What a way to close out the year: playing drums on the lead single from Alicia Keys’ Billboard Top 200 #1 charting Girl on Fire, and receiving a Grammy nomination for Drake’s Take Care (Best Rap Album)!  We’re tracking like mad around here, call us to add Grammy-nominated, #1 charting, Platinum-selling drum tracks to YOUR songs!

It’s been hard to keep up with website updates, with all the stuff that’s been going on around here. We’ve been tracking drums like mad fiends (even had the Rolling Stones’ horn section in recently for a session), finished building the new studio after the damage from last year’s hurricane, and spent a couple weeks dodging Hurricane Sandy. Here are some of the highlights:

Our resident session drummer Dylan Wissing is playing on the title track and lead single of Alicia Keys‘ latest release “Girl on Fire” with Nicki Minaj.The recording took place in June at Alicia’s personal Manhattan studio (and that’s a pretty sweet place…). The great Ken Lewis was engineering, with Indie Studio Drummer’s Matt Teitelman assisting on the drum teching. As of this writing the album is #1 on iTunes, and the single is on radio charts all around the world. Check out the video:

Another recent session was for Fabolous and his track “SoNY,” adding old school funk fills. More work with Ken Lewis (Matt T. assisting), for Hip Hop producer extraordinaire Just Blaze. Fairly high-pressure session, as I was on the road with Blues/Soul singer Kirsten Thien when the call came in.  It was a mad dash to get back to the studio from the final show in Maine, and a sprint to get the kit miced, the parts learned, and the tracks sent to Ken.  The song was on the radio about three days after our parts were sent.  Check out the video, with some powerful footage from Hurricane Sandy:

On a completely different side, recently tracked the song “Wouldn’t Be a Merry Christmas” with Grammy-winning producer Steve Addabbo (Shawn Colvin, Suzanne Vega) for artist Elizabeth Chan.  Elizabeth is featured on Morgan Spurlock’s show Failure Club. Her debut EP “Naughty & Nice” hit #4 on iTunes Holiday Music chart, with the single in iTunes Top 25.

Indie studio Drummer’s Dylan Wissing has been on tour for several weeks this year with Blues/Soul sensation Kirsten Thien. In May, Kirsten and the band (an amazing group of musicians and people, with David Patterson on guitar, and Erik Boyd and Johnny Pisano sharing the bass chair) travelled across the US to Washington State. The band travelled to Europe in October for an amazing sixteen days of shows. Here’s live footage from a date opening for the great Dickey Betts.

After Hurricane Irene destroyed our former studio last year, we’ve spent a good part of the year building our fabulous new Triple Colossal Studios in Hoboken, New Jersey. Happy to report that, once the water receded and power came back on, our families, homes, studio and vehicles were all completely unscathed by this year’s Hurricane Sandy! Sad to say that the same can’t be said of a good deal of our beautiful little town – thousands here (and all over the region) lost everything. Please help support Rebuild Hoboken to bring this town back to life.

It’s been a great year so far (with a couple weeks of hurricane madness) at Indie Studio Drummer, with more amazing and inspiring projects coming up. Contact us if you need drum tracks for your project, and we look forward to working together!

We’ve barely had time to breathe here at Indie Studio Drummer, so much has happened since August. Here’s a wrap-up of highlights:

Playing drums on Drake’s #1 charting (and I believe Platinum-selling by this point) album Take Care.We’re on the track “Lord Knows” Read the rest of this entry »

Indie Studio Drummer on the Billboard charts!  Our own Dylan Wissing played drums on the title track to the Maybach Music Group’s “Self Made,” featuring Rick Ross.  The album was number #1 for two weeks straight on both the R&B/Hip Hop Album and Rap Album charts.   Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks, Musicians Union for the heads-up (several months after the fact, but that’s fine by me)…

Apparently the Kanye West / Jay-Z track “Power” I played drums on is prominently featured on the show “Gossip Girls!”  If, like everyone here at Indie Studio Drummer, you are dying to find out just what happened on the episode, it’s chronicled in exhaustive detail here:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2010/10/gossip-girl-recap-the-greatest-aphrodisiac.html

Never a dull moment with Blair, Juliette, and Serena!

Working once again with studio wizard Ken Lewis and hip hop mega-producer Just Blaze, recording an intense sample recreation for rapper Rick Ross‘ upcoming 2011 release “God Forgives, I Don’t” (Def Jam). Can’t give away the song we’re recreating, but it’s by one of the most famous songwriters in history, and the track is apparently a single.  More news as we have it…

More work with mega-Platinum producer Just Blaze and mega-Grammy-winning engineer Ken Lewis: a sample recreation on rapper/actor Saigon’s track “The Invitation (feat. Q-Tip & Fatman Scoop)” from his latest album The Greatest Story Never Told on Suburban Noize Records!

The job on the Indie Studio Drummer end was to exactly recreate the original sample underlying the tune, a funky and obscure old soul track with lots of cymbals and percussion. Hard work, and extremely meticulous, but damn fun.  I listened to A Tribe Called Quest’s brilliant record The Low End Theory about a zillion times in my youth, so it’s a personal thrill to play on a track with Q-Tip, too!

Not sure where this one will end up, but the call just came in to start work on a sample recreation for rapper/actor Common’s latest release.  As is the case with a lot of this work, we’re recreating a funky old-school soul sample in minute detail.  Indie Studio Drummer’s Dylan Wissing has personally auditioned about fifty different tambourines in just about every music store in Manhattan to match a tone found in the late 60s sample – he’s the man to go to with any tambourine-sourcing related questions you might have!

Have been in the studio recently with amazing Americana/Soul singer/songwriter Josh Charles and the Stone Ramblers, cutting several new tunes for an upcoming release.  Josh has appeared on Good Morning America, the Tavis Smiley Show, CNN, and Voice of America, and pretty much all over the Internet and print.  And given the fact that his previous drummers have been Bernard Davis, Herlin Riley, and Brian Blade, and given that Josh’s mentor is the legendary Dr. John, it’s a real honor to share the stage with him!  Look for a full-length release from the Stone Ramblers later this year.

It’s the world’s most widely-read drum magazine – and the home page at www.moderndrummer.com features our very own Dylan Wissing this week!  Pretty damn exciting news in these quarters…