What’s the most rewarding way to learn about a city’s history and culture? Listen to its music, and talk to its musicians. This was Dave Grohl’s inspiration for the eighth Foo Fighters album, commemorating the Grammy-winning rock group’s 20th anniversary. In 2014, the band set out to explore the rich history of music across the United States, writing and recording each of the new album’s songs in a different musical landmark city: Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. Grohl documented the ambitious project in Sonic Highways, a sweeping eight-part HBO docu-series and a compelling love letter to American music.
Grohl first skyrocketed to fame as the drummer of Seattle grunge group Nirvana. When the band dissolved in 1994 following the tragic death of front-man Kurt Cobain, Grohl found solace in making new music. He first formed Foo Fighters as a one-man project in 1994, and the band grew to include five members and to achieve worldwide fame. In each episode of Sonic Highways, Grohl (lead vocals, guitar) and band mates Taylor Hawkins (drums), Nate Mendel (bass), Chris Shiflett (lead guitar), and Pat Smear (rhythm guitar) travel to a different iconic recording location. Grohl interviews local legends who helped define the musical culture of the city, and invites them to collaborate with the band as they flesh out a new track. Grohl draws inspiration from these interactions to write the lyrics for each new song, penning them in an experimental style that captures the essence of each city’s musical culture. Each episode masterfully combines interviews, live performances, and fascinating information about the musical history of each locale, concluding with the debut of a song from the band’s new album, also titled “Sonic Highways”. Even if you have just the vaguest of knowledge of a city’s musical roots, watch the Sonic Highways episode and you’ll feel like an expert.
Premiering on HBO last October, Sonic Highways racked up four Emmy nominations this year, including Outstanding Informational Series or Special. Grohl directed the entire season and received a nomination for his work on the Washington D.C. episode. The Seattle episode earned production sound mixer Fred Stuben and re-recording mixers Jeff Fuller and Eddie Kim a nomination for sound mixing, and Justin Lebens received a nod for the episode’s sound editing. Dave Grohl, Eddie Kim, and Jeff Fuller chatted with us about their Emmy nominated work on the series.
Grohl’s inspiration for Sonic Highways can be traced back to the previous Foo Fighters record, Wasting Light, surprisingly recorded in his own garage. “I wanted to take the band out of our recording studio and into an environment that would challenge us,” Grohl told us. This experience is captured in the 2011 documentary Foo Fighters: Back and Forth, directed by James Moll. Grohl scouted for equipment to build a new studio in his home during this time, and he heard that his friends at the iconic Sound City studio in Van Nuys, California were selling off some of their gear. Founded in 1969, the studio’s vintage analog equipment has captured some of the most influential records in rock history, from Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush” to Nirvana’s “Nevermind”. “I called and asked if they were selling their big mixing console that had been there since the early 70s, and is considered the best in Los Angeles,” Grohl says. “They basically said they’d sell their grandmother before they sold that board.”
Later on, the studio decided to part with the fabled equipment after all. They called Grohl, and he took them up on the offer. Inspired by the rich history of the studio and the mixing console, Grohl decided to direct his first documentary, Sound City (2013). He channeled his experience directing music videos into the project. “I figured I would just dive in and see if I could figure it out,” he told us. Featuring influential producers and musicians like Paul McCartney, Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty, Neil Young, and many others, the film chronicles the studio’s illustrious history and discusses the impact of music in the age of technology. “It was so much fun to make,” Grohl says. “All I had to do was tell the story of my favorite studio, interview all of these legendary musicians, and throw it all together in a way that did justice to the history and the music.”
As the band geared up for their eighth album, Grohl knew he wanted to do something new and challenging. “I thought, well, now I can’t just stroll into the studio and record. I have to do something special,” he explains. Grohl drew inspiration from both Back and Forth and Sound City to bring Sonic Highways to life, weaving the creative process of recording a new album into a fascinating exploration of musical history across the country. “I mixed those two concepts together to take the band to eight different studios, where we would be challenged by the environment,” he explains. He aspired to tell the stories of each city through the lens of its local musicians, and to explore the interaction between the environment of each location and its music, both past and present. All the while, he would be documenting the creative process of making a new Foo Fighters album. The ambitious project didn’t take off immediately, but Grohl kept pushing to make his idea a reality. “I was a cheerleader for more than a few months, begging people to jump on board, and finally the people at HBO gave me a chance,” he tells us.
Grohl and executive producers James Rota and John Ramsay assembled a top-notch crew to bring the multi-faceted concept to life. “As with pretty much everything I do in the Foo Fighters, I like to build a team of people that I can trust. When you’re working with a band, you’re immediately thrown into a collaborative environment,” he explains. “I don’t have to tighten the reins too much on anybody because they’re all so great.” The show’s on-set team included production sound mixer Fred Stuben and cinematographers Kenny Stoff and Jessica Young. A strong, reliable crew was especially vital, due to Grohl’s hectic schedule and workload during production. In addition to writing and recording a new album, he was interviewing musicians, writing episodes of the show with Mark Monroe, and editing the show together. “It was such a mammoth, massive project that I basically had to look to each person and say, ‘okay, do the right thing’, and within a few sit-downs, they understood exactly what we needed,” Grohl tells us.
Each episode of the series posed exciting new challenges and situations. The New Orleans episode was particularly unique, with the band recording an album in the historic Preservation Hall, right in the heart of Bourbon Street. “In most of the other episodes, we were dealing with a conventional rock band configuration,” Grohl told us. “But when we got to New Orleans, there were horns everywhere, and we were walking down the street with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.” The Foo Fighters recorded a song in the Hall, which was certainly not equipped for recording, so the team had to build a studio to make it happen.
Another interesting challenge arose during the Los Angeles episode, when the band recorded at the Rancho de la Luna in Joshua Tree. “It was really just a tiny house in the desert, so in order to fit the Foo Fighters and our noise in those rooms, we had to get really creative,” Grohl explains. Creativity was essential at every location, with minimal time for pre-production, and only five or six shooting days at each location. “Everything was kind of guerilla style — you just get in there and figure it out. We had to make it work, and you get what you get,” Grohl says. “There’s no coming back or redoing anything, so the challenge of that was really exciting, and everybody was up for it. Which, for me, meant that everybody was a badass, and that’s important. It’s important to be a badass.”
Each episode took shape at Therapy Studios, an award-winning post production company in Los Angeles. Supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Eddie Kim and re-recording mixer Jeff Fuller told us about their workflow for each episode, which also earned them CAS and MPSE awards earlier this year.
“When we began working on the show, we circled the wagons and had a lot of workflow meetings,” Fuller tells us. After assistant sound editor Eric Shin gathered the materials from each editor, including music tracks and AAF files, dialogue/sound effects editor Justin Lebens would clean up and edit the dialogue before sending it over to Eddie Kim. “I would finesse it and start mixing it up against the music, simultaneously editing background and sound design moments for the show,” Kim explains. “I would do a lot of different things while working toward the end goal of making it sound beautiful.” Kim’s musical background and love for audio was an ideal fit for Sonic Highways. “When I work with sound, I usually work musically, seeing how the sound flows in the picture and how it can create natural dynamics,” he tells us. “When you’re editing video, you’re very confined to what’s on the picture, but in audio, you get to create the world outside of the borders. I believe that audio is the life behind picture.”
Next, Kim would send the mix to Jeff Fuller, who would sit with Grohl for final tweaks and touch-ups, while also fitting the audio into the legal limits. “We’d watch each episode and spot it to add sound effects, work out music edits, and fix dialogue,” Fuller tells us. “I would note which parts of the voiceover I would like to have Dave replace or re-read. A lot of the stories he conveyed on the show were recorded from snippets of conversations he had with the writers, and settings for those recordings were less than optimum most of the time.” Some conversations were recorded at Therapy’s sister production office in Sherman Oaks, California. “Dave would go in there and record on a little Mbox or a Zoom, and some of the audio was just conversations over the dinner table,” Fuller explains. As time went on, the workflow became more and more efficient. “I would play Dave my preliminary mix, tell him what I wanted to re-record with him, and he’d give me notes about the mix. We started getting in a really comfortable rhythm, where he was happy with what we were doing.”
Kim and Fuller mixed on Pro Tools 10 with an Avid C|24 mix board and Genelec 8040B bi-amplified monitors in 5.1 surround configurations. Pro Tools 11 came out just as the team started the project, but they decided to stick with 10 to avoid running two versions at once. iZotope’s RX 4 toolkit proved to be tremendously useful for the project. The team used the Denoise and Declick features extensively for dialogue cleanup. “It’s an amazing package of great noise-reducing plugins and audio suites,” says Kim. “It’s definitely a time and a life saver, so you’re not sitting there at 3:00 in the morning, drawing waveforms.” Fuller added, “I can’t say enough about the people at iZotope. They’ve got some awesome plugins. I fell in love with them over the production of the show, and now I use their Final Mix plugin on my master bus, even for broadcast TV or radio mixes.” Fuller also matched different dialogue room tones with Altiverb, and used Waves Q10 if he needed to notch a piece of audio, allowing him to achieve a higher or lower level of reduction.
Cleaning up interview dialogue was a vital aspect of the workflow, especially when recorded in less than ideal environments. One particularly noisy interview took place backstage at a concert. “Their bus just happened to be right next to the generator, so the dialogue was 75% diesel engine. But you have to make it work. You can’t call these people back and ask them to ADR their interviews.” Fuller says. “We had to do a lot of stripping of the noise, and that would deteriorate the audio quality, but we would try to find a balance where it wouldn’t be too gouged out,” says Kim. In especially noisy locations, like New Orleans, the team would strip out the noise and replace some of the natural ambience. “When you use those noise reduction tools, they also create a lot of artifacting if you overdo it, so there’s a line that you don’t want to cross.”
Fuller worked with PMI Audio and microphone developer Brent Casey to acquire an ideal arsenal of recording gear for the series. PMI supplied a Series 500 rack full of different mic preamps to help Fuller achieve the precise recording style that he was seeking. “Since so much of the content, especially the voiceover, is so personal, I didn’t want Dave to sound too ‘produced,’” Fuller explains. “I wanted it to sound intimate, like he was telling you — the listener — a story, which he was.” After testing out the multitude of options, Fuller chose a Joemeek preQ Series 500 mic preamp, and mic’d Grohl up with a Neumann U87. “It just seemed to get a really intimate, warm, conversational sound,” he tells us. “If I was working on a TV commercial and recording voiceover, I probably would have used a different mic and mic pre, but it worked out really well. I was very happy with the sounds I was getting.”
One of Fuller’s favorite sequences is the opening of the New Orleans episode, when the Foo Fighters are playing with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and decide to get up and parade their music down the street. “There were three on-camera mics and the whole band was mic’d up, so I had maybe 9 different forms of source audio from that sequence,” Fuller explains. “I listened to all of them entirely through and built this scene. When you walk out into Bourbon Street, the whole place opens up. If you’re listening to it on a good system, it really feels like you’re walking down the street with them, and it’s entirely from the lav mics.” Another memorable segment is the Seattle episode’s subterranean recording sequence at Robert Lang Studios. The sequence is edited to focus on each individual instrument, one at a time. The camera zooms in on a guitar, and you only hear that specific guitar, then it moves to the drums, and isolates their sound from the rest of the mix. “Mixing that, and creating this aural montage that was going along with the picture was really fun,” says Fuller. “The editors did a really good job of pre-assembling it, and I had the pleasure of getting to massage it and throw things in different areas of the room as they were happening.”
Fuller also worked closely with HBO to set ideal audio specs for series, which would need to conform to broadcast standards. Grohl was very happy with the audio mix for the film Sound City, and wanted to create the same effect for Sonic Highways. “Sound City was mixed for the theater and has a much wider dynamic range,” Fuller says. “The dialogue was on level and the music was through the roof. Broadcast specs are very different from theater specs when it comes to mixing dynamic range, so I tried to accomplish the same results as much as possible. I didn’t want to break any windows or blow anybody’s speakers, but we found a happy medium, and HBO was very happy with the way it sounded.” The team used Dolby Media Meter software to keep the episodes within spec for broadcast in both the US and the UK.
The Therapy team had a full month to complete the first episode. “It’s a long schedule, but they wanted it to sound beautiful, so we had plenty of time to get it into shape,” Kim tells us. The schedule picked up later on, with the team working on multiple episodes at once. “By the third or fourth episode, all the gears were spinning, and we were just a machine,” says Fuller. Because each episode includes extensive amounts of music to spotlight the musicians from each city, there were many editorial changes and a good deal of back and forth during the approval process. “The workflow was very immersive. I would be in the preliminary stages of one episode while also doing the final mix for the previous episode,” Fuller tells us. Despite a busy schedule, the team always delivered impeccable work. “The last thing I wanted it to sound like was that it was hastily put together, and it never was. Not even one minute of one episode was ever compromised,” says Fuller.
Achieving the best possible sound was of paramount importance to Grohl. “Sound is incredibly important, whether it’s the sound of an instrument, or the level of an interview versus a song, or how to pull all of those things together so it hits you in the gut,” Grohl says. “There are moments that you just want to ride, so you can slap someone in the face with a chord. It was a huge part of the final product.” Grohl worked with the post sound team at Therapy Studios to achieve the best possible final mix. “It was easy. I would just sit down, have a coffee, and watch through the episode,” he says. “To me, it’s all about making things feel seamless and natural. I’m as deaf as a post, but as a drummer, I can hear sonic inconsistency. So it’s just a matter of being on the same page with whoever you’re working with, and making sure that you are hearing the same thing.”
Hearing the final mix come together was one of Grohl’s favorite aspects of the Sonic Highways workflow. “It was usually the first time I would really get a feel of the episode, because the audio was the final piece in the puzzle,” Grohl tells us. “At that point, we’d cut all of the sections together, and we’d gotten to a place where we felt like the composition of the episode made sense, so it was just a matter of the audio really driving it all home. It was an exciting part of the process.”
Despite Grohl’s uncompromising approach to audio, he certainly doesn’t consider himself to be technically inclined. “In everything I do, I’m the least technical person around. I’m the least technical drummer, I’m the least technical guitar player, and I’m the least technical director, so I can only imagine that when it came to mixing sound, I sounded like a 12-year-old kid in front of his home stereo saying, ‘it sounds a little bass-y to me’,” he laughs. “But you just sort of know. You follow your gut feeling, you know when something works, and you know when it doesn’t. There have been times during both Sound City and Sonic Highways when I wasn’t entirely sure what was wrong with a piece, but I knew it didn’t feel right. And then you just work on it until it feels right, and you trust the people that you’re working with to help you find that. We were lucky to work with some really great people.”
The feeling was certainly mutual, according to Eddie Kim and Jeff Fuller. “It was great working with Dave Grohl. He’s such an amazing humanitarian, and he’s just a cool dude. He’s a guy that you instantly connect with, because he has a genuine, sincere love for people,” Kim tells us. “He’s a people person. He’s as interested in you as you are in him,” Fuller adds. “We grew up in relatively the same era, listening to the same music, so it was like hanging out with a high school buddy. He was completely approachable, and there was a nice mutual respect going on between the whole team.” Grohl’s sincerity and trust led to an especially creative, productive work environment for the project. “It was a different mindset. Some people have very stringent ways of working, but this was much more relaxed,” Kim says. “We didn’t take it any less seriously, but there was no pressure from above, and it felt very free and open.” Grohl’s work ethic and passion for the project meshed perfectly with Therapy Studios. “It’s an amazing facility. There’s a very high level of professionalism paired with a high level of camaraderie and friendliness,” says Kim. “We’re run by creative people who are passionate about what we do. I think that’s why everything we’ve done has that quality,” adds Fuller. “Sound City was an amazing documentary, and it began our relationship with Dave Grohl. Sonic Highways was the next step, and all of our editors, sound crew — everybody from the producers down to the assistants — were all just amazingly on board with everything.”
HBO already gave the go ahead for Season 2 of Sonic Highways, and we can’t wait to see where the Foo Fighters will take us next. “The great thing about the series is that the concept is wide open to any city, any type of music, and any musician. The basic framework of the show was to visit a place and talk to the people about the environment and how it influences the music, so it could be done anywhere, and the possibilities are limitless,” Grohl tells us. “You could take it to Munich, you could take it to Toronto, you could take it to Portland, you could take it to Sydney, Australia — so it’s very exciting.” Since there’s no shortage of stellar location options available, Grohl is focusing on how to make the new season even better than the last. “I’d hate to do something that’s just like last time,” he says. “It would be great to do something that’s even more reckless and crazy, and that’s easy to find when you’re talking to musicians. We’ll see what happens!”