A Conversation With Violet Grohl

I'm so glad you brought up the website there specifically because I've had a guest on the show.

Her name is Sue Tierney and she was one of the people who was responsible for helping to put those um tablatures onto the website and one of the things that she talked about was how bizarre of a project it was considering the rise of the internet was happening at the same time they were figuring out how to build a website at the same time they were trying to figure out what the hell these cords were and that was quite the project for them obviously um but that also i like that you brought up you know you are a young person.

I'm a young person.

I came to Joni Mitchell through a similar, you know, first you kind of have these physical copies of albums and whatnot that maybe your parents give you or your parents introduce you to.

But then, you know, we had YouTube that we could go to go down those rabbit holes, like you said.

And it's just interesting how people of more our generation have the ability to make a map through somebody's catalog that way at the top of buttons.

Obviously, there are pros and cons to that, as there are with anything.

But, you know, it's just interesting how this new generation, including yourself, has been able to use that as such a resource to learn from, but then fall back on ultimately, you know.

So, and I'm also glad you brought up the chord tunings too, because this is something that, you know, obviously has baffled Joni listeners and Joni critics alike, you know, for years and years.

And I'm just kind of wondering what... like did you approach those tunings and was there ever a moment where you were like oh like I can't do this like this is too hard this is crazy this is not something that a normal person can do on guitar or did that kind of I mean teaching yourself to play guitar is already kind of a challenge in and of itself but then teaching yourself to play a guitar with those tunings is a whole other level like what what did that process look like because you were a kid

yeah it it really like I was just so curious about it all.

And when it came to like the really more like extreme tunings where it's like drop B and then the high string is like, it's I would just tune my guitar and I still to this day like I have guitars that like I have broken the strings on those guitars so many times because I was playing Joni Mitchell songs like it was like I've had strings snap in my face and like because I wanted to, you know, like hear those tunings and like feel them out and play her songs.

And then also like, after I would play her songs, I would experiment with like writing my own songs and those tunings and just like seeing how like expansive guitar was.

And I, it was like so much, there was so much more to it than I realized, but Yeah, it was just something I was really curious about.

I just wanted to fall down that kind of rabbit hole as well.

And I think it's so beautiful.

And I think that if you have a stringed instrument, why not experiment with the possibilities of the tunings of that instrument? Push it to its limit and see what sounds can come from that, because it's so, it can be so spectacular and so beautiful.

Like, Hegira is my favorite Joni Mitchell album.

It's just, like, so, it's, like, striking.

It's so beautiful and dark and warm and moody and sometimes cold.

It's, like, there are just so many feelings and it's so deep.

And you know, the, you know, the title track for that record is in like a drop B tuning and it's kind of like chugged along and it's just so like, it's like I said about the blue cover.

It's like, it's so emotive.

Like there's so much feeling just behind like hearing the intro to that song.

It like, it feels like you're like, in a car, like rolling down a highway, just kind of like, you know, feeling like the drone of like the hum of the car and of, you know, like all of that.