A man that grew up in Grand Forks is up for a Juno award for his work with bands Bon Jovi and Canadian rockers Three Days Grace.
Mike Plotnikoff, son of locals Mike Sr. and Doreen, will be in Toronto in late-March to attend ceremonies for the Canadian music award after earning a Recording Engineer of the Year nomination for work on Bon Jovi’s What Do You Got? and Three Days Grace’s Break.
He says that as an engineer, he goes in with the artist, records the sound for the record and creates the sound – what the guitars, drums and overall record will sound like.
“I did the one song with Bon Jovi, it was for the greatest hits record,” Plotnikoff says over the phone from his home in Los Angeles.
“I worked with Jon Bon Jovi a long time ago in New York and I did three songs on his solo project and it just happened to be that I got to work with him again on this new single.”
He says that Bon Jovi and the band are all very nice and it was good to work with the band’s namesake again.
Plotnikoff also has a working history with Three Days Grace and says he maintains contact with band members.
“I did their second and third records and the third record was the one I got nominated for,” he says. “They’re good Canadian kids.”
The former Grand Forks resident has an impressive resume having also worked with the likes of The Cranberries, Van Halen, INXS, Theory of a Deadman, Buckcherry and Moist, and he also had a hand in one of Aerosmith’s multi platinum-selling albums, 1993’s Get a Grip.
Plotnikoff was originally the assistant on that recording but as fate would have it, he soon found himself in the engineer’s chair.
He says that the original engineer was fired because he didn’t get along with the band and rather than begin a search for a new engineer, Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler and album producer Bruce Fairbairn decided to let Plotnikoff take the reins.
“It was a six-month record and we were three months in and (they said) Mike’s been in on this record, he knows what’s going on, just let him finish recording – Get a Grip sold (well over a) million albums in the U.S. so it was a huge album,” he recollects.
After that, things took off as he began working with other well-known artists and gained similar success – Van Halen’s Balance went platinum in both Canada and the States and the same for The Cranberries’ To The Faithful Departed.
There wasn’t one thing in Grand Forks that influenced his decision to get into sound engineering but he did say that family played a factor in his career path.
“I always had music around me and I was surrounded by music my whole life,” explains Plotnikoff.
“My brother (Rob) played in a band and I always wanted to be a musician but I was never as good as he was so I ended up working with sound instead.”
Plotnikoff will be up against David Travers-Smith (who is nominated for work with Ruth Moody and Jayme Stone), Jeff Wolpert (Loreena McKennitt and David Clayton-Thomas), Lenny De Rose (Sarah Harmer) and Kevin Churko (Ozzy Osbourne), who is a very good friend of his.
“When I started working in Vancouver (at Little Mountain Sound Studios) I happened to meet Kevin and his brother Cory, who moved from Saskatoon and had a band they were trying to get signed,” reminisces Plotnikoff.
“I’ve known him since I was 19, 20 years old. Any time he’s in L.A. we get together.”
Ozzy Osbourne also lives in the L.A. so the two would get together quite often.
There isn’t any trash talking between the two, Plotnikoff says.