Shane Hawkins | Chevy Metal's drummer

On 3 September 2022, at Wembley Stadium, a teenager walked out in front of 90,000 people and played “My Hero” with the Foo Fighters.

His father had been their drummer. His father had died six months earlier.

It is, by some distance, the most emotionally loaded thing anyone has done behind a drum kit this decade — and the remarkable part is that he was good. Not good considering. Just good.

Who is Shane Hawkins?

Oliver Shane Hawkins was born on 4 August 2006, the son of Taylor Hawkins, drummer for the Foo Fighters from 1997 until his death in March 2022.

He grew up around it, in the most literal sense — Taylor’s kit was in the house, and the family circle included most of the best rock drummers in America.

His main band is Chevy Metal, the covers band his father founded in California. Shane has taken over the drum stool.

The tribute concerts

The Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concerts took place at Wembley Stadium in London on 3 September 2022 and at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles on 27 September 2022.

Shane played “My Hero” with the Foo Fighters at both.

There is no polite way to describe what that must have taken, so it is worth being direct about what it sounded like instead: he played it hard, straight and correctly, at his father’s tempo, and the room came apart.

Drumeo’s voters gave him Drum Performance Of The Year in 2022 for it, and the panel followed with the Tony Williams Award for Breakout Year in 2024.

What Shane Hawkins actually does

He hits properly. The stroke is full-length and the drums are struck, not tapped. That is a learned habit and it is the single biggest thing separating rock drummers who sound big from rock drummers who do not.

He plays the song’s part. In Chevy Metal — a covers band by design — the job is to play Queen, Van Halen and Foo Fighters material as the record does. He does, without decorating it.

He has good time under pressure. The Wembley performance is the evidence, and there is not a better test available.

He is still early. He is a young player with an enormous amount of career in front of him, and it would be silly to write a final assessment of a drummer who has barely started.

Shane Hawkins’s setup

His gear is not extensively documented, and we would rather say that than invent it.

What is on the record: he is associated with Zildjian cymbals and with Protection Racket cases. Everything else — the shells, the snares, the sizes — has not been published in any detail we would be willing to print.

If you know his current specification and can point at a source, the Rig Vault takes suggested edits on every page, and we will happily build him one.

The kit he grew up around

For context, his father’s Foo Fighters setup is well documented and is very much the sound of this family: a big open kit, Gretsch shells, Zildjian cymbals, and drums tuned high and left to ring.

If you want a starting point for the sound, that is it — our cymbal buying guide and the Gear Guru will get you the rest of the way on a budget.

Where to start listening

• “My Hero”, Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concert, Wembley (2022). The one.
• “My Hero”, Kia Forum (2022). The second one, and steadier.
• Chevy Metal live footage. A covers band, played straight, which is where a young drummer actually learns the job.

Final thoughts

It would be easy — and wrong — to write about Shane Hawkins purely as somebody’s son.

The Wembley performance was extraordinary because of the circumstances, but it was credible because of the playing, and those are two different things. He turned up, he hit the drums like he meant it, and he did not miss.

Whatever he ends up doing, that is a first professional appearance nobody is going to forget.

Read about Dave Grohl, or see Chad Smith and Danny Carey — two of the drummers who played the same two nights.