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Alex Oswald, Chad Edwards and Mykk Hannon join Rick Frederick as Tridon.
The Ledger’s Carrie Ribeiro interviews members of the band Tridon following the Grande Fest. The group is slated to perform at Polarfest in San Tan Valley on Dec. 5.
Hard rock singer Rick Frederick of San Tan Valley. He is the founder of the rising band Tridon.
Southeast Valley Ledger
Hard rock singer Rick Frederick of San Tan Valley is a man of unyielding faith: faith in the Lord and in himself. His rising hard rock band Tridon began as a simple bedroom project with an 8-track recorder, yet through years of struggling to find gigs, plucking reliable members out from the pool of flakes, and never succumbing to external or internal doubt, he has earned opening slots for classic rock legends and recorded with a Grammy-winning engineer.
“So many people across the board have overcome overwhelming odds because they never gave up and no one could deter them,” Frederick said. “I want to be that beacon of light that inspires and attracts other people to do that same thing.”
Tridon will bring that uplifting message to San Tan Valley for the very first time at this year’s PolarFest on Dec. 5. That message is particularly hard-won, as Frederick has never veered from his dream of rock stardom.
Quickly writing confident solo songs in his Tucson home, Frederick fired up a full band in earnest starting in 2006, but after playing around town for a few years, he said the band hit the ceiling.
“It’s like any good product: if it’s sitting your garage, it’s going nowhere,” he said.
In 2010, the operation moved to Phoenix to seek more gigs and bigger stages, and Frederick soon settled in San Tan Valley with his future wife. The group was pulling better shows, scoring gigs with classic rockers like Tesla and LA Guns, but still had something of a membership revolving door. A few years ago, Frederick took a phone call from one former band member who was quitting the group without notice.
“I don’t wish to badmouth anybody,” Frederick insisted, “but this guy was very arrogant.”
He recalls the former member dismissing all of Frederick’s work with insults before hanging up the phone.
“He told me, ‘Your music isn’t that good. You have no chance of making it, so you should give up and join a cover band.’”
This was a turning point, and in that moment, he was unfazed by the put-downs. “I took that as a rallying cry,” he said.
He thought to himself: I accept this challenge.
He took that experience and penned the song “What You Are”, a kiss off ode to abandoning all the negative entities that can harm one’s self-purpose.
“It’s about those people that try to tear you apart,” he said, “to tell you your dream is absolutely crazy, that you’ll never achieve it.”
In a few years, Tridon would open shows for the likes of crossover alt-rockers Flyleaf and rock ‘n roll good old boy Ted Nugent, and “What You Are” would end up on a record they recorded with one of the most accomplished producers in contemporary hard rock.
The group recorded its latest album, 2014’s Edge of Redemption, with Jeremy Parker, a high-profile producer/engineer who’s worked with some of hard rock’s biggest names. Parker’s massive track record begins with his work engineering Evanescence’s breakthrough album, Fallen, which won Grammys and sold millions. He quickly became a hard rock household name, working on records for hard rock radio stalwarts like Godsmack, Disturbed and Trivium.
All of those bands are on the list of Frederick’s favorite acts. And as luck would have it, Parker happened to be at the Saltmine Studios in Mesa while Frederick was laying down vocal tracks.
Sight unseen, Parker sat in on the session, and they struck up a friendly rapport. The two soon arranged to work together on Tridon’s newest material.
Clearly, Frederick was floored by the opportunity, saying it was no less than an honor. Tridon began the sessions for Edge of Redemption at Premier Studios in Phoenix with a legend in the producer’s seat.
“I immediately became a student, listening and learning,” he said. “Any musician in a studio like that is a kid in the candy store.”
The result is a record that closely follows the potent formula of chugging verses and triumphant choruses that proved so successful for the early 2000s radio rock and nu-metal bands Tridon admires. The darkest of these songs is the agile metal of “When It’s Over”, with guitarist Alex Oswald’s anxious buzzsaw riffs compacted by Chad Edwards’ airtight drum wallops and Mykk Hannon’s rupturing bass, all before the chorus gives way to soaring distorted chords.
But the band’s most common mode is redemptive anthems like the album’s title track, bursting with bright guitar leads and sweeping vocal hooks. Throughout the album, Frederick’s voice careens and coos much like Saliva’s Josey Scott or Chad Kroger of Nickelback, and the lyrics make less-than-subtle allusions to the spirituality behind the message.
Hard rock and Christianity were quite cozy at the turn of the millennium. Bands that originally launched in the Christian rock market, like Evanescence and Flyleaf, eventually had massive crossover success with secular audiences. But some groups, most infamously Creed, fell prey to rock hedonism and alienated large swathes of their audiences.
Frederick said that besides Creed spin-off band Alter Bridge, he hasn’t really ever connected with explicitly Christian music. He remembers his sister getting him into secular hard rock and his brother psyching him up on albums by 90s alt rock chart toppers Live.
But while his message of redemption comes from a deep place of faith, he wants the positivity of his music to be universal.
“My writing isn’t trying to nail down a specific form of belief,” he said. “I’m trying to speak to the world as a whole.”
“There’s evil and there’s good, light and darkness,” he adds, “and they’re at war with each other.”
With his heart set on taking Tridon around the world, Fredrickson will let nothing dim his light.
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