Your Shot: Dave Grohl’s ‘Love Letter to the History of American Music’

Sonic Highways is both the name of the forthcoming Foo Fighters album and an eight-part HBO docu-series chronicling its making. Directed by frontman and general rock God Dave Grohl, it follows the Foo Fighters across America as they base themselves in historically significant studios to write and record a track at each stop, and interview musicians and significant city residents, such as Dolly Parton, Slash and President Barack Obama - yes, really. LBB’s Addison Capper caught up with executive producers, John Ramsay of Therapy Content and long-time friend of Grohl, James A. Rota, to find out more about the project that Grohl is dubbing ‘a love letter to the history of American music’. 

LBB> You’ve previously worked with Dave Grohl on Sound City. How did the relationship initially come about? And why do you think it’s turned out to be a successful one?

JRamsay> Jim – I’ve known him since high school – has been friends with Dave for 14 years. When Dave decided to make the Sound City documentary he called Jim to help him. Jim has worked in film production for many years. When Dave explained the scope and scale he wanted Sound City to be, Jim was kind enough to recommend me as a collaborator and fellow producer on the project. 

It’s been a successful collaboration because Dave is trusting and very loyal. Once you prove your competence he trusts you to do your job. He is not a micro manager. And he is a great time. He’s so much fun to be around and everyone wants to give him their best effort. He’s an inspiring leader and he has great ideas that are a pleasure to work on.

LBB> Jim, Dave is a personal friend of yours. How is he to work with as a director? How do you think his qualities as a frontman translate to being a director?

JRota> Well, we met through a mutual friend, Nick Raskulinecz, who produced records for both our bands.  Dave is very passionate and involved deeply in what he creates.  He has a really great knack for telling a great story and I think that translates very well to the screen.  I would say his being a frontman takes a backseat to his storytelling.

LBB> As a director, what is he like to work with?

JRamsay> Dave is incredibly generous and a great collaborator. He has a clear vision of what he wants and he is very good at explaining his ideas. It makes it easy to chart a course as a producer because you know exactly what his expectations are and where he wants to be in the end.

LBB> How was the production process for you? 

JRota> The process was great.  It was fantastic to be able to spend so much time in each city and really get a feel for what makes each place special.  Each city was picked for its musical importance but it turned out to be only part of the story in each place. The people, geography, weather, layout, etc. really do have a massive influence on what gets created artistically.

We visited Chicago, New York, Joshua Tree, Seattle, Austin, Nashville, Washington D.C. and New Orleans. We encountered too many people to mention here because we did over 100 interviews.  Everyone from Dolly Parton to Farrell.  From Slash to Bonnie Raitt.  It really is the most extensive musical map that we could have hoped for.  We started shooting interviews in August of 2013, but didn’t go into full production until January 2014.  We will be in post until the end of November 2014.

JRamsay> We started shooting interviews in September of 2013. We tried to knock out a few people for each city, to make sure our outline for each episode would be properly supported. If any of our suppositions were weak we could adjust our approach before we showed up with the full production to shoot the entire episode. Starting in January of 2014, we arrived in each city for 10 days. We loaded in our film gear and started rolling cameras. The band arrived the day later and we shot the load-in of the recording equipment. Some of the spaces we shot in were not even recording studios, so the engineer would sometimes have to build a control room before the band arrived. The band would be in town for a week, tracking their various parts of the song together. Our production methods required the smallest footprint possible, so we would not interfere with the recording process. During the recording process, we had interviews set up with local musicians, producers, etc. Those interviews were transcribed and on the second to last day, Dave would take those transcripts and use bits of the interviews as inspiration for the lyrics to the song that we just spent the week documenting. We would then film a performance video of the song, used as the close for each episode. After that it was back to LA for four days before we moved on to the next city for 10 days.

LBB> What were the most memorable moments and why?

JRota> It was all pretty memorable. Each place had it’s own magic.  I’d have to say watching Dave talk to all of these people and hear their stories were the most memorable things to me.

JRamsay> The most memorable moment was going to the Whitehouse and interviewing the President. Not only is it a huge honour to meet a sitting President at the Whitehouse, but I also got to roll a few balls down the Whitehouse bowling alley. Say what you want about Nixon's poor judgement in the Watergate incident, but no one can question the brilliance of a man who puts a bowling alley in his house.

LBB> It’s a real collaboration of different creative qualities - Dave Grohl directing, Foo Fighters’ musical knowledge, Therapy Content’s production quality, the link to commercial production through Therapy Studios, and all of the post work through Therapy too. What do you think everyone learned from each other and how fruitful did that merge of talents turn out to be? 

JRamsay> Therapy Content had produced a similar scale documentary before, Sound City, so we knew what resources were needed and what type of timeline we could expect. Being an integrated production studio and working on a lot of commercial post production, we are comfortable with very compressed timelines and managing a lot of disciplines all under the same roof. That experience allowed us to compress the post production of eight episodes into five months.

LBB> Had you ever been involved in anything like this before? 

JRota> John and I produced Dave’s documentary ‘Sound City’ so we were coming off that project.  John and I have both been in the production/post production game for quite a while now.  This was definitely the first time we have ever documented the recording of an album and the historical significance of a particular city’s musical roots intertwined into a one-hour episodic docu-series. In fact, I don’t think it’s ever been done before!

It was unbelievably rewarding to be involved in this project.  Like Dave, John and I believe that preserving America’s musical history is very important.  

LBB> And the trickiest components - what were they and how did you overcome them?

JRamsay> The trickiest component was handling logistics for the band and the film crew. We needed to keep the crew as small as possible so we didn’t interfere with the recording process. That meant having a skeleton film crew. We were severely understaffed and everyone had to do the job of several people.  The only way to overcome that issue was to work - really hard. Everyone on the crew busted their asses.

LBB> What can we expect from the series? 

JRota> You [people living in or from USA] will probably learn that there is a whole lot of music that happened regionally from where you grew up or currently live.  You also may be turned onto some great new music that you’ve never heard before.  Lastly, I truly believe the way that the band was inspired to create this music by visiting these different places really produced an amazing new collection of songs by the Foo Fighters.