Foo Fighters have announced their first plans to celebrate their 25th anniversary as a band — by touring the same stops that they did on their first US tour back in 1995.
After a huge 2019 that saw the band headline Reading + Leeds Festival (and frontman Dave Grohl play a surprise performance at Club NME with Rick Astley), this year will see the band release a new album and celebrate a quarter of a century together.
‘The Van Tour’ will see Foos “hitting a number of the same spots that Dave Grohl, Nate Mendel and Pat Smear trail-blazed in a Dodge van all those years ago”, albeit upgraded to arena this time.
Before each gig, fans will be shown a preview of Grohl’s new documentary What Drives Us. The band describe the film as “a deep dive into what possesses a particular tribe of human beings to leave behind jobs, families, relationships and any semblance of sanity to climb into a busted ass econoline and take their music to the people – or at least a dozen or so of them here and there.”
The synopsis adds: “What Drives Us explores motivations, recounts personal anecdotes, and explores the physical and psychological toll of touring in vans via interviews with members of van tour veteran bands ranging from Black Flag and Dead Kennedys to Metallica and The Beatles, and many, many more.”
Foo Fighters’ Van Tour US dates are:
April
Sunday 12 – PHOENIX, AZ, Talking Stick Resort Arena
Tuesday 14 – ALBUQUERQUE, NM, Santa Ana Star Center
Thursday 16 – OKLAHOMA CITY, OK, Chesapeake Energy Arena
Saturday 18 – WICHITA, KS, INTRUST Bank Arena
Monday 20 – KNOXVILLE, TN, Thompson-Boiling Arena
Recommended
May
Sunday 10 – GREEN BAY, WI, Resch Center
Tuesday 12 – GRAND RAPIDS, MI, Van Andel Arena
Thursday 14 – CINCINNATI, OH, Heritage Bank Center
Monday 18 – CLEVELAND, OH, Rocket Mortgage Arena
Wed 20 – HAMILTON, ON, FirstOntario Centre
It is hoped that UK tour dates will follow soon. Meanwhile, the band’s upcoming European tour dates are below:
June
Wednesday 10 – BERLIN, DE, Waldbuhne
Friday 12 – NICKELSDORF, AT, Nova Rock Festival
Sunday 14 – MILAN, IT, I-Days
Tuesday 16-17 – NIMES, FR, Festival de Nimes
Friday 19 – LISBON, PT, Rock In Rio Lisboa
This tour news comes after Grohl recently confirmed that Foo Fighters’ new album is complete.
“We just finished making a record,” he said. “Some of those songs, the best ones happen in 45 minutes. Then there’s other songs — there’s a riff on the new record I’ve been working on for 25 years. The first time I demoed it was in my basement in Seattle.”
The frontman previously teased that the follow-up to 2017’s ‘Concrete & Gold’ will be “fucking weird”.
As well as reuniting with the surviving members of Nirvana recently, Grohl also teased that more new music could be on the horizon from Them Crooked Vultures – his side project with Josh Homme and John Paul Jones.
“Every show I played with Them Crooked Vultures was better than the last,” Grohl told NME back in August. “I can honestly say that they are the best rock n’ roll band that I’ve ever been in, in my life. We were just a force of fucking nature.”
“We’ve talked. We’ve got together. I never say never. If you want me to be your drummer, we either have to be best fucking friends or you have to be better than Josh Homme and John Paul Jones. If those guys call and say that it’s time to go, then I’m gonna go because that’s the band. That’s the band that I want to be the drummer of forever. Josh and I talk about it all the time. I know that John would love to as well. It’s also like herding cats. So, we’ll see.”