Foo Fighters frontman and iconic drummer of Nirvana Dave Grohl was on the Bon Appétit Foodcast recently to promote his new Backbeat BBQ company. During the show, Grohl shared a story about how he would go hunting during his earlier years and what he used to do with his shotgun. Alternative Nation transcribed Grohl’s comments.
Grohl: So, growing up in Virginia, there was always someplace, somewhere that had some sort of barbeque. It wasn’t like a big part of my life when I was a kid but I had always dug it and I was always into cooking, out. Actually when I was a kid, when I was young I would go hunting and stuff like that.
Host: Like hunting rifles?
Grohl: Hunting rifles?
Host: As opposed to, like, hunting with Ted Nugent with a crossbow!
Grohl: I used hunting shotguns actually.
Host: I don’t know, you’re talking to a Jewish guy from upper/middle class [Washington] D.C; I don’t know what these things are.
Grohl: No, no, you’re not gonna blaze up guns out there. Now, I would do a lot of bird hunting on the bay.
Host: Oh the bay, classy.
Grohl: Yeah, the ocean. I would go around Chincoteague and Assateague. That was mostly goose and duck, eastern shore shit. I would then go to places outside of Leesburg and Purcellville in places in Virginia to do-
Host: I like how you’re going from the Rehoboth accent to the more Southern accent.
Grohl: You have to say the name of the places right, but I would hunt dove and pheasant but mostly just bird.
Host: Would someone dress them and then you’d eat them? What would happen?
Grohl: I’d fucking clean them and cook them!
Host: Oh okay, how did you learn how to do that?
Grohl: My mom had a boyfriend who lived with us, his name was Chip Donaldson. Chip was a substitute teacher that was also a car salesman who was also a Vietnam veteran. Like this brilliant dude. I think he was a forensics coach or a debate coach. Chip was a really trippy guy that moved in with us and as a result, our house went from looking like a tiny Hirshhorn museum in Springfield, Virginia to a hunting lodge. In one week everything was brown, there was wood everywhere, maybe some taxidermy and all of a sudden there were shotguns above the bed. I was like, ten or eleven so for like a ten or eleven-year-old boy it was like, fuck yes, this is fucking rad!
Grohl concluded:
Grohl: So I learned to hunt and shoot by going out to farms and cleaning their barns of pigeons.