I think the biggest thing was we all just played all the time.

I mean, it was all the time you were in two, three, four bands at any given time and just gigging every weekend and playing keg parties and doing that whole thing. Yeah, it was the greatest. You started, you said, when you were 11, is that right? Yeah. 11, so are you, you know, I play guitar. I've grown up with guitar players, been around in my whole life, and I'm not the type of guitar player that I, in many ways that you are,

but I want to get specific. I know guys who, when they're on the road, that guitar goes with them everywhere. Are you that guy? Do you play? How much do you play off of stage? Do you bring a guitar? Like, I read that Kirk Hammett brings, that Peter Green, Les Paul, with him, like, into every bed that he sleeps in on the road.

You know, are you that level of obsessed, or do you put it down and come back to it? I'm that level of obsessed, in a sense. I don't bring a 1959, you know, vintage Les Paul that once belonged to Peter Green. I bring my brand new, you know, made out of, like, plywood, Fender Acousticonic, which is the best, you know, hotel room guitar of all time. But, no, I always bring a guitar with me. And pretty much always have. And, yeah, like, you know, we spend so much time.

on the road and you spent a lot of time in hotel rooms just woodshedding and and and noodling around and that's where i wind up writing a lot of songs and and working on stuff and then especially when you're like where we are right now like at the front end of uh of going out on the road and with a new album and a bunch of new songs and all this stuff i'll be sitting in my room just trying to remember parts right keeping it in my hands you know yeah yeah it's like it's almost like an athlete you have to keep your body and your muscle memory yeah i went i went on a um a spring break vacation trip with my family recently where we went, we were down in Costa Rica for about a week just surfing and hanging around. And it was weird not having a guitar.

Yeah. Yeah. I never, I pretty much play just all the time. Well, you can, you can tell. I'm sitting at home and watching TV. I'm annoying my wife. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I knew that was you, staring at the TV. I heard that's how John Brian learned how to write songs. He just as a kid played in front of the television all the time. and it all kind of seeps in. That'd be another good guy for the new show, John Ryan. Who are the sort of like dream interviews for you? Oh, God, there's so many.

I mean, all of the, any classic rock, you know, Richie Blackmore would be amazing. Jimmy Page would be amazing. Brian May. You know, all the folks that I listened to growing up, especially in that, you know who is thus far completely underrepresented is like 80s, heavy metal guitar play. I haven't

I've reached out to a bunch of those dudes but I haven't landed one yet. It's a little weird. I thought that that would be the easiest you know there's just that's that's like the guitar hero era. I thought that would be like pretty simple to land but I haven't haven't landed any of them yet. Eddie's dead who's the guy? We'll tweet

at him. We'll get an online thing going. You can't get Eddie Van Hennie and you can't get Randy Rose and those were probably my top two but you know Inebey Malmstein would be great Jakey Lee would be great Warren D. Martini John Sykes

you get a little later Slash I would really like to I'm bugging his Believe you me I'm bugging Slash his publicist He seems like he's around Every other week Yeah there's a bunch of them

I mean You know any of those folks that I grew up listening to I would love And you know Although I'm trying to not Get pigeonholed in any one genre I mean certainly like rock And country music are the

ones that I know the most and country music has always embraced ripping guitar playing. So there's a lot of those folks that I want to get to. And then people that I just don't know, I don't know who like the go-to pop guitar player is. I don't know. Maybe you do. Send somebody my, I don't know, you know. Who do you guys want to hear? Yeah, who do you guys want to hear? Who do you want to hear Chris interview for guitar players? Who? I pitched her. Well, not her herself, but her publicist. Yeah. They are aware of it. it. John Mayor. I think we pitched him too. Yeah, that'd be

great. Tom Morello? Tomarillo? The Edge, I think we pitched the edge. And again, when I say pitched that person, that person doesn't know the fuck I am, and it's never heard to my show. So it's not like that, but you know, it's their representatives.

That's the biz, kids. You've got to go through the representatives. And so I think, honestly, the majority of people that I've interviewed for this thing are people whose phone number I have. Because I could bypass that whole, like, the publicist going, when's this coming out? It's a pod...

What's a podcast? Is it a podcast or video show? Is it on the radio? Can you send me a link? I'm like, it doesn't exist yet. Well, fuck you. That has been... Honestly, that has been one of the funest parts of this

because when I started walking the floor, you know, I'd never interviewed anybody. Podcasting was pretty new. I didn't know anybody who's mostly focused on, like, Americana and country music. And I didn't know anybody. in that world. So I didn't have any contact. So it took me a couple of years to get to know, you know, the publicists that work a lot. And eventually I developed relationships and then it got

a lot easier to book people. And then, you know, you get another thing where you're getting pitched more than you can actually do, which is great. With this, it's freaking starting over. Because there is no link you can send them. There's no website. There's no, you know, it's just like, hey, I've got this cookie idea. And guess what? Your client has to do a bunch of homework before they come on. And it's going to be on video, so they have to worry about how they look, and they need an amp and a guitar, and they need an audio interface and blah-b-de-blah, you know, so yeah, that part of it has been super fun. Just starting over. So who do we say, The Edge, Tom Arello, John Mayer, Her, that's the list.

But those are all people on my list. Come on, people. Let's come up with some folks I'm not thinking of. Daniel Donato, who said that? He's on the list. I already talked to him. Booked. Mick Marr. Mick Mars, on the list. Pitched him. Who? Who? Oh, wow, that's a good one.

Is he a lead guitar player? Okay, all right. John Fruchante was mentioned? John Fruciante is on the list. Nice. Haven't heard back. John, if you're watching, if you're out there in the crowd, if you're looking at this on Instagram,

give me a ring, buddy. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes. Uh, yeah, actually I asked Pat the other day for Nuno's number. Haven't pitched him yet, but for sure. Local, local guy. Yeah. And you got Rivers, Rivers graduated from Harvard over here.

Oh, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, okay, so you played with a bunch of, you've met a bunch of these dudes, you've been on stage with a bunch of these dudes. I got to, I know you a little bit, and I know you're a fucking guitar freak. Like, you're a fan, right? You must, how do you control the fan side of you and just maintain the cool professional side? Oh, it's really hard.

Yeah? I don't know if I always control it, man. Sometimes it just gets the best. Anyone that you can recall being on stage with where you've just been like, I talked to a guy the other night who told me he was on stage with Springsteen once when he was a kid, a fluke thing. And he literally went up to his amp and he turned it down. So he could just listen to the boss.

Yeah. Oh, man, there's been so many over the years. It's hard to even pick one. Mick Jagger was a huge one. You know, when we got to back him up. Yeah. That was like just, you know, it doesn't get much better than that. You find yourself just watching more than you're trying to remember the rift of brown sugar.

Totally. Would you remember what song you did? Oh, we did. God, what did we did? We did, I think, Mother's Little Helper. And then we did that, we did like part of that, and then it's only rock and roll. Nice. Yeah.

Very cool. Yeah, which is great. Very cool. The only way that would have been cooler is if Keith was there. Yeah, well, yeah. Never met Keith Riches. He'd be good for the show. Yeah.

He'd be fantastic. As would Mick Taylor or Ron Wood or any of those cats, man. That Stones is kind of like, for me, that's the tippy top. That's the apex. Yeah. We'll make it happen. We're going to make it happen. Yeah, that's right.

That's right. We're going to try to do that. Yeah, if any of you folks out there know, Keith Richards. Give my number. I think it's parole officers somewhere around, so we'll figure that out. So you have kids, one of the, they play music, but once again, re-engaged in guitar playing. Yeah.

perspective as you know you're in the fricking foo fighters watching your kid learn how to play guitar what's that like it's been really fun because we made all our kids take piano and guitar lessons when they were real young and none of them really dug it and especially my youngest like he was so he just i mean he's just me he hates taking like at that age he hates taking lessons and he he basically hates teachers right and we had this guy that was the sweetest dude, this guy Nick, that would come to our house and give my kids guitar lessons, like in the dining room. And he would come over, and he was just the sweetest guy, always smiling, bringing his little, like, gig bag, acoustic guitar, and I'd be like, amen, it's time for your guitar

lesson, and he'd be upstairs, and he'd be like, I hate that guy, I'm not coming down, and he'd be, and he just, oh, no. And so that didn't last too long, and he drifted away from it, but he's recently picked it back up on his own accord. And honestly, that's kind of part of the inspiration of this whole thing. He watches a bunch of people on YouTube explain how to play things. And then he'll learn it, and then he'll quiz

me on it. And then I'll have to go figure it out. But like, you know, I interviewed Blake from Jawbreaker and he explained how to play accident prone, which is like one of my favorite Jawbreaker songs. And the reason I wanted to do that song, and part of the reason, I mean, I love Blake and I love Jobbreaker.

But part of the reason was because my son's obsessed with Jawbreaker. And he had asked me to figure out how to play accident-prone and show him. And we had watched somebody online explain it, you know, pretty close to right. But I knew it wasn't quite right. And Blake's a lefty. And, you know, it's just cool, you know. So, yeah, watching my son go down that road is fun. That's awesome, man.

Yeah. And he doesn't have any of my cultural baggage with anything. So he'll, like, listen to old records from the wrong period. Like, I'm like, no, you don't listen to tears are falling. you listen to strutter you know and some of that kind of but I just keep my mouth shut

you know what I mean he'll get to it he'll figure it yeah yeah he'll get to it all right shred with shifty videos on volume.com

yes volume dot com yes I don't know if we mentioned them yet video will live on volume dot com and then there's going to be

a podcast version of it but really you're going to want to and I interview the folks too a bit in there and then we get into the weeds

with guitar stuff and you're going to want to watch their hands people it's the most important part This guy's bringing you a new utility. Everyone can be a guitar player. Chris Shifflett, everybody.

Yay. Thank you, Boston. See you later tonight. All right, discos, that was my conversation with Foo Fighters, Chris Shifflet. I hope you dug it. You can search for Chris's new podcasts wherever podcasts are available.

Search Shred with Shifty and be sure to subscribe and follow. The trailer is available now and the season launches on June 22nd. Video versions of the pod will be available exclusively on volume.com. That's it for me. I've got a traditional after-party episode coming your way next Thursday per usual with your voicemails and text.

Looking forward to hearing from you guys. Next up in disgrace land, little Kim, look out. All right, rockerola. I'm out of here.