Thanks to Tania

Im sure you have been asked this a million times so I will just let you make your comments. Chris Shiflett – Foo Fighters.
Ya know what… it was something he wanted to do. I think that if he would have had the offer and turned it down he always would have wondered what it would have been like and that would have been really bad. So he just took a chance and went with it and it was a good chance to take. He is havin a great time we are still friends with him.
Sara told me that he is still with Me First.
Yea he still does Me First… he is totally the same guy he just did what he wanted to do and that is respectable.
(I believe that was Matt Riddle who said that).

This is from an interview with Tony Sly, shortly after Chris vacated the band:
JG: So what happened with Chris? You know joining the Foo Fighters and all?
TS: He called me about a week ago and told me. He left this band to tour with the Foo Fighters and I think it is a great opportunity for him. For us it's just a speed bump. We already have a replacement and he is great. I mean this band has had like 8 guitarist or something like that so it's not a huge deal to us. We'll miss him. We had a lot of great days together but we've moved on. Everyone expects us to be bitter but he's a good friend and we wish him all the luck.
JG: Do you get that question a lot?
TS: Yes, it seems to be the topic of the week for us. I've fielded a lot of questions about it for all kinds of zines and newspapers etc...It could be good for us, we get to talk about the new record and our upcoming tours a lot. (TS is Tony Sly)

http://www.acornweb.com/punk/interviews/joeycape1.html It's a link to an interview with Joey Cape, but it's really good and there's some stuff that he says about Chris, which I shall highlight here for you:
Is Jake Jackson still playing with the Gimme Gimmes?
Yea he is supposed to do the tour and it looks like, the Foo Fighters are doing a record really soon I guess so I guess the deal is he is supposed to be done with his parts on the record by the time the tour starts but it remains to be seen. And you know those major label bands their schedules change like, its ridiculous ya know? so who knows. But we got a couple back up guys which is such a shame. Because like to me I don't even want to do it without Jake. He's my man. I mean Chris and I grew up together, I've known him all my life. What do you call him, Jake or Chris?
I call him Chris. I call him both I guess but, I call him Chris. I've known him all my life and Jake just came a few years ago. He was just Jake at FAT. Because before he was in No Use For A Name he was working at FAT Wreck Chords and there was another guy named Chris (Dodge) that worked there so they didn't want to like deal with the name problems so they made him pick a new name. And he got to pick his own name he was like "Well I'll be Jake Jackson."
(can I say: awww, that's too sweet!)

Gimme interview: http://www.acornweb.com/punk/interviews/mfatgg1.html
OK, what was the band that inspired this band? Mike: Years ago, I thought, Man, I would love to do old Neil Diamond songs and old folk guitar songs and make them punk - that'd be great. And Joey thought the same thing.
Joey: I was living with our other guitar player, who's not here right now, and we had a list on our refrigerator of all these cheezy '70's on our refrigerator that would thought would be cool to do punk rock and then Mike came up and stole our idea telepathically. It was really kind of a drag and now he is sort of the leader, which I think is really unfair. Jake Jackson should be the leader of this affair. In all seriousness, I think the reason that we agreed on is that we both write songs in our bands, and I think the idea is that any good song comes out in formatting and style. You could take a good song that would make people cringe, but if you put it in a format or a style that people would enjoy....
(that further cements the fact that I've read that Joey and Chris were the founders of the band, and then Mike, et. al)

Enjoy!
Tania