Derek Grant, drummer of Alkaline Trio and accomplished guitarist and singer, has released a free solo album under the name The Reaper. Derek wrote his songs through puberty when he was heavily influenced by The Misfits. As Derek moved throughout the years, he would shift the boxes of these 4 track master tapes from state to state, until he finally got around to digitizing them. Explains the musician: 
\"I transferred a few songs to Pro-Tools to see about remixing them - what I found was some dreadfully recorded instruments, and a whole lot of poorly played music. My first instinct was to just re-record the songs, perhaps change some lyrics, and re-arrange the songs a bit. But while I am hopefully a more accomplished musician than I was 18 years ago, there\'s a spirit and energy to those songs that I could never recreate. It lives in the words and the vocals. So the decision was made to re-record the music around the vocal tracks.\"
So Derek set about picking his favorite of the songs, digitizing all of the vocal tracks and EQ-ing them to sound half-way intelligible. He spent two days relearning and re-recording all of the guitar parts, then he took the recordings to Sonic Iguana Studios where Mass Giorgini and Phillip Hill helped Derek to record the drums. In keeping with the original spirit, everything was recorded and mixed as quickly and haphazardly as possible.
You can download Derek\'s songs and artwork for free at this location.
