Last year, the Foo Fighters suffered a sudden and tragic loss when longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins died unexpectedly. The band made it clear that they would keep going, and next week, they’ll release their new album But Here We Are. This year, Foo Fighters will play a whole lot of festival gigs, and they’ll have a new drummer: Josh Freese, a longtime session guy with an extensive resume who’s played with a bunch of different big-deal bands over the years. Last night, Freese played his first show as a Foo Fighter. Perhaps to highlight his strange status within the group, Freese wore a shirt that said “Employee Of The Month.”

Josh Freese played with the Foo Fighters during a pair of Taylor Hawkins tribute shows last year, and he made his debut with the band during a livestream event earlier this week. In that performance, the band played new songs “Rescued,” “Under You,” and “Nothing At All” live for the first time. Last night, in a kind of warm-up to their headlining gig at this weekend’s Boston Calling festival, Foo Fighters played the Bank Of New Hampshire Pavilion — their first regular full-band set since Hawkins died last year. As part of that set, the band debuted “But Here We Are,” the title track from their new album.

Before playing “But Here We Are,” Dave Grohl told the crowd, “We gotta get through this whole thing together, and in doing that, we wrote a bunch of new songs because that’s what helps us deal with everything we’ve had to go through.” The song is a big, blustery, emotional rocker, and Grohl seemed to be struggling to get through it. He was clearly in a heavy emotional state last night, visibly fighting back tears several times.

Foo Fighters also played new songs “Rescued,” “Under You,” and “Nothing At All” again, and they ran through most of their classics. Near the end of the show, Grohl introduced “the man behind the drums, Josh Freese” to the crowd: “We would not be here tonight if it weren’t for Josh so, everybody give Josh a big fucking round of applause.” Immediately afterward, Grohl played a solo-acoustic version of the band’s 2005 song “Cold Day In The Sun,” telling the crowd, “You know, I have to say that this is something that I never thought I’d have to do. I’m gonna try to do it. Taylor wrote this song. We used to sing it together, so I’m gonna do it for him tonight.”

Below, check out fan-made videos of those “But Here We Are” and “Cold Day In The Sun” performances, as well as last night’s setlist, via Setlist.fm, and a few other videos from last night’s show.

SETLIST:
01 “Rescued”
02 “Walk”
03 “No Son Of Mine”
04 “Learn To Fly”
05 “Times Like These”
06 “Under You”
07 “The Pretender”
08 “But Here We Are”
09 “Breakout”
10 “The Sky Is A Neighborhood”
11 “My Hero”
12 “This Is A Call”
13 “All My Life”
14 “Nothing at All”
15 “Shame Shame” (with Violet Grohl)
16 “These Days”
17 “Cold Day In The Sun” (Dave Grohl solo-acoustic)
18 “Monkey Wrench”
19 “Best Of You”
20 “Aurora”
21 “Everlong”

But Here We Are is out 6/2 on Roswell.