Recording With Rik Gratton

Recording With Rik Gratton at Phase 1 in Toronto

I had the pleasure of meeting and working with Rik Gratton yesterday. I've been working on another album for the "GodRocks", a video/CD/TV/Concert act that I've been associated with for a number of years. On previous albums, I've done all of the instrumentation myself and specifically with drum programming rather than live drumming. There has never been much need to have a real player on this stuff, especially when you consider the demographic that applies to the GodRocks.

The new songs Bruce Stacey wrote for this album are quite a bit more modern/rock sounding than ever before, and the prospect of programming drums on these songs seemed like a wasted effort. So we decided to actually hire a real drummer.

None of us associated with the Godrocks universe had ever worked with Rik before, but he came highly recommended. I was particularly sold on him once I found out that he is a very close friend of Terry Bozzio, hands-down my favorite drummer of all time.

We had one day at Phase 1 Studios in Toronto to get 10 songs done with Rik. The plan was to finish all the drums, get new bass recorded by me, and then after all of this, have me play grand piano on a few songs too. That's a lot to fit into one studio day!! I've done many a session, where the players work their asses off during a very long day, and come away with less than 3-4 songs completed.

Rik was beyond comprehension!

Although these are songs geared at kids, they are by no means simplistic, cookie-cutter songs. A number of these tunes have very strange arrangements, including 6/4 bars, more than one bridge and other little tidbits that help build what I call "the candies" of the production. I wrote really quick rhythmic charts for Rik, but otherwise, he was kind of on his own.

One song in particular was very elaborate. He listened to it twice before he played it. When he went in to give it a run through, he nailed it in the single take. He did this all bloody day! He'd go in and just "wank something out" and it would be virtually perfect! We did the occasional punch in, but for the most part, he was a 1-take drummer. Unbelievable!

Right at the end of the session, it occurred to me that I had not gotten any video footage from the day, so I quickly threw up my Photobooth software and started filming something. It didn't take long for Bruce and Darryl (the executive producer and engineer) to notice they were being filmed!!

Enjoy the video clip. Wish I had more footage.

This was a studio day where I really sat back and thought "man, it's days like this I'm really glad I do this for a living!" It was almost 12 hours of nearly constant work, with barely time off to eat a few slices of pizza, and there were many trips to the Americano machine, but it was a joy from start to finish!

Thanks to Rik for being such a great guy and such an unbelievable musician.

Ian - October 15/09