Bandleader; podcast impresario; Foo Fighters guitarist—such are the roles of Chris Shiflett, whose sophomore solo album Hard Lessons arrived on June 14, a short month after his Grand Ole Opry debut.
Brantley Gutierrez
Mostly written while on the road with FF, the LP takes a cosmic turn from Shiflett’s 2017 debut West Coast Town, re-introducing his country side through the use of his trusted rock and roll instincts. In fact, Hard Lessons’ title can be interpreted as a thinly veiled reference to his journey outside of rock and roll in the first place.
“For years, I was like a rough-around-the-edges version of that stuff,” Shiflett says, talking about his approach to playing country music. “But with making this record, I didn’t give myself any parameters on what it was. If it felt right and sounded right, we recorded it.”
Brantley Gutierrez
Sonically, the album is a culmination of the lessons learned since Shiflett first tiptoed into Americana territory with the 2010 self-titled debut of his side project Chris Shiflett & The Dead Peasants. It’s a presentation of a fully realized artist who’s spent the last nine years picking up new skills in an initially unfamiliar genre. After all, for a California-raised guitarist who discovered his love of music by way of local heavy metal shows before joining one of the largest rock bands in the world, proving his mettle in the country world wasn’t easy.
“Going out and [touring Chris Shiflett & The Dead Peasants], I remember feeling really awkward,” Shiflett says. “I couldn’t quite wrap my head around, like, ‘why doesn’t this sound right? These are the right chords, but it just isn’t right.’ And it’s just all in your head. It’s just about getting comfortable in a different dynamic.”
Inspired by his friend who leads a house band in Austin, Texas, Shiflett started learning Golden Era country songs to build a deeper understanding of the genre. The Dead Peasants’ second release, 2013’s All Hat and No Cattle, was a cover album reworking songs by artists like Buck Owens, Faron Young, and Merle Haggard (save one original: “A Woman Like You”). Afterward, Shiflett enjoyed the imprimatur of country music super-producer Dave Cobb (Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell), who signed on to helm the West Coast Town sessions when the budding Americana songwriter was ready for his first solo release.
Brantley Gutierrez
At that point, he was also four years into his podcast Walking The Floor, which features interviews with many Nashville musicians, bolstering his presence in the country music scene. When he had finished writing and co-writing (with several Music City songwriters including hit-maker Kendall Marvel) songs for his second release, he didn’t have to think twice about who he wanted behind the mixing board. Cobb was the man for the job.
“Before we started making this record, he [Cobb] was like, ‘you should be playing big, loud, rock and roll guitar,’” Shiflett says. “He told me to do my version of country music. Loud. And my initial thing was like, ‘I wanna play my telecaster with reverb!’ But I went with it, because I trust his guidance. And the end result was representative of all the things I grew up listening to.”
Shiflett believes he finally hit his stride with Hard Lessons, blending his childhood influences of riff-based rock bands like Aerosmith, Kiss, and Social Distortion with the roots music he began to love in his adulthood. Songs like “Leaving Again” and “Fool’s Gold” harken back to Laurel Canyon-era acts like The Eagles and Neil Young by placing folk melodies over fuzzy guitar and B3 organ. Plaintive rock riffs and hard rock-style drum breaks abound, with Shiflett’s impeccable lead guitar and strident vocals connecting the dots. All the while, the different sides of his musical character shine through with uniform quality and purpose, paying homage to the hard-learned lessons of the last nine years and the craft that taught them to him.