Foo Fighters' guitarist Chris Shiflett shakes things up with 'Lost at Sea' solo album and mini tour

Though Chris Shiflett gets to rock out on guitar in front of thousands of fans at mega music festivals and sold-out stadiums around the world with the Foo Fighters, he’s equally as excited to bust out a well-worn acoustic guitar and play alt-country and Americana songs inside more intimate clubs.

He’s fortunate, he said, to have a foot in both worlds and though he’s earned a certain level of notoriety, at his core he’s just a huge music fan.

Aside from being in arguably one of the biggest rock bands on the planet, Shiflett, who came up in the punk rock world in bands like No Use for a Name and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, has enjoyed a fulfilling solo career.

He’s got three albums under his belt, including the forthcoming “Lost at Sea,” which will be out on Oct. 20 via Blue Élan Records. While on a brief break in the Foo Fighters’ busy touring schedule, Shiflett will bring his new music to the Belly Up in Solana Beach on Thursday.

“We’ve been playing about four songs off the record live so far, but we should probably get down a couple more,” Shiflett said during a phone interview from his Los Angeles home. “It has been really fun. It’s interesting to play a song nobody’s heard before. If you can get a crowd to react to a song no one has ever heard, it’s like, all right, this could be good.”

So far, he’s peppered in the rippin’ guitar-forward rock track “Black Top White Lines,” which Shiflett wrote with album producer and The Cadillac Three vocalist-guitarist Jaren Johnston and Brothers Osborne songwriter-guitarist John Osborne; the country twang-filled “Dead and Gone” featuring the talents of Charlie Worsham (Dierks Bentley, Old Crow Medicine Show) on dobro and Tom Bukovac (Bob Seger, Willie Nelson) on guitar; as well as and the Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers-influenced, “Overboard.”

While his first two albums, 2017’s “West Coast Town” and 2019’s “Hard Lessons,” lean more heavily on an alt-country sound, “Lost at Sea” is more all over the map sonically, with tunes that could please audiences in both punk rock bars or a boot-scootin’ honky tonks. At the time of our interview, “Damage Control,” which conjures a reggae-island music à la Jimmy Buffett vibe, was Shiflett’s favorite new song.

“I pretty much wrote all the songs during lockdown in 2020-2021, except for ‘Damage Control,’” he said. He actually wrote that song 15 years ago and while on tour with a night off in New York City several years back, he and a friend recorded a version of it in a basement studio. He unearthed the old song while digging through files to create this album and sent the raw recording to Johnston, who insisted it should live on “Lost at Sea.”

“It’s pretty different from the demo, which I will never play anyone because it’s really, really (bad),” he says with a laugh. “But now it’s one of my favorite songs on the whole record. I love what Charlie Worsham played on that, he’s singing and playing acoustic guitar and there’s a banjo track on there that kinda became the hook of the song and I love it.”

On top of his numerous musical projects, Shiflett also has a popular podcast, “Walking the Floor,” on which he interviews famous musicians, writers and athletes about their creative inspirations. He also recently launched a new video podcast series, “Shred with Shifty,” during which he chats with accomplished guitarists like Brad Paisley, Chic’s Nile Rogers, Lindsay Ell and his debut episode featured Rush’s Alex Lifeson.

“I interviewed Mike Campbell for it the other day, which was unbelievable because I had him breaking down a bunch of his guitar parts and it’s one of those things where you’re pinching yourself while it’s happening because you’re going ‘I can’t believe I’m talking to Mike Campbell,’” he said of the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ guitarist, while noting that these podcasts are a bit self-serving because he really wanted to meet and talk to a lot of these people.

“When do you get a chance to sit and talk with these people you love about their craft,” he said. “Honestly, in my line of work, we get to meet people and it blows your mind, but it’s usually at a festival or backstage at a show and rarely do you get a quiet moment with somebody. If Jimmy Page comes to your show, everyone in the building wants to bum-rush him, as you’d expect. It’s not like you get to sit there and pick their brain about guitar tone and so that’s a big reason why I do these shows.”

With the use of modern technology, Shiflett is able to bring fans into the homes and studios of a lot of these players, who are step-by-step breaking down some iconic guitar parts. It’s something that growing up in Santa Barbara and learning to play guitar, he wished he’d had access to himself.

“I didn’t sit around trying to figure out how to play the guitar parts on records that I loved, but occasionally I’d take a song in to my guitar teacher and have them figure out the bits,” he said. “I was never one of those people that learned all the stuff like the record and I didn’t get into that until much later, when technology evolved to where you could do that a little easier. Now we have apps and you can slow down a song and dilute the part you’re trying to figure out and hone in on it. If I had that as a kid, I’d be a much better guitar player now for it.”

He said he’s also been envious of the guitar collections of some of his subjects.

“There’s no end to coveting other people’s vintage guitar collections, that never ends,” he said. “I’ve got some nice stuff, but by the time I could afford to buy a nice vintage guitar, the prices are now insane so I just can’t do it. I sold off a bunch of guitars a few years ago and bought one nice old ’57 Les Paul. I should do that again. You end up buying a bunch of guitars and there’s only a few that ever become really special to you. The older I get, the more it appeals to me to get rid of my clutter.”

Shiflett says he usually doesn’t regret offloading instruments, but he often thinks about a pair of guitars that got away from him back when he played his first gig in ninth grade during a talent show at Santa Barbara High School.

“I didn’t have a good guitar at that point, so I borrowed my older brother Mike’s and he had an old vintage SG and a Strat and I took them both to the show and for some reason I left them at the high school and they got stolen,” he said. “Never to be heard from again. It haunts me to this day. Whoever has got them, give them back! I’ll buy them back at an inflated price. I’m serious.”

The now 52-year-old husband and father of three will have a bit of downtime at home this month, but the rest of 2023 is filled with a few solo shows and national and international festival tour dates with Foo Fighters in support of the band’s latest album, “But Here We Are,” its first record without drummer and Laguna Beach native Taylor Hawkins, who died while on tour in 2022.

After a lot of speculation, Foo Fighters revealed its new drummer to be Orange County native and current Long Beach resident Josh Freese, who has famously anchored the punk rock band The Vandals and played in the studio and toured with acts like Sting, Devo, A Perfect Circle and Nine Inch Nails. Foo Fighters will headline the final evening of the three-day Eddie Vedder-curated Ohana Festival in Dana Point on Sunday, Oct. 1.

“It’s great for me to have Josh in the band because I’ve known him for a very long time,” Shiflett said. “He played a couple of shows with a band I was in back in the early ‘90s and we’ve crossed paths a million times ever since over the years. I’ve been a fan, an admirer and friend for a long time, but I’d never gotten to play with him in a band day after day and show after show ... I love it and he’s fantastic.”

When: 8 p.m. Thursday

Where: Belly Up, 143 S. Cedros Ave., Solana Beach

Tickets: $20-$35

Online: bellyup.com

Fadroski writes for the Southern California News Group.