Chris Shiflett, courtesy Joey Martinez.

There’s little time spent idle for singer-songwriter Chris Shiflett, best known as Foo Fighters’ guitarist. He’s back at his Los Angeles home after a trip to England where the Foos played a surprise set as The ChurnUps. Shiflett acknowledges that many attendees had long cracked the case.

“I think it was maybe the worst kept secret in rock and roll, but it was great,” he said.

The guitarist is in high spirits, not only due to being back out on the road with the Foo Fighters but also because he’s gearing up to release his third solo record, country rocker Lost At Sea. He began working on it in 2020 and Shiflett said it made for an unusual, yet gratifying process. The gears slowly began to turn after speaking with friend and fellow musician Jaren Johnson, of The Cadillac Three, about producing a few songs.

“We had written a couple songs, I was writing with a bunch of other people, and just writing a bunch of stuff on my own,” Shiflett said. “I would just send Jaren demos. That led to first recording session out in Nashville.”

After Shiflett heard the finishes songs, he asked Johnson to produce an entire record. Typically making his records all at once, this time Shifflet flew to Nashville several times to record a couple songs at a time, as the musicians’ busy schedules aligned. The start-and-stop pace offered a new perspective.

“As we were getting to the end, we had a sense of what the album needed,” Shiflett said. “‘We need something like this, we don’t have anything that’s in this space.'”

In between recording sessions, he’d sit on the songs, coming back with a fresh set of ears and taking his time as family time and the Foo Fighters’ schedule allowed. He might decide a guitar solo was needed, and do a song, sending it back and forth.

The material is pure Nashville, with a heavy dose of bluesy, Southern rock. The hooks are big and anthemic. Tracks like “Black Top White Lines” soar atop Chris Shiflett’s slick guitar work.

Working with Johnson was the right combination that bridged the pair’s musical backgrounds.

“He knows rock, and he knows country, and he knows everything in between,” Shiflett said. “But he also brings another thing in: He’s an amazing songwriter. That’s a big part of what he does.”

Shiflett said he trusted Johnson to be know which songs to move forward on and which to leave behind.

“As a musician sometimes I get lost in it,” he said. “Even halfway through making a record, I’ll get lost in it, and it’s nice to have someone with an unbiased opinion that you can lean on.”

On past records he made a concerted effort to avoid certain elements of his grunge and punk background. This time, if it was good, he used it.

His solo work is never too far away. Case in point, the run of upcoming dates that will take Chris Shiflett up and down California with a pair of Bay Area stops. It will be an extra busy week, as those gigs will come on the heels of Foo Fighters headlining set at Outside Lands. The intimate solo gigs provide the musical yin to Foo Fighters’ yang.

“There’s a lot to be said for those big venues and festival shows. Those are crazy and the energy is like a jet engine blowing in your face,” he said. “But it’s very different playing in a bar to handful of people and trying to win a crowd over. They’re all really different experiences and I just love doing both.”

With Foo Fighters returning to the road following the tragic death of beloved drummer Taylor Hawkins, Shiflett faced the inevitable onslaught of questions. Given the propensity of the internet to rile up rumor, speculation and misinformation, Shiflett has built a personal barrier on the topic.

“Anytime I talk about anything Foo-Fighters-related it just becomes clickbait and people take it out of context,” he said.

Shiflett’s own musical upbringing has a Bay Area connection: He lived in San Francisco most of the time he played with Sunnyvale punk rockers No Use For a Name in the ’90s.

“I worked at Fat Wreck Chords when I first moved up there. That was a super fun period of my life where I was still young without any real responsibilities like kids or a mortgage,” Shiflett said. “So many happy memories of going to see bands and just living it full-time. That was really the first time I lived the full-time musician life…most of the time.”

If a new album and a slew of tour dates wasn’t enough, Shiflett is also in the midst of launching a new guitar podcast, Shred With Shifty. The premise brings Shiflett together with guitar heroes past and present to offer instruction and dissect their famous solos. The first episode is with Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson, speaking about “Limelight.” Future guests include Brad Paisley, Rivers Cuomo and Richie Sambora.

Follow writer Mike DeWald at Twitter.com/mike_dewald.