Chris Shiflett is not done writing about birthdays. He’s not done swearing either. But the Foo Fighters guitarist swears the next solo album might be a little less beachy and a little more polite. “My wife’s like, ‘How many songs can you write where you reference the PCH?’” he admits, before mock-scolding himself: “Enough with the beach. And the swear words.”
Welcome to Lost at Sea, Shiflett’s latest solo album and perhaps his most personal—though he’d hesitate to call it that. “It’s not a straight-up diary,” he says of tracks like “Carrie Midnight Texas Queen,” which was born from a mysterious title he jotted down in a notebook years ago and eventually turned into a song. “It’s sort of embellishing on the facts a little bit,” he adds, “but that one just worked.” The key, he says, is not losing your connection to the song—even when it’s not your story anymore.
If “Carrie” is the country-fried Americana banger of the set, “What Weighs You Down” is the soft-hearted center. Inspired by his wife’s birthday, it’s the latest in a growing canon of Shiflett birthday songs—something he’s only now becoming aware of. “I was thinking about that the other day—how many songs have I written about my birthday, my wife’s birthday, somebody’s birthday?” he laughs. “Apparently a lot.”
That track’s just one part of a seemingly linear album, one that starts with “Dead and Gone” and ends with “Parties”—a cheeky little bookend that makes more sense when Shiflett explains he doesn’t get invited to many anymore. “I got sober a long time ago, and that’s kind of an element of that song too,” he says. “Eventually you just stop getting invited.”
Shiflett’s pivot to solo work has always leaned rootsier than his day job, though he says the country influences weren’t something he leaned into musically until the Dead Peasants project over a decade ago. “All the good guitar playing’s been in country music for a long time,” he says, not bothering to sugarcoat it. “Rock music? There’s a lot of cool stuff. But if you’re looking for someone playing like Don Rich? It’s not coming from the rock world.”
Still, it’s funny to him how often people act shocked. “Nobody from the country side says, ‘You like rock music?’” he says. “But everybody from the rock side is like, ‘You like country?!’ Like it’s some betrayal.”
The melting of genres is a constant in Shiflett’s musical worldview. “It all sounds the same now,” he says—though not in a cranky boomer way. It’s more a shrug of acceptance. Pop, rock, country, R&B—it’s all processed through the same sonic sausage grinder. “When I was growing up, everything seemed very separate. Now it’s all one big smoothie.”
And if anyone’s still confused about how the guy from Foo Fighters wound up writing a song about getting older and feeling out of place at dinner parties, there’s always Shred With Shifty, his new podcast that’s part gearhead deep-dive, part musician hangout, and all charm. “The hope is that it’s the kind of conversation you’d have backstage, or in the studio lounge with a coffee,” he says. So far that’s meant chats with everyone from Brad Paisley to Mike Campbell. “It’s not just pedal talk,” he insists. “But I do love a good pedal.”
Especially when you don’t have to lug a Marshall half-stack around to hear it. “If you can avoid loading gear into your car and down to the gig? I’m all for it,” he says. Spoken like a man who’s been to a few too many parties… and played just as many.
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
