Staying True to Musicians: Ken Rich of Grand Street Recording (Part 1)

February 3rd, 2020 by Will Kreth

This is Part I of Will Kreth’s one-on-one interview with producer, engineer, composer, and musician Ken Rich, founder of Brooklyn’s Grand Street Recording. Don’t miss Part 2 of this in-depth Q&A right here.

Underground/basement studios always seem to be borne of necessity.

Take producer, engineer, composer and musician Ken Rich’s Grand Street Recording studio in Brooklyn. Located in South Williamsburg, the epicenter of a perpetual gentrification boom that turned a predominantly Puerto Rican and Dominican neighborhood once known as Los Sures (or “South Side”) into a maze of shiny, half-empty condo towers and artisanal eateries for a now ageing (and some stroller-pushing) hipster populace – Grand Street Recording got its start before the boom (and bust) years of the Aughts, in 2004 – when Rich and his business partner Andrew Sherman found a 100+ year old three story building to buy – just three blocks from the Lorimer St. L/G train subway stop.

After a successful excavation—taking the dirt floor basement down two feet and pouring a 6” slab of concrete—the underground studio began to take shape.

Since then, the list of artists who’ve recorded at GSR has included: Lizz Wright, Ingrid Michaelson, Brian Blade, Toshi Reagon, Morley, Joseph Arthur, David Mead, Joss Stone, Sir Patrick Stewart, Earl Slick (of David Bowie’s band), Cory Henry, Angus & Julia Stone, John Scofield, Mike Doughty, Tracy Bonham, Joe Jackson, Joy Askew, Will Lee, Julia Darling, Sunny Ozell, and Paris Monster – among others.

He’s got the chops: Ken Rich in his heavy element.

Rich, born in Seattle and raised in Boston to a musical family (both parents were musical)—took up tuba as a kid—and has accordingly developed a few low-end theories along the way. As a bassist, his big break came in the mid ‘90s when the late, great master drummer Babatunde Olatunji asked him to be his touring bass player and musical director. A move to NYC would see session work with Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, and David Byrne dot his resume.

His love of home recording his band and friends got him dreaming of his own studio, but it was his ad and interstitial jingle composing for the National Basketball Association and VH1 in the ‘90s that grew the nest egg to start digging into bedrock. With a massive amount of vintage gear and instruments, (including more than 30 snare drums[!]) – Grand Street has grown in its reputation as a recording haven for musicians, run by a musician.

Origins – Building the Grand Street Studio

What year was the studio properly founded?

I bought the building with my friend and business partner, Andrew Sherman, in 2004. I’ve always had some sort of home recording space, but it wasn’t until I was with my fiancé at the time—now my wife—that I needed to move the studio out of my living room! Finding a building in Williamsburg was an important part of expanding my home studio and being able to customize a space to create music.

Did you buy the building with the studio in mind?

Oh no, not really. I mean, there was a definite possibility of it being a space for me to work, but it was not initially conceived as a public facility with a staff and that sort of thing—it was just really intended as a refined project studio. Fortunately, I’d been in recording studios long enough as a bassist that I had a sense of what worked and didn’t work and how I could bring the things I liked about other studios into my own space.

What were the challenges and struggles with the space? I noticed that there was excavation.

Yeah, so the excavation was—in hindsight, one of the most harrowing and yet ultimately best decisions that we made. We dug down two feet to gain some ceiling height, which was really motivated by acoustics. You know, seven-foot ceilings don’t sound that great—you need at least eight feet to have what I consider to be a natural-sounding space. I also wanted to float both the control room and sound booth in order to have good isolation and needed the extra ceiling height for that purpose.

A Musical Family & Taking on The Tuba

I think I read somewhere that at the age of 3 you were starting to show musical proclivity or interest.

I grew up around it – my mother is a violist and used to play with the Boston Philharmonic with Ben Zander as conductor. In college, she studied musical therapy – and it was something that she was really passionate about throughout her life. My dad was also musical and played the trombone and enjoyed singing. He sang at Tanglewood one year, but he’s not a musician by trade. We had tons of records, cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes around and there was always music playing. It’s funny, now that I think about, it it’s the same sort of environment I try to provide for my own kids.

The violin was the first instrument I started playing—using the Suzuki method in school; at home, I started tinkering around with the piano, and then in grade school started the tuba.

Did you move from tuba to Sousaphone?

They’re very similar instruments, so I played both. I played the Sousaphone in the marching band, but played the tuba in the school band, Dixieland ensembles as well as the All State Orchestra. The tuba was really the first instrument I started to excel in, but I felt like I wasn’t playing music that I wanted to listen to – stuff like Neil Young and AC/DC and Led Zeppelin.

I suppose that motivated me to learn electric guitar which then morphed into bass by necessity. Ultimately, it was the bass that really stuck because it best suited my personality and how I related to music. I’d already played the Sousaphone and tuba for many years so it just clicked. The funny thing is that since it was so close to me, I never thought about it as a potential career.

Were you a music major in college?

No, I got a major in Philosophy and a minor in Religion at Oberlin College, but since I had grown up with music, I still always gravitated toward the music scene there. The wonderful thing about my college experience was that Oberlin also has a music conservatory which allowed me to play in some amazing big band and smaller ensembles. At first I studied with Wendell Logan, and then Donald Byrd. Both were extraordinary composers and performers in their own right and really pushed me musically. But beyond the structure of academia, there was a great independent music scene there with seminal artists such as Bitch Magnet, Liz Phair, and also bands I played with such as The Sky Monks, Recipe for Noise and Hagfish.

Even with all this musical involvement, I still figured that after college I’d go academia or something like that. As it turned out, by the time I graduated, I was pretty ready to take a break from that so I went back to Boston and got a job tending bar at a music venue—Johnny D’s in Somerville—people who were in Boston at that time know it well.

So, I bartended there for a year in 1989 and got to know more local musicians, a few of whom suggested that I start doing some gigs as a bassist.

Somehow the working musician thing opened up

Yeah it actually happened – I started getting busy with music work, but continued working as a bartender and also got a job as security guard at a methadone clinic. Between those two jobs, I suppose I developed some skills and sensitivities that carry over into the recording studio! Once I realized I could make a living playing music I knew I was on the right path.

New York City and Babatunde Olatunji

So you moved to NYC toward the end of 1990 – how did that transition from Boston work?

When I first moved to New York I started doing a lot of local blues gigs with Pat Cisarano, Bill Sims and Irving Louis Lattin, and some touring between Boston and New York to keep my earlier commitments. On top of that, I started a job watering plants in corporate offices to keep a steady income. I also did some jingle work as a bassist through my college friend David Baron who had a music house in Time Square called Baron and Baron.

That early commercial work allowed me to meet more session musicians which lead to more work in places such as Tomandandy, Sacred Noise, JSM and Alias. I also started working with some original artists and bands such as Blue Leaves, Pull My Daisy, Julia Darling and Miami Relatives.

Rich with “Drums of Passion” pioneer Babatunde Olatunji.

At what point did you pick up with [the revered percussionist] Babatunde Olatunji? Because that seems like a big jump from playing in blues bars and rock bands?

Yeah, Olatunji was the first internationally known artist that I worked with and stylistically pretty well out of my wheelhouse. I had gotten a last minute call to play a brunch gig and I didn’t know much about what it was—it was at CBGB’s Gallery, and so I packed up my bass and showed up. I figured it would be a standard repertoire, but when I arrived there was a murmur about Olatunji coming. The guitar player on the gig was Hui Cox who was in his band at the time, so Olatunji was going to make a surprise appearance.

When he came on stage, all the other musicians left the stage, but he asked me to stay. So we played bass and drums, just us two, improvising. And so that was that…I got the gig. He was in his mid-60’s at that time and we played on and off together for the remainder of his life.

I was often the only American-born person in the group—the band was largely African drummers—and I “went to school.” I really learned a lot from them about working with a drum ensemble, about feel, and about energy shifts in their music.

Baba would do something really interesting that had never been a part of my music repertoire, which was he would accelerate tempo to create energy in the music in a very purposeful way. It was a groove acceleration—in time. The art was that you don’t want to rush the accelerator and he would establish the tempo by his body movement—it was just totally fascinating to learn the right way to accelerate versus the wrong way.

I ended up playing 10 or 12 years with him “on again, off again” due to his age and declining health. It was wonderful to learn so much from an elder drum master as well as to develop a very close friendship. I still really miss him.

How do you think that reflected on your personal view of music and being a musician?

It opened things up. I had listened to African music before, but I had never really participated inside of it. It became the most groove-oriented project I’ve been involved in where there’s just a couple of chord changes and simple melodic lines—so it’s really about the drums, percussion, steady bass part and making people move to the music.

That was from about 1993 to 2003—but since working with Baba wasn’t a full-time job I was able to play other gigs, continue my studio work as well as start to record and produce bands and singer-songwriters.

Key Collaborations

Tell me about your collaboration with Joseph Arthur.

In 2000 or so I met Joseph Arthur and we ultimately ended up being housemates in Cobble Hill [Brooklyn, NY]. He had started a new record with Michael Napolitano in New Orleans [before moving to Brooklyn], but he continued to write—as he does prolifically—and had a bunch of new material to record.

Meanwhile, the stuff that he and Michael started had not been really finished—there was still a bunch of tracking and overdubs to be done. So, he and I began to collaborate—quite a lot—in my living room studio. As we worked, his vision grew into a bigger production that we could do at home, so I brought in Andrew Sherman to do a bunch of keyboards and string arranging for the record. This lead to us going to Prague to record the orchestra.

From the sound of it, you’d think it was a major label release, but it really wasn’t a “big budget” record. We were able to call in favors and since Andrew’s production company would go to Prague regularly to record strings for commercials we were able to piggy-back Joseph’s strings on one of those projects.

Left to right: Ken Rich and Joseph Arthur on the console.

I saw him at the Bowie tribute after Bowie passed in 2016 at Radio City [Music Hall]. He just seems very tenuous, like, he’s just barely holding it together. The image he puts on stage – like at any moment, like he’s going to implode, or…

Yeah, there is a bit of a high-wire intensity in his performance. He’s lived his life like that for a long time and pursues whatever artistic endeavor he’s engaged in to its’ fullest potential. Creating through life, yeah, but beautifully tenacious—he knows who he is and what he wants and he’ll doggedly stick to his vision. Remarkably, he’s as great of a painter as he is a musician. I’m really proud of that record we did, “Our Shadows Will Remain.” which was ranked #12 on Entertainment Weekly’s Album of the Year poll for 2004. That was right before I moved and started Grand Street Recording.

You seem to value a number of long-term relationships with musicians who keep coming back to the studio – to work with you and/or Grand Street, what are some of the relationships that speak to that?

I’ve always really valued the collaborative process and have been very fortunate to make some wonderful friends along the way! One of the great long-term creative collaborations was with Julia Darling. We met around the year 2000 when I joined her band as a bassist and toured across the US and Australia. We made a few albums together and it was through our first recording collaboration that I met Andrew Sherman. There’s also Christian Gibbs, who goes under a bunch of different pseudonyms, like Lucinda Black Bear, Motherwell Johnson and C. Gibbs – he writes some incredible songs and is an amazing guitarist and vocalist.

Rene Lopez is another singer songwriter whom I’ve worked with for many years. He’s a great mulit-instrumentalist and is a huge Prince fan which has allowed us to go in many stylistic directions. Of course, Morley – we met through Olatunji and she’s grown into one of my best friends and collaborators. We’ve worked on many recordings, and in her most recent project, she brought in [drummer] Brian Blade, [keyboardist] Jon Cowherd, and [bassists] James Genus and Will Lee.

Another artist that I’ve had a long-term relationship with is Rob Carlyle. My close friend and musical cohort Hugh Pool and I have collaborated as the production team for Rob’s band, The Compulsions, for at least 15 years. Rob has brought in a variety of “sideman luminaries” including Hubert Sumlin, Earl Slick [David Bowie], Richard Fortus, Frank Ferrer (Guns N’ Roses), Brian Delaney (NY Dolls) and Bumblefoot.

(Left to Right): Ken Rich, Grace VanderWaal, Ingrid Michaelson, Lynn Saul, Simon MacWilliams

And I can’t forget Ingrid Michaelson. She started coming to Grand Street Recording to record her “Army of 3” singles. The videos, which were shot here, are amazingly inventive, covering Gotye’s “Somebody I Used to Know” and Rihanna’s “We Found Love.”

That project morphed into some album projects where I recorded the band and many vocals on Lights Out, It Doesn’t Have to Make Sense and Songs for the Season. She works very quickly and is focused on arranging parts in a way that serves the song. She keeps her core group near and really engages them in a way that feels like family.

There have also been some recent collaborations that have felt like they could turn into long-term projects at some point. I had a great session with [British singer] Joss Stone not too long ago when she came in to sing for an artist named Michael Wimberly. And most recently, the great singer Lizz Wright recorded at Grand Street Recording. She came into the studio with her producer/guitarist Chris Bruce and the band that she tours with. They were trying out some new material, and the fact that they had been playing so much together allowed the songs to gel very quickly. Needless to say, her vocal takes were all stunning and I was really moved by the depth of her delivery.

So yeah, those are some of the artists that immediately come to mind but there are many others not listed here.

Sir Patrick Stewart Session & Meeting George Martin

What’s the story about working with Sir Patrick Stewart?

That project happened as a result of working on an album with his wife Sunny Ozell. Her producer, Ethan Eubanks, had grown close with Sunny and Patrick and when he realized that Patrick had a soft spot for cowboy songs from his childhood, Ethan suggested doing a tongue in cheek K-Tel style infomercial.

Left to Right: Erik Deutsch, John Graboff, Ethan Eubanks, Patrick Stewart, Ken Rich, and Jim Campilongo

Patrick was up for it so we recorded the band and then Patrick recorded his vocals as an overdub. We had a great time and he seemed to really appreciate the recording process and the musicians who worked on the project with him.

Tell me about meeting George Martin.

I got to know him through my mom’s work at a theater company [Revels] in Boston that was founded by Jack Langstaff. In the ‘50’s he and Sir George had done some recording together and then rekindled that friendship nearly 50 years later. Jack and my mom knew I was a huge fan of Sir George Martin’s work with The Beatles, so whenever Sir George would come to Boston, they would kindly invite me to join them for a visit.

Who’s in the photo with you and George?

That’s [engineer] Eddie Kramer (worked at Electric Ladyland/Record Plant with Hendrix, Rolling Stones, Kiss, many more). In 1999 I was working with him as a bassist on a blues/rock project. When George Martin came to New York City for a lecture at Town Hall, I invited Eddie to come along. After the talk, George’s manager brought us backstage afterwards for what turned into a remarkable hang! I feel really fortunate to have been able to spend time with both of these recording giants!

Audio excellence comes in threes. (Left to right) Eddie Kramer, Sir George Martin, Ken Rich

Going back for a second to the quality of relationships in the long term – and the things you have going for you with the studio. It seems you’ve attracted a set of regulars who are creative doers trying to put out their own new independent music. Is it fair to say 80% of them are singer/songwriters?

Yeah, easily. I mean, for those – at least the ones that I mentioned, there are all singer songwriters. There’s also another long-term collaboration that I’ve had with Alex Lyras who’s a playwright and actor. We’ve worked together on several of his one-man theater productions where I created the sound design and composition. We won the LA Theatre Critics Award and an Ovation Award for his show “The Common Air”. We currently have another play called “Plasticity” which opened January 17th at the Greenwich House Theater and is scheduled to run through mid-February.

Singer-Songwriters: No Formula

With a singer songwriter—I think it’s fair to say that singer/songwriters, in general, with today’s music—are not part of that “hit making machine.”

For every Ed Sheeran, there’s a million other teen idols and/or—maybe [formula] is a bad word, but also, there’s some truth in it too. There’s a certain group of big name producers like Max Martin and Stargate and all those guys are trying to take groups and move them through a filter of a certain amount of hooky choruses, familiar chord changes and chord progressions that everyone knows—and get them out the other end and try to make it somehow sound a little bit original yet super familiar. This [Grand Street Recording] is not that kind of studio.

Not necessarily (laughs), but I’d hate to pigeonhole us. We do get calls from some of the bigger record companies to do overdubs and writing sessions at Grand Street. The fact remains that it’s a basement studio and doesn’t have a big sexy console or bougie artist lounge, however, there are a lot of great instruments. It’s my feeling that one of the things that separates Grand Street Recording from other studios is the number of quality instruments, effects, and noise-making devices we have. I think having all that stuff around and available is particularly fruitful for songwriting sessions and sessions that really depend on the spontaneous inspiration.

For instance, Angus Stone [from the brother and sister duo of Angus and Julia Stone] came in to record demos for Rick Rubin who had signed them to Def Jam. So, they came in for 16 days to write with their band and record demos—but the demos ended up being a good part of the record. I feel it was the environment and quality of recording at Grand Street that really inspired them to do some great work!

But there’s an old adage that the studio’s a terrible place to write your songs in… that changes when the money is available.

[Laughs] Exactly—in the early stages of production, it’s still sort of common for a record company to say “go in and record demos”, but I never record something thinking “this one’s gonna be a demo.” I always do it up 100% because you never know when the magic is going to strike, and when it does, I don’t want to miss it! Often enough, we record something relatively quickly that lasts through the edit/mix process.

So you’ve got a good reputation amongst the remaining majors.

Yeah, it’s a respected place. People can trust that there will be excellent sounds, a proper microphone collection, quality engineering in an inspired environment. All in all, it feels like home but with a carefully curated collection of gear.

Even if it goes to another studio for re-recording demos or final overdubs and edits, you’re recording whatever comes up the writing sessions—because who’s to say whether it’s a demo or whether it becomes the basis for the final mix, because the [songwriting] inspiration can come from anywhere—whether it’s in rented studios, or in a bedroom, or with GarageBand on a laptop in a hotel room.

That said, there’s still something about the chemistry of people getting together in the same place—that you’re getting someone to write for in that moment. What’s your feeling about the, and maybe “dividing line” is too strong a word, but the differentiation between people who feel like they can do it all in software without collaboration, and people who are driven to, or drawn towards collaboration – and find that they’re not as creative without the collaborative spirit? Or is it actually both/and—not either/or?

It’s interesting, I’ve always thought of home recording in the context of “necessity is the mother of invention.” In the cases where an artist isn’t getting what they want from players, or simply doesn’t have the budget or time to get people in a room together, if their vision is strong enough, they’ll find a way to bring their music to life.

Joseph [Arthur] is a good example of that now. He’s evolved into a place where he does mostly everything himself —he’ll record it, he’ll play all the instruments, sing it, mix it, do all the stuff—and I think it’s because his vision is particularly strong. It wasn’t that he was trying to create something just in a computer that’s sterile—but rather it’s a priority for him to keep it really raw and interesting. But home recording for him became his necessity.

On the other hand, there are artists who have a hard time finding inspiration sitting by themselves in a room, but when they have a collaborator—that really lights them up, that spark —then there’s the push and pull of ideas that they really enjoy. And then, there are artists like David Mead who create great demos at home, but only for the purpose of teaching the band specific parts in an efficient way.

So it just depends on what kind of artistic trajectory a person is on. There are also cases where someone hadn’t particularly focused on collaborating—but when they find the right collaborator that becomes really fruitful for them and perhaps pushes them in an undiscovered direction. Again, it’s mostly around necessity and what’s available.

— Come back next to SonicScoop week for Part 2 of Will Kreth’s in-depth interview with Ken Rich.

Producer, arranger, songwriter and lyricist Will Kreth is also the owner of MediaGroove Music (founded in 2006) and most recently was the executive director of EIDR.org. Previously at Showtime Networks, working on the data side of the film & TV industry, he co-founded Wired Magazine in 1992, after working for Apple. Former advisory board member to the Austin Music Foundation. Investor/Advisor to Critical Metrics (a music recommendation startup). With MediaGroove – produced, arranged, and launched 9 releases since 2010. Find him on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/willkreth/.

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