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Those who’ve been salivating in anticipation of local boy Dave Grohl‘s long-awaited HBO miniseries can wipe up some of their drool today. The network just released a trailer for the eight-episode project, Sonic Highways, and it looks like a beautifully shot music nerd’s dream—-an ambitious wade through a half-century’s worth of music history.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0TrqXHoL10
Sonic Highways will follow the Foo Fighters around the country as they make their eighth album, recording each track in a different city: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Nashville, Austin, Seattle, and, of course, D.C.
The series, which launches Oct. 17, boasts a celebrity appearance list that reads like an American Music 101 syllabus. There are cameos by the likes of Dolly Parton, Buddy Guy, Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, ZZ Top, Joan Jett, and Macklemore, who actually looks like he was filmed in a legitimate thrift shop.
Ian MacKaye shows up, too. “Punk just seemed kind of a joke to me until we see the Bad Brains,” he says. “We decided, like, we’re gonna do this.” It seems that MacKaye will, unsurprisingly, play a solid role in the series’ stop in D.C.—-a collection of Fugazi and Minor Threat posters is teased, and it looks like the Foo Fighters recorded one of their tracks at Arlington’s Inner Ear Studio.
Virginia native Pharrell Williams gives one of D.C.’s other hometown heroes a shout: “My earliest memories of D.C. was Trouble Funk.” “D.C. is go-go,” says Trouble Funk’s Big Tony in the trailer. “I would assure you that even Obama’s got a go-go tape somewhere up in there.”
Does he, though? Grohl, who directed the series, scored an interview with the president, but the trailer doesn’t offer any peeks at his music collection. Saving it for the D.C. episode, we hope.