Watch Dave Grohl & His Daughter Violet Cover X’s “Nausea” With Krist Novoselic On Kimmel
Nirvana reunion alert! Last week, Dave Grohl released the first song he’d ever recorded with his 15-year-old daughter Violet. On his Dave’s True Stories website, Grohl explained that he’d learned that he was distantly related to DJ Bonebrake, drummer for the great LA band X, and that’s why he and Violet banged out their version of X’s 1980 rager “Nausea.” Dave played all the instruments, and Violet sang, coming surprisingly close to evoking the fearsome presence of X’s Exene Cervenka. Last night, Grohl and Violet played their “Nausea” cover on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and they had help.
For the Kimmel performance, Dave Grohl couldn’t play all the instruments at the same time, so he brought in some ringers. Krist Novoselic, Dave old Nirvana bandmate and occasional Foo Fighters collaborator, came back to play bass. Novoselic looked extremely happy to be there, and I am extremely happy that I’m not blogging about Novoselic for the same reason as last time. Dave played guitar on this one, not drums, so it’s not really a Nirvana reunion. Instead, Grohls got former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo, a pretty great stand-in. Super-producer and recent Foo Fighters collaborator Greg Kurstin also played organ.
For those ’90s rock heads keeping score at home, that means we got an extremely unlikely supergroup — members of Nirvana, Slayer, and Geggy Tah — backing up a singer who was born when the ’90s were a distant memory. As for Violet Grohl, she crushed this motherfucker. She belted the song out, and she had presence. Maybe this is nepotism at work, but maybe when you grow up around rock stars, you aren’t intimidated to sing with rock stars.
This performance was ostensibly there to promote Grohl’s new documentary What Drives Us, in which Grohl interviews various rock stars about subjects like tour-van farts. Grohl also talked to his buddy Kimmel, appearing in-studio and telling the story of how that “Nausea” cover came to happen. You can see the performance and the interview below. Also below, for the hell of it, check out X playing “Nausea” in The Decline Of Western Civilization.
What Drives Us is out 4/30.