In Your Honor - Recording

Recording

The recording sessions ran from January to March 2005, with only two and a half weeks being spent on the acoustic record. Forty tracks were recorded - fifteen of them acoustic - with half of them ending on the final track list. Studio 606 was not finished as the band moved in, and the bandmembers even helped with the final stages of construction, “hammering, stuffing insulation — doing whatever to speed the process.” Eight of the rock songs were last-minute compositions done after the acoustic record was finished, as "Dave started feeling that it was better than the rock record." The songs were recorded in analog tape - which was reused over and over due to a tape shortage and a desire to save money - before being transferred to Pro Tools for overdubs, editing and mixing. Raskulinecz mixed the rock songs, while Elliot Scheiner mixed the stereo and 5.1 versions of the acoustic sides.

The band entered the studio with most of the songs finished and rehearsed; producer Nick Raskulinecz, who also worked on One by One, stated that while "One By One was very loose, "In Your Honor was more planned out. Dave was more meticulous on that one". The electric album was done in segments by instrument, starting with the drums and guitars, then vocals, and finally bass. Mendel would write a bass line on Pro Tools at home before showing it to Grohl and Raskulinecz. The bass was recorded after the vocals, which Raskulinecz said was done because “By doing bass last, you can really tailor it for tuning, parts and sound. If you do the drums and then the guitars, you can fill the hole that's left with bass. And sometimes that hole wants a certain frequency that isn't traditional for bass, but you have to go with it, which is even more fun.” During the last three weeks of work in the rock songs, the band was in the studio "from noon to eight in the morning, making the rock record the most devastating thing we've ever done". After two months working with the rock songs, the band was approaching their established deadline and had a meeting where they decided that to finish the album "Everyone has to be here all day, we need to do one song a day and no one's leaving until that song is done." Grohl would listen to a click track, and "we'd find a tempo and I'd just roll an arrangement off the top of my head." As the bandmembers recorded their parts, Grohl would write the lyrics. The rushed approach prevented Mendel from writing bass lines, so he ended up "concentrating on just finding the notes and getting the rhythm right."

"I look at this album as kind of the end of one chapter and the beginning of something new. (...) With the rock record, we finally got the aggressive, anthemic thing down. With the acoustic album, it offers some kind of look into the future of things we're capable of doing and the direction we could move if we wanted to."

Grohl declared that "making this record revitalized this band", particularly the acoustic songs, as they "showed ourselves what we're capable of doing" and " things scary again. You do something that you've never done, and it makes you feel like a bigger band." The frontman also stated the mellower acoustic disc was an opportunity to use "the acoustic tracks we wrote in the past eight or nine years, but never put on albums because they never seemed to fit", particularly because Grohl felt that "it's hard to put an acoustic song in the middle of a rock record, because sometimes it mucks up the sequence." The tracks include Grohl's first composition "Friend of a Friend" - done in 1990, and previously recorded under the pseudonym 'Late!' on the cassette Pocketwatch; "Razor", which Grohl wrote for a benefit concert at the Wiltern Theater; and drummer Taylor Hawkins' composition "Cold Day in the Sun", which after an attempt to do an electric version became an unplugged track, featuring Hawkins on vocals and tambourine and Grohl in the drums.

While preparing the acoustic album, Grohl decided that he would improve it with guest appearances, and made a list of musicians that he would like to work with, such as Warren Haynes and Grant Hart. The guests that appeared on the record included Norah Jones, John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin fame, and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age. John Paul Jones agreed to appear as he was in Los Angeles for the Grammy Awards, and Grohl described his appearance as the "second-greatest thing to happen to me in my life" behind his marriage. Norah Jones was brought for the bossa nova "Virginia Moon" after Grohl heard her record and considered that his song was "her vibe" and Jones' voice "was so smooth and warm that I figured it would work out great with mine." The song features Grohl's guitar technician Joe Beebe on lead guitar as he was the only one in the crew with jazz experience. The Wallflowers' keyboard player Rami Jaffee and that dog.'s violinist Petra Haden also contributed to the album, and were later drafted for the Foo Fighters' touring band. After the album was finished, Grohl stated that he hoped that the Foo Fighters were most remembered for this record, describing it as "just the most fucking kick-ass thing we've ever done", and saying that "If someone asked me which Led Zeppelin album to buy, I would tell them Physical Graffiti, because it has such a wide dynamic and it shows the range that band had. And that's what we wanted to do with this album."