{"id":2980,"date":"2011-08-02T09:22:07","date_gmt":"2011-08-02T16:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=2980"},"modified":"2011-08-02T09:22:07","modified_gmt":"2011-08-02T16:22:07","slug":"taylor-hawkins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/taylor-hawkins\/","title":{"rendered":"TAYLOR HAWKINS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

TAYLOR HAWKINS<\/h1>\n

A Foo Fighter and Coattail Rider conjures the sound of his childhood<\/strong><\/h2>\n

When he\u2019s not pounding the skins behind longtime musical partner Dave\u00a0Grohl in Foo Fighters, singer and drummer Taylor Hawkins fronts his own group, the Coattail Riders. The trio has just released\u00a0its second album, Red Light Fever<\/em>, a collection of lush power-pop featuring contributions from Grohl, Roger Taylor and Brian May of Queen, and the Cars\u2019\u00a0Elliot Easton. \u201cWe tried to make a really honest-sounding rock \u2019n\u2019 roll record,\u201d Hawkins says. \u201cEverything is out of tune a little bit and out of time a little bit, just the way rock \u2019n\u2019 roll should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

How would you compare this album to your 2006 self-titled debut? <\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s 100 percent different. The first one came together as me goofing around in my friend\u2019s living room studio, which really just consisted of five microphones and a small Pro Tools rig. We didn\u2019t even think we were making a record at first\u2014we 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\u2013a lot of harmonies and big sounds, done in a really nice studio and using all the gadgetry that comes\u00a0with that.<\/p>\n

How long had you been working on these tunes?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A couple of the songs date back a long\u00a0ways. There\u2019s a song called \u201cSunshine,\u201d\u00a0which I wrote in \u201998. There\u2019s a couple more\u00a0bits and pieces of things that I\u2019ve had lying around for years, and then about\u00a0half or three-quarters of them were written in the demoing process to make this\u00a0record. I did the demos myself, for the\u00a0most part, and with help from other people\u00a0on a few. Dave Grohl came in and helped with the arrangements. He helped in the\u00a0initial phases of the recording process,\u00a0too. We laid the bed of the record, and\u00a0he spent a couple of days doing\u00a0rhythm guitars.<\/p>\n

How did the guys from Queen come to appear on the album?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve known them for years. Every time we\u00a0go to England we go out to dinner with\u00a0Brian and Roger, or they get up onstage\u00a0with the Foo Fighters. So when I was making this record, I called and said, \u201cI have a\u00a0few songs on here that would sound even better with you on them. I mean, they\u2019d\u00a0all<\/em> sound better with you on them, but if I could just get you for a couple songs, that\u2019d be great.\u201d And they did it.<\/p>\n

Did you tailor songs specifically to suit their strengths?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not really. I had finished up a lot of the recording before I sent them the tracks. \u201cYour Shoes\u201d has Roger Taylor doing background vocals. On those early \u201970s records like Queen<\/em> and Queen II<\/em>, he\u2019s 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\u2019s great when a song calls for a melodic guitar solo. And he did all the big choruses on \u201cWay Down.\u201d As soon as those vocals come in you\u2019re like, \u201cWhoa, Queen just came into the studio!\u201d<\/p>\n

What keeps drawing you back to that \u201970s-style sound? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I wanted to make a more colorful-sounding record, and that led to me making what everyone is telling me is a \u201970s-influenced record. This is almost like 45 minutes in\u00a0the back of my mom\u2019s car on the way to soccer practice. It\u2019s memories put into songs, sound-wise\u2014not just Queen, but Electric Light Orchestra and ABBA and the Bee Gees and all that great late-\u201970s harmony-driven pop. That is the brunt of my record collection.<\/p>\n

\u2013Eric R. Danton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TAYLOR HAWKINS A Foo Fighter and Coattail Rider conjures the sound of his childhood When he\u2019s not pounding the skins behind longtime musical partner Dave\u00a0Grohl in Foo Fighters, singer and drummer Taylor Hawkins fronts his own group, the Coattail Riders. The trio has just released\u00a0its second album, Red Light Fever, a collection of lush power-pop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[70,970,2268],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2980"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2982,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2980\/revisions\/2982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}