Dave Grohl has paid tribute to his “family history” by releasing a duet with his daughter.
The Foo Fighters frontman and his eldest child, 15-year-old Violet have teamed up for a cover of X’s 1980 track ‘Nausea’, with the song recorded at the ‘All My Life’ singer’s home studio and featuring in his upcoming documentary ‘What Drives Us’.
Dave explained on Instagram how he is connected to X both through music and family ties and how those connections ultimately “serve as the foundation to the soundtrack to our lives.”
The 52-year-old rocker – who also has Harper, 12, and Ophelia, six, with wife Jordyn Blum – explained how, following Nirvana’s 1992 world tour, his grandmother told him he could be related to X drummer DJ Bonebrake because his surname was her maiden name and in 2007 after a Foo Fighters gig, he and other members of his family had a reunion with the musician.
He recalled: “After the show, Pat [Smear] brought DJ to the dressing room backstage, where my mother, sister and I were having drinks. “As he came through the door, we all stood up and warmly greeted him like a long lost relative, inspecting every feature, desperately trying to identify the trademark family brow or chin, passed down over centuries.
“Long discussions of distant relatives and our historic family tree ensued, and by the end of the night we parted ways feeling a bit more connected to the lineage that brought us to this place, musical and otherwise.
After finishing work on ‘What Drives Us’ and watching it back, he felt it was important to commemorate those connections in some way.
Dave wrote in the third part of his lengthy post: “I wanted to record a song that would not only pay tribute to the people and music that influenced me to become a musician, but also to pay tribute to my long family history.
“So what better than an X song? And what better person to sing it than my daughter, Violet Grohl, another descendant of Johann Christian Beinbrech. “I picked up one of my favorite X songs, ‘Nausea’, from their 1980 debut album ‘Los Angeles’ and forwarded it to Violet, hoping that she would agree to my most impulsive idea.
“Anyone who has ever heard Violet sing knows that she was certainly capable of doing it, but it was just
a matter of getting her in front of the microphone to record, something that the two of us had never done together before. It felt so meaningful to have the first song Violet and I record together be a tribute to our Bonebrake heritage.”
Violet agreed and Dave recorded the instrumental tracks before she added her vocals and he then put harmonies over the top, and the ‘Everlong’ hitmaker couldn’t be prouder of the track.
He gushed: “We smiled upon listening to playback at full volume. It was a moment that superseded anything musical. A life moment that I will cherish forever. A family moment.”