With Foo Fighters‘ HBO series Sonic Highways set to premiere Friday, Oct. 17, the network has released a five-minute extended trailer for the show with an interview of the band explaining what viewers can expect.
In it, band leader Dave Grohl explains the project’s beginnings following the completion of his Sound City documentary. He says, “I thought rather than just go into a studio and make another record, we could go all over the country and make a record where each song was recorded in a different studio.”
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The clip also names and shows clips of a number of guests to expect on the show, for interviews about their hometowns and some will even jam with the Foos. Among them are Willie Nelson, Public Enemy‘s Chuck D, Dolly Parton, Queens of the Stone Age‘s Josh Homme, Coldplay‘s Chris Martin, Kiss‘ Paul Stanley, the Black Keys‘ Dan Auerbach, Pharrell and Mike D of the Beastie Boys.
Watch it here:
“Basically, the process is we come to a city and we spend a week and we start recording an instrumental, because I interview all of these different musicians from that city,” says Grohl, explaining from there he would cull material to write his song lyrics. “I talk about the regional relevance of the music from that city, the cultural influence, that ‘made-for-the-sound’ of the music. There’s no way that you can tell the history of a city’s music in one hour, so we have to do it in a way that relates to the band and goes from point A to point B and becomes a song.”
The eight-part series will feature a new city and new song each week, with every episode culminating in a performance of the newly created song. The band tours Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., New York, Nashville, Austin and New Orleans over the show’s course.
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“Mostly we wanted to pick cities that meant something to us,” says guitarist Pat Smear in the trailer.
For instance: In Seattle Grohl made the first Foo Fighters record and had his history as Nirvana‘s drummer; in Chicago, the band visits the studio of producer Steve Albini, who also worked on Nirvana’s In Utero; and Washington D.C. is where Grohl grew up.
The Butch Vig-produced Sonic Highways album will be released on Nov. 10, halfway through the HBO series’ journey, and this week The Foo Fighters kick off a weeklong musical residence on The Late Show With David Letterman. The night before the series’ premiere, the band will also release the album’s first single, “Something From Nothing.”