Foo Fighters' Taylor Hawkins Preps Club Tour With the Coattail Riders

Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders will release their second record, a '70s melodic chart rock influenced set titled 'Red Light Fever,' one day after the band's US club tour begins Apr.19 in San Diego. The Foo Fighters drummer and his crew will also hit 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' on Apr. 21 before they head east and up to Canada to continue their short spring club trek.

"I was just at our studio yesterday, me and Dave [Grohl] are starting to work on ideas, rough sketches for the next Foo Fighters record," Hawkins tells Spinner. "We have all these posters up, like Motorhead posters, rock photographs, whatever. One of the posters we have is a tour poster from 1997, right when I joined the band. It was from over in England. I was looking at some of the clubs we played like Corn Exchange and Rock City and all these places. I was like, 'wow.'" As in, "wow, you don't play those small places anymore?" "Not with Foo Fighters. Not yet," he adds with a laugh.

Indeed, Hawkins and the Coattail Riders will mostly play smaller venues than the Madison Square Garden and Wembley Stadium-sized venues the Foos are used to. Still, they'll add in some summer festivals, including the opening day of London's five-year-old Wireless on July 2. More clubs shows are expected to be announced soon.

"It's such a different thing," says Hawkins, speaking from his home turf of Laguna Beach, Calif. "I like playing clubs. They're better for listening to music. They're not as much of an event as something like a Wembley Stadium but as far as listening pleasure, I like watching bands in clubs. It really fits the Coattail Riders. I sing most of the songs from behind the drums. It's not like I'm prancing around the stage like Mick Jagger or something."