The Foo Fighters frontman tried to coach his daughter through a scratchy throat on her solo tour — and got lovingly, perfectly put in his place.
Every singer who has ever stood in a club bathroom at soundcheck, voice cracking, knows the panic. Now imagine your dad is Dave Grohl — and he still can’t talk you down. The Foo Fighters frontman told the story himself on Monday’s *Jimmy Kimmel Live*, where he and the band are holding court all week, and it’s the most charming rock-dad moment of the fall.
His eldest daughter, Violet Grohl, 20, is out on the road on her Be Sweet To Me tour, playing pubs and clubs across the U.S., Mexico and Europe through the end of the year. “She’s playing the pubs and she’s playing the clubs and she’s losing sleep and she’s losing her voice,” Dave said. He FaceTimes her almost every day, and when she told him her throat was scratchy and hurting, he handed down the road-tested family remedy: “Go in the shower, stand in there for half an hour, take an Advil, drink some tea.”
It did not land. “Then the response is, ‘Dad, I don’t know if I can do it,'” he recalled. His pep talk: “Violet, they don’t care if your voice is raspy. Just get up there and do it.” Her answer: “They’re gonna notice!” So he went for the closer: “I get up on stage every night and I sound like Lemmy from Motörhead. They’re not gonna notice!” And Violet, without missing a beat: “Yeah, but you scream. I *sing*.”
The crowd gasped; her dad just grinned. “And she’s not wrong!” he said. “I mean, you’ll hear it, man. She’s the real deal.” Anyone who has followed this tour knows the stakes aren’t pretend for her — earlier on the U.K. leg, Violet actually lost her voice and had to postpone her Manchester and Glasgow shows, telling fans, “I don’t have a voice right now… I just can’t perform.” She’s since been back out winning over room after room behind her debut album, *Be Sweet to Me*, which arrived in May.
Dave, for his part, says he has known since she was four years old — singing along to Amy Winehouse from her car seat “with perfect pitch and following every tiny little inflection” — that this was coming. “I knew. She has an ear. She really has an ear.” Violet grew up coming on the road with the Foo Fighters and was singing backup for the band by the time she was 12, strolling out in front of 50,000 people while her dad stood backstage nervous: “She was born to do this.”
The 247 Take — There’s something beautiful about the most famously big-hearted screamer in rock admitting, on national television, that his daughter got the finer instrument. Dave built a career on a voice that could strip paint; Violet is building hers on one people lean in to hear. Different tools, same calling — and the student, as they say, has officially started roasting the teacher.
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Sources: *Jimmy Kimmel Live* (the original interview, Monday’s episode) | Entertainment Weekly | OC Music News | Rock Celebrities
