Dave Grohl talks mysterious quarantine side project: "It's people you wouldn't expect me to jam with"

Dave Grohl is an unstoppable creative spirit, so it's not really a surprise to learn the Foo Fighter general hasn't spent lockdown playing Call Of Duty in his pants. In addition to sharing a number of short stories from his remarkable life so far on social media, he's revealed been recorded a batch of "weird" songs with other people. And it all sounds very intriguing…

"I'm not gonna just go in and start writing more songs," he told Absolute Radio (above) about the odd spot he found himself in, stuck in lockdown with a new Foos record in the can. "But what I've found is that in the last six or seven months I started getting emails from these different musicians that are doing the same thing - they are sitting at home and are creatively restless.

"I'm sending drum tracks, and they're sending guitar tracks"

"They're basically saying, 'Hey, Dave, I've been doing the same thing for years, I've been stuck in this one sort of creative lane for a long time. It's time to get weird, do you want to do a side project?'

Unsurprisingly, Grohl was more than happy to oblige. But who were these guests who reached out?

"People you would never expect," answers Grohl, who has obviously been sworn to a degree of secrecy, "and we are like remotely recording with each other – I'm sending drum tracks, and they're sending guitar tracks, I'm playing in my own studio, sending it back."

So at least we know one thing – he's playing drums again. 

"So, I think that this period of quarantine or lockdown - the result in six or seven months will be a wave of new music that's just weird," Grohl added. "It's just a bunch of people with nothing else to do."

But right now he just won't say who those people are. 

"No, I don't wanna say anything yet. But it's people you wouldn't expect me to jam with, so it's kind of cool."

Next on the agenda is the release of the Foo Fighters' new album Medicine At Midnight on 5 February. You can hear the first single Shame Shame above. 

For now, Grohl's showcased his drum chops alongside St Vincent on a cover of Nine Inch Nails Downward Spiral classic Piggy as a tribute to the band's inclusion into The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. Grohl previously played on the sessions for Nine Inch Nails's 2004 With Teeth record.

Rob Laing
Guitars Editor, MusicRadar

I'm the Guitars Editor for MusicRadar, handling news, reviews, features, tuition, advice for the strings side of the site and everything in between. Before MusicRadar I worked on guitar magazines for 15 years, including Editor of Total Guitar in the UK. When I'm not rejigging pedalboards I'm usually thinking about rejigging pedalboards.