The song, Blame It, is up for R&B duo/group and R&B song. Nailed it, Foxx says, "to smithereens!"
The group occupies one of four studios humming with music and commotion Wednesday night at CenterStaging, where Grammy hopefuls are putting finishing touches on performances for Sunday's telecast. The Zac Brown Band is next door, while the Dave Matthews Band and Lady Gaga are holed up in a nearby complex.
They'll polish their acts in seclusion before weekend rehearsals at Staples Center, where the Grammy Awards will be staged at 8 p.m. live ET/tape-delay PT on CBS.
Beyonce leads the nominations with 10, then Taylor Swift with eight and the Black Eyed Peas, Maxwell and Kanye West with six each. Wow moments and unique pairings tend to draw viewers as much as suspense over who'll grab top prizes. Best-album contenders Beyonce, Lady Gaga, DMB, Swift and the Peas are on the bill, along with Grammy vets (Roberta Flack) and such newbies as Zac Brown, rehearsing in Studio 11.
Singer/guitarist Brown, a former restaurant owner, hands Grammy executive producer Ken Ehrlich his Southern Groundcookbook of family recipes. "The food is serious," says Brown, who has a farm in Georgia. "My grandmother was a canner. I've been in the kitchen my whole life."
The band is rehearsing America the Beautiful, Leon Russell's Dixie Lullaby and Chicken Fried, up for country duo/group. The group is also nominated for best new artist and country album.
Manager Bernard Cahill persuades Ehrlich to stretch their slot to 4 minutes, 45 seconds, but the band shaves off 15 seconds after another run-through.
Russell, sitting in on piano and vocals, will make his Grammy stage debut Sunday, roughly two weeks after surgery for a brain-fluid leak.
"I'm tired, but otherwise OK; it's a pretty quick recovery," he says, unfazed by the Grammy gig. "I'm going to be in the background, and I don't have to walk a red carpet."
The band is overjoyed to have the legendary singer/songwriter on their team. Cahill tells Ehrlich, who suggested Russell's inclusion, "Your vision is coming together!"
Beaming, Ehrlich says, "This works. It sounds great."
Matthews: 'It can go all to hell'
Artists have come to trust Ehrlich's matchmaking instincts.
"I can't tell you that there's a formula; the music drives it," he says of his charismatic pairings. Sensing a link between Lady Gaga's theatrics and Elton John's early persona, he suggested their collaboration, an expected sizzler.
Strolling across the street toward Gaga's closed set, Ehrlich says, "We have a pretty high bar because of last year's show (U2, Paul McCartney, a rap posse with M.I.A.,Coldplay with Jay-Z). I was really proud of that. You get something to a certain point collaboratively, then you put your faith in the artists and let the magic happen."
Gaga's studio is silent, but down the hall the Dave Matthews Band's drills couldn't be more festive. The studio can barely accommodate the band, the crew and dozens of additional players, including singers, a string section, percussionists and eight horn players plucked from the Grammy in the Schools program.
"We made them sweat," producer Rob Cavallo says of the students, whose horn charts were rewritten overnight. "This isn't high school band."
The large cast is loosely re-creating the video for You and Me, from Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King, up for best album and rock album. The ensemble may be unwieldy, says Matthews, "but it's cool that everyone up there is playing. There are no dancers, no stand-ins. We wanted everything live. There's such a freedom to that."
And a risk, he admits.
"It can go all to hell. The electronics could explode. It could be a great big disaster. And then I hope I have the wisdom to laugh."
A surprise and a vindication
While surprised by the nominations, Matthews says voters got it right. GrooGrux, DMB's strongest work to date, was completed after the 2008 death of saxophonist LeRoi Moore, who pushed the band to raise the bar in the studio.
"It's about healing, about living up to our expectations, about the discovery of our love for each other," Matthews says. "There's a sadness to it but also a comfort that we went all out to represent him.
"So having the nod from the Grammys makes me go, 'Yeah, exactly, I'm glad you noticed.' I don't mean that in an arrogant way. This is the time."
