Derek Grant
The Alkaline Trio's

This article is an excerpt from the 10/2005 issue of Modern Drummer Magazine. Check your newsstands today to read the full article.

by Waleed Rashidi


A few years ago, when Derek Grant received a call to do a Japanese tour with punk band Face To Face right after he'd left his gig as the drummer with The Suicide Machines, he assumed it was to perform behind the kit. But after a few conversations, he realized that the group wanted him as a guitarist. "I basically told them they had the wrong guy," Grant says. "I didn't even own a guitar at that time."

But the guys in Face To Face weren't mistaken. They'd heard from various sources that Grant, besides being a slammin' drummer, was also a talented multi-instrumentalist. In fact, the word got out about his axe talents after he played some amazing guitar licks during soundchecks with The Suicide Machines. "So Face To Face flew me out," Grant recalls. "I did two rehearsals with them and we went to Japan. But that's how I met the guys in Alkaline Trio, because they were the opening act on that tour."

After becoming acquainted with the Trio's material, Grant became a fan and kept in touch with the group. After some time, Grant received a phone call for another new gig. This time, it was for the drum seat in The Alkaline Trio. "I went down and rehearsed with them," he says. "We wrote a song within the first week and recorded it shortly thereafter, and that was that."

Two albums and several tours later, Grant's still the Trio's persistent pulse. Spin his debut with the band, 2003's Good Mourning, and you'll find a drummer who's blended the fury and recklessness of early punks with the grace and precision of more modern rockers. This year's Crimson is no exception, as the multi-instrumentalist contributes even more of his trademark talents to the imperative, dark-themed melodic punk music that's become the band's signature.

We caught the twenty-eight-year-old Grant while he was in Los Angeles to talk about things like his "mechanical" approach to the band's latest release, developing his ambidexterity, and the importance of keeping good time. As you'll read, the innovative and articulate Grant is much more than just "The drummer in the band."

MD: How were the sessions for your latest album different from your previous one?

Derek: Well, we've had a little bit more time to work together as a band. When we did Good Mourning, I'd only been in the band for about a year and a half. So I was still trying to find my footing. I was trying to figure out where I fit both personally and musically, because I had such admiration for Matt [Skiba, guitarist/vocalist] and Dan [Andriano, bassist/vocalist] as songwriters. I was really hesitant to contribute too much on Good Mourning because I had just made the transition from being a fan of the band to being in the band, and I was really wary of messing with the formula. I wrote music for one of the songs that made it onto Good Mourning. But aside from that, I just kind of stood back and observed.

We got in the studio and had a pretty difficult time. I had some physical problems that I hadn't anticipated. For the first time in my life, I kind of struggled with different forms of arthritis. I'd been playing drums for so long'since I was two years old, non-stop. It's never been a hobby - it's consumed my life. So many years of playing without warming up or doing any stretching just led to problems with my elbows and knees, primarily.

When we were doing Good Mourning, I started having trouble with my right leg. It was almost like muscle spasms were happening, where I had to concentrate so hard to just play the patterns I wanted to play with my right leg. It was definitely a pretty dark period, when I had to confront the possibility of not physically being able to do what I wanted to do.

For Crimson, I didn't have any of those problems. I'm glad to say that I'm in much better health now. I also have a better understanding of my role in the group and my role as an individual. We wrote well together. It was more cohesive and collaborative. We had Jerry Finn producing for the first time. He was supposed to produce Good Mourning, but he was tied up doing the last AFI album. So a combination of all of that, along with just being stronger songwriters and having that natural growth, made the whole process much more enjoyable. We really couldn't be happier with the outcome.

MD: Did anything else change this time around?

Derek: For me personally, it was just a matter of being a little bit more picky about certain takes, like what was good and what was bad. Jerry tried to the best of his ability to be in the studio as much as possible on Good Mourning, to help us get the sounds dialed in. But unfortunately he couldn't be there for a lot of the tracking. This time, I had him around. And he's a drummer himself, so I had another set of ears. Both of us have a shared love for Bill Stevenson's playing, so we definitely have some common ground. And we were able to pick through stuff. I just felt a lot more confident having somebody else with that critical ear.

Aside from that, Jerry helped us with song arrangements and the selection of what songs should be on the album. We also did a lot more pre-production this time around. I had worked with Jerry on the first Suicide Machines album that I did, and I think it was relatively early in his career as a producer/engineer. And it was certainly early in my career, so I'm very familiar with Jerry and comfortable working with him.

MD: Sonically, what were you looking for out of your drums on Crimson?

Derek: This time around, I was really thinking of something that would be a cross between Motley Crue's Dr. Feelgood and The Cure's Disintegration or maybe their The Head On The Door. And likewise, I tried a couple of different approaches in playing on the album to achieve different sounds.

On about half the songs, I tried to play as if I was a drum machine. I tried to approach it in a mechanical way, even to the extent of not recording the cymbals or toms live; just doing kick, snare, and hi-hat and overdubbing the rest. It really gave me the opportunity to play around with a lot of sounds and performances and to do certain things that just aren't humanly possible, like overlapping hi-hat with ride cymbal and overlapping toms with kick and snare - not the usual stuff. We also used a lot of different drum setups, as opposed to Good Mourning, where we only used one.

Waleed Rashidi

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