Foo Fighters honor Taylor Hawkins, blaze new path at Harley-Davidson festival in Milwaukee

Looking back at the last Harley-Davidson music festival in Milwaukee a decade ago, one memory burns brightest.

Taylor Hawkins’ cover band Chevy Metal was booked for a side stage, and Foo Fighters bandmate Dave Grohl walked out for a surprise appearance — because he loved playing music and loved being with his friend. They had a blast jamming together for the hell of it, while a small and elated crowd, and rock pioneer Joan Jett in the wings, looked on with huge grins.

Flash forward to Saturday, when Foo Fighters played for about 45,000 people at a sold-out daylong concert in Veterans Park for the Harley-Davidson Homecoming Festival. Joan Jett was there to play, too.

Hawkins, of course, wasn’t.

After Hawkins' death last year, Foo Fighters’ future was in real jeopardy. Beyond being a tremendous talent behind the drum kit, Hawkins’ bright personality, winning humor and brotherly rapport with Grohl felt like the heart and soul of the band.

And it could never be fully replaced.

But about 30 seconds into the band's two-hour set Saturday, it was crystal clear that Foo Fighters were in good hands with veteran session drummer Josh Freese.

After Grohl’s simmering vocals and taut guitar strokes to begin “All My Life,” Freese smashed the kit with Hawkins-scale force. Before the band hit the tension-building bridge, Freese was given space to fly free, ferociously attacking the kit, the snare popping with the force and speed of an Uzi as his feet triggered a dizzying double kick-drum assault.

“All right (expletive), you wanna dance?” Grohl hollered over the obliteration. And the band snapped back together to crush a final chorus as Grohl unleashed a hellfire scream that threatened to knock out his voice early in the night.

Any concerns were quickly squashed two songs later, with Grohl confidently boasting, "We're just warming up (expletive) — you know that, right?"

Those comments came in the middle of a breathless, Freese-fueled six-song sprint. During "No Son of Mine," Freese U-turned from the octane, opting for some polyrhythmic pops and textures while Grohl banged his head, smacked his gum and dug into his guitar, the band steering into the grooves of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.” A couple songs later during ”Walk,” Grohl repeatedly screamed “I never wanna die” with such force during the bridge that he lost his breath — then regrouped, sucking in air and throwing out a banshee-like yell.

For his sake, it’s a good thing the set had some quieter moments, and a couple of those were just as exciting.

Grohl noticed a potential issue near the stage, prompting him to pause the show so security could check it out. So Grohl kept things a little calmer, opting for a rare solo performance of "Big Me" on guitar that was moving in its stillness.

And the band brought back the drawn-out intro for "Times Like These" that kicked off their last Milwaukee show in 2021 — the first major concert in Milwaukee after the pandemic began. While that performance, with Grohl singing slowly over Rami Jaffee's pensive keys, was a cathartic release, this time, the song, for crowd and band alike, came from a place of joy, of coming out of the hardship, with Grohl stifling a relieved chuckle as he sang, "It's times like these you learn to love again."

It wasn't the only time there were laughs Saturday — again, a relief, after the loss the band has endured. An introduce-the-band portion went from guitarist Chris Shiflett playing a note-cascading solo as Grohl lit up a cigarette ("Overqualified, I think," Grohl quipped) to Pat Smear brushing a bottle of champagne against his guitar during his moment to shine, before taking a swig.

Freese also revisited parts of his extensive résumé, touching on everything from Devo's "Whip It" to Nine Inch Nails' "March of the Pigs." It's a bit that the band has done at other shows this year, and a fan in the front knew what was coming — a curveball snippet of another Freese credit, Michael Bublé's "Haven't Met You Yet." The fan had up a sign that read, "I know the Bublé song," earning him an invite onto the stage, where he took a seat in front of the drum kit.

When the time came for the fan, Nicholas (like Bublé, from Canada, we found out), to show his stuff, he unwrapped the microphone from the stand, prompting big eyes from Grohl — but the fan hilariously bombed.

"You can't look at the lyrics," Grohl told Nicholas, who took everything in stride as the pair joined forces to sing the title of the song, with a juvenile swap of "met" for a certain four-letter word.

"Get your ass off my stage," Grohl told him dryly, before celebrating Nicholas' nerve and confidence. Grohl then dedicated the next song, "My Hero," to him.

That moment was reminiscent of the comedy bits Grohl and Hawkins did over the years, as integral to the late drummer's legacy as his talent. And in honor of their departed friend, Grohl and the band near the end of the night played Hawkins' favorite Foo Fighters song, "Aurora," prompting the packed field to chant Hawkins' name.

And as the band's tender sorrow morphed into a heart-bursting finish, a silhouette of a hawk hovered on the big screen over the thousands who will never forget him.

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Country outlaw Cody Jinks wins over the rock crowd

“I don’t know how the hell they booked a country band between Joan Jett and Foo Fighters, but here we are,” Cody Jinks said at the start of the festival’s penultimate set Saturday night. There were a few diehards scattered around singing along, but safe to say most of the people packed in front of the stage were claiming turf for the headliner.

But Jinks deserved this slot on the bill. His story songs gripped the uninitiated, whether he was singing about grabbing a six-pack of Old Milwaukee on "Mamma Song," or numbing his sorrows on “Must Be the Whiskey.”

“OK for a country band so far?” he asked the crowd a few songs in, to roaring reassurance. “I’ll let you in on a secret. We kind of rock a little, too.”

Set closer “Loud and Heavy” made that clear, with up to four guitarists creating a sonic storm, backed by drums, bass, keys and pedal steel. And with Social Distortion dropping out of the festival while Mike Ness recovers from surgery related to Stage 1 tonsil cancer, Jinks paid tribute with a rollicking cover of "Reach for the Sky,"

“You didn’t know what the (expletive) was gonna happen when we got up here, did ya?” Jinks said afterward. Another fair assessment, but people clearly liked what they were hearing.

Joan Jett plays for a packed crowd fit for her legacy

No living rocker matches up better with the idealized perception of the Harley brand than Joan Jett: classic, unapologetic, defiant, firing on all cylinders.

Jett showed she still loves rock 'n' roll Saturday, her voice more weathered at 64 but full of vigor, as she led her band the Blackhearts through signatures like “Bad Reputation” and the Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb.” And no-nonsense new songs “If You’re Blue” and “Make the Music Go Boom” from this year’s EP “Mindset” fit right in with the standards.

And when a massive crowd burst into a spontaneous singalong for “Crimson and Clover,” the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer showed she was still capable of being surprised.

White Reaper, Ghost Hounds also opened

White Reaper reminded the Harley faithful of the beauty of the simple things, from taking a moment to acknowledge the coolness of drums to orchestrating a crowd birthday shout-out for a buddy backstage (so keyboardist Ryan Hater didn’t need to buy him a gift).

The Kentucky garage rockers' sound was pretty simple and straightforward, too, but songs like “Pages” and “Might Be Right,” charged by Thin Lizzy-like power chords, were pretty beautiful, a swell soundtrack for a sunny and hot afternoon in the park.

From the blues-rock boogie of “Make It Shake” to the Gothic country smolder of new single “Last Train to Nowhere” (poised to get a Taylor Sheridan bump on the “Yellowstone” creator’s new show “Special Ops: Lioness”), Ghost Hounds sounded like an echo of a bunch of bands you’ve heard before. But the Pittsburgh group still did a grand job getting the party started Saturday, with each of the nine musicians dousing the stage with swagger for fiery finish “Dirty Angel.”

Foo Fighters' Harley-Davidson Homecoming Festival setlist

1. "All My Life"

2. "The Pretender"

3. "No Son of Mine"

4. "Rescued"

5. "Walk"

6. "The Pretender"

7. "Times Like These"

8. "Under You"

9. "La Dee Da"

10. "Breakout"

11. "My Hero"

12. "This Is a Call"

13. "The Sky Is a Neighborhood"

14. "Shame Shame"

15. "Big Me"

16. "Monkey Wrench"

17. "Aurora"

18. "Best of You"

19. "Everlong"

Contact Piet at (414) 223-5162 or plevy@journalsentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter at @pietlevy or Facebook at facebook.com/PietLevyMJS.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Foo Fighters honor Taylor Hawkins, blaze new path at Harley festival