Punk veteran. Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee. Alt-country songwriter. Modern-day guitar hero, Chris Shifflet releases his new single ‘Long, Long Year’.
For more than 25 years, Foo Fighters six-stringer Chris Shiflett has blurred the lines between genre and generation, balancing his full-band projects with an ongoing solo career. With his new single, “Long, Long Year,” Shiflett turns a new page, building a bridge between his native California and Nashville, Tennessee, where he recorded this new tune with legendary producer Vance Powell and a small roster of Americana all-stars: bassist Jack Lawrence (The Raconteurs, Jack White, Wanda Jackson), drummer Julian Doro (Eagles of Death Metal, The Whigs), keyboardist Mike Webb, steel guitarist Luke Schneider, and mandolinist/harmony vocalist Sierra Hull.
Kicking off with a swaggering drum pattern, “Long, Long Year’s” mid-tempo, piano and pedal steel-filled arrangement is a windows-down, let-it-all-out singalong. “I spent a lot of time alone at my studio in L.A. during the first part of the lockdown just woodshedding tunes,” says Chris. “The line ‘It’s been a long, long year’ was rattling around my head for obvious reasons, but I framed it as a love song.”
The resulting tune feels like a release, sung with uplifting emotion and forward-looking, both in the intended love song framing and through the greater, pandemic-induced dread lens.
