TAYLOR HAWKINS

A Foo Fighter and Coattail Rider conjures the sound of his childhood

When he’s not pounding the skins behind longtime musical partner Dave Grohl in Foo Fighters, singer and drummer Taylor Hawkins fronts his own group, the Coattail Riders. The trio has just released its second album, Red Light Fever, a collection of lush power-pop featuring contributions from Grohl, Roger Taylor and Brian May of Queen, and the Cars’ Elliot Easton. “We tried to make a really honest-sounding rock ’n’ roll record,” Hawkins says. “Everything is out of tune a little bit and out of time a little bit, just the way rock ’n’ roll should be.”

How would you compare this album to your 2006 self-titled debut?

It’s 100 percent different. The first one came together as me goofing around in my friend’s living room studio, which really just consisted of five microphones and a small Pro Tools rig. We didn’t even think we were making a record at first—we thought we were just doing four or five songs, and it could be this intimate thing. It was the first record, so it made sense to do it like that. This record is definitely more of a hi-fi production–a lot of harmonies and big sounds, done in a really nice studio and using all the gadgetry that comes with that.

How long had you been working on these tunes?

A couple of the songs date back a long ways. There’s a song called “Sunshine,” which I wrote in ’98. There’s a couple more bits and pieces of things that I’ve had lying around for years, and then about half or three-quarters of them were written in the demoing process to make this record. I did the demos myself, for the most part, and with help from other people on a few. Dave Grohl came in and helped with the arrangements. He helped in the initial phases of the recording process, too. We laid the bed of the record, and he spent a couple of days doing rhythm guitars.

How did the guys from Queen come to appear on the album?

I’ve known them for years. Every time we go to England we go out to dinner with Brian and Roger, or they get up onstage with the Foo Fighters. So when I was making this record, I called and said, “I have a few songs on here that would sound even better with you on them. I mean, they’d all sound better with you on them, but if I could just get you for a couple songs, that’d be great.” And they did it.

Did you tailor songs specifically to suit their strengths?

Not really. I had finished up a lot of the recording before I sent them the tracks. “Your Shoes” has Roger Taylor doing background vocals. On those early ’70s records like Queen and Queen II, he’s got that crazy, almost scary-sounding witch voice when he does those high vocals. I thought it would be perfect to have him do those background vocals. Brian’s great when a song calls for a melodic guitar solo. And he did all the big choruses on “Way Down.” As soon as those vocals come in you’re like, “Whoa, Queen just came into the studio!”

What keeps drawing you back to that ’70s-style sound?

I wanted to make a more colorful-sounding record, and that led to me making what everyone is telling me is a ’70s-influenced record. This is almost like 45 minutes in the back of my mom’s car on the way to soccer practice. It’s memories put into songs, sound-wise—not just Queen, but Electric Light Orchestra and ABBA and the Bee Gees and all that great late-’70s harmony-driven pop. That is the brunt of my record collection.

–Eric R. Danton