Alkaline Trio - Red Drums: The Drums of "Crimson"

An overview of the drum tracking for the "Crimson" album We had a pretty good idea of what "Crimson" would sound like when we entered the studio in late 2004. We had written more than enough songs for the album, and we had worked on them for months making fully produced demos at our practice space, and at home. Now we just needed to duplicate what we had done, but make it sound better... bigger. With the help of producer Jerry Finn (RIP), and engineer Ryan Hewitt, we were able to do that. We recorded the songs in groups, pairing numbers that had similar feels and tempos - then we would build a kit to suit the vibe. We did this several times over, using pieces of the two or three kits that were lying around. For some of the songs, we overdubbed the cymbals and toms, allowing elements to overlap or be isolated. It was a fun, focused, and experimental process. The end result is one of my favorite Alkaline Trio albums. Some of this footage was posted in 2005 as part of a series of short recording journals - This is a new, more comprehensive edit. Filmed by Dan Andriano and myself Drum Tech: Keith Schubert