Foo Fighters are a stadium-shaking, anthemic rock band who have had no problem filling the world’s biggest spaces for the better part of twenty years. Outside of Dave Grohl, the only consistent member of the group since 1994 has been bassist Nate Mendel. The Richland, WA native also helmed one of Seattle’s premier rock bands at the height of the alternative rock movement in Sunny Day Real Estate until the group disbanded when Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith teamed up with Grohl’s new project, only to reunite several times in the years since.
Now, Mendel is branching out in between massive tours with Foo Fighters as Lieutenant with a new record ( If I Kill This Thing We’re All Going to Eat for a Week ) featuring members of Modest Mouse, The Head and the Heart, and old friends like Sunny Day Real Estate’s Jeremy Enigk. As you’ll see, Mendel went into this project with a fair amount of trepidation but emerged with a final product he is proud of.
What was the inspiration for making a solo record? Where did these songs come from and how did you manage to carve out time within Foo Fighters’ busy schedule?
Well, there wasn’t a lot of strategizing for how the timing was going to work out. That’s why I am getting ready to go on tour between two Foo Fighters tours. I was concentrating enough on getting this album made that I didn’t think that “Oh it might come out at some point and I want to go to the shows, and it would be a good idea to figure out when that will happen.” But I have been writing bits here and there for years and never really looked to make a record or put together a band. And I got enough stuff together that I decided that it was probably time to think about distilling all these ideas into songs. So I just picked out the best 13 ideas and started focusing on those and trying to work out a way to turn them into songs and strategizing on how to write lyrics and figure out who will play keyboard, drums and put the whole thing together – and that process took probably three years, and I did it between Wasting Light and Sonic Highways. I was in the middle of recording it right when Foo Fighters got together to start working on this latest record, so the summer before last was a pretty busy summer.
You’re the chief songwriter for this album, a different role for you compared to Foo Fighters and Sunny Day Real Estate. What was that like?
I never done anything besides throw in bass ideas. I have never come in with a series of chords or “I think a song should sound like this” or anything like that. So it’s completely foreign, new, and really a great experience to sit in a room and think, “Okay so what should a song sound like” and have to make all the decisions on my own. I’m glad that I went through with it like that. I don’t know if I would do it again. I think collaborating with the band to my experience is the best way to do things. But I think in order for me to get a handle on being a songwriter and person that would be more out in front creatively in a band I needed to go through with doing it on my own. So there was a lot of demoing and to see what a song would sound like. I couldn’t go through different iterations with the band. Like, “Let’s try to doing it in 3/4. Let’s try it faster.” Something like that. If any time one of those ideas would come up I would have to scrap the entire thing and basically re-demo the song, which is a really pain-staking and tedious process.
After going through that, how would you prefer to do the next album?
I don’t know if I will have the confidence yet to say like “This is the song we should do as a band.” With this the songs are already finished so when I got the band that’s playing live together there wasn’t much of a creative process. It was a matter about learning the songs. That’s another evolution as a person who is running a band, which is to get together when you got only a scrap of an idea and steer guys in a certain direction while trying to maintain the vision for the songs, and at the same taking in the ideas of the accomplished creative guys you’re working with. That’s the next step into figuring this thing out.
That’s interesting because I’ve heard you say that one of the most difficult parts of being in Foo Fighters initially was trying to fit in the studio. It seems like this was a learning experience along those same lines.
Well I think so and I think part of that was on purpose. Being a recording bass player wired there’s always something to learn. But I got it down enough that I got the space to try to figure something else out and learn. It’s a whole other region of music that I purposely secluded myself from, like “No I just play bass in this band. That is what I do.” So stepping out from that and involving other musicians, it’s amazing how naive I have been about the whole process. That’s one thing I could say. Like being this far in and saying, “Okay, so the drummer I was played with can’t make this tour. How am I going to find another drummer? Somebody’s interested? What does that look like? How long does it take to learn this song? Are they going to like the song? Does it even matter if they like the song?” All that kind of thing. There’s a lot to figure out not just musically but also socially if that makes sense.
Do you think you’ll walk into the next Foo Fighters session with a different approach?
I think my role in Foo Fighters will not change. I am not going to become the main songwriter in the band. But I think the thing I would have of course is maybe more empathy for the position that Dave is in. And I don’t know practically what that would mean, but when we are in a room figuring out a song and him going for a thing and trying to filter his ideas through four other guys who are all in the same position: going through that at the same time, what kind of fruit that bares I have no idea. We’ll just have to wait until we make another record…
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