Taylor Hawkins Gets Help From Brian May, Dave Grohl on New Coattail Riders' Album

Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders will release their second album, 'Red Light Fever,' on Apr. 20, and this time around, the four-piece roped in some assistance. "I had some help from some friends on this record," Hawkins tells Spinner, speaking of some well-known friends at that. "Well, you know, you pull in favors," the Foo Fighters drummer adds with a giggle when discussing how he got Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen and Elliot Easton of the Cars to help out on the album.

"Brian May, he was helpful on a couple of those tunes big time," he continues. "Roger Taylor sang background vocals; I always loved his voice. He was such an important part of the sound of Queen. Then Elliott Easton from the Cars did a guitar solo on the first song of the record. I love his guitar playing. I met him over the past year and I just of corralled him into coming into the studio."

"Then my good buddy Dave from the Foo Fighters came along," he adds glibly, talking about Foo head Dave Grohl. "He played a lot of rhythm guitar on the record. He was very helpful early on with arrangements. Under the producers of the record, it says produced by the Coattail Riders and Drew Hester, but he's under that umbrella as one of the producers."

"A couple of the songs were very much co-written with him," Hawkins adds warmly, "but he was like, 'Nah, it's all your song.' Like 'I Don't Think I Trust You Anymore,' that's me and Dave in the studio working on the song."

Another big difference this time around Hawkins says was recording in Foo Fighters' state-of-the-art 606 Studio in Los Angeles and not in his living room, as the Coattail Riders' eponymous 2006 debut was. "It's the difference between a $3 million amazing studio that we pumped everything into and doing it in some living room," he says. "It was already going to be some bigger sort of thing. You got a bigger idea, you get a bigger sound."