Grammy Tour

There is a sign on the road coming into Ridgway, Colorado, that proclaims the town as home of the Grammy Awards.  That is certainly an interesting thing for a small town to be famous for, so we asked some questions and found out that a tiny company called Billing’s Artwork makes all the Grammy trophies for the award show every year.  We stopped by Billing’s twice, but always found that they were closed.  But the third time was a charm.  They were open for business, and even open to the idea of giving a couple of strangers off the street an impromptu tour.

Patrick has worked for Billing’s for 9 years, and he gave us one the best tours we have ever  had.  He started by showing us some of the finished trophies for this year’s award show.  He also explained that there are stage Grammies that they hand out at the award show, but the winners are not allowed to take home with them.  The musical artists will actually get their personalized Grammy with their name and award title engraved on it later.  So Billing's makes around 600 personalized Grammy awards each year, but they only need 40 for the night of the show, since the same generic Grammy is used over and over throughout the evening.

These same 40 stage Grammies can be used from year to year, unless someone (like Taylor Swift) drops it on stage in the short amount of time she had it in her hands.  That stage Grammy broke, and had to be replaced for the next year’s program.  Broken Grammies brings up a whole other part of their business.  Once the personalized Grammy awards are sent home, all kinds of things happen to them.  They get dropped and dented, they get corroded in the floods from Hurricane Katrina, they are used as shot glasses, etc.  Whatever the reason, they can be repaired or replaced here in Ridgway.  All it takes is $450 and a signed 8x10 glossy photograph from the musical artist for Billing's Art to replace the damaged goods with a shiny new Grammy award.  Their walls and files are filled with signed photos.  The damaged Grammies end up in their shop, and each one has an interesting tale to tell. 

 Patrick took us into the workroom to explain the 16 hour process that it takes to make each Grammy.  Here he assembled the pieces of the old-school mold that they use to cast the base.  He will then use the large ladle hanging on the wall to dip some of the special melted “grammium” metal into the mold.   Grammium is a special blend of zinc and other metals that they use just for this process.   Each base is cast by hand, and has to be perfect to meet their strict standards.  Patrick said it isn’t unusual to cast 100 and only use 30 of them.  The other 70 will be melted down to cast again.

Here is a tray of Grammy bases that have been polished and are now ready for the several parts that will be soldered onto them.

The Grammy bells are shipped in from another company, but they are carefully sanded and shined before being added to the base.  This whole process was captured on film by the show, “How It's Made” and aired last spring.  Patrick is now famous since his tattooed arms were videoed on the show while he was shining those Grammy phones.

After all the parts are put together, the finished metal trophy is then hand-delivered 30 miles away to another company in Montrose that will do the gold-plated finish.  He showed us another whole cabinet of awards that were rejected because the gold finish was not perfect.  Such a lot of work to not actually make it on stage!

Billing’s makes other awards besides the Grammy.  The next photo shows a few dusty awards, including the Latino Grammy with its burgundy base.  They also made the original duck-shaped hood ornament for the famous “Rubber Ducky” truck on the “Smokey and the Bandit” movie.  People are still ordering duckies from Billing’s for their trucks.

But Patrick’s favorite is the John R. Wooden award that they assemble for the outstanding college basketball player of the year.  He thinks that the best piece in the entire shop is the 1984 trophy that was awarded to Michael Jordan.  They have the original because they had to remake one for Michael when it was damaged. 

After all the Grammies they have made, they also got to make one for themselves.  Billing's Artworks got a lifetime award several years ago for their contribution of making the Grammy trophies.  There are only four employees in this very specialized shop, and they look forward to going to the award show every year to hand deliver the Grammies.  They just happen to attend several of the parties after the award show as well.

We got the deluxe tour, and Patrick spent a lot of time answering all our questions.  We even got a picture with him and one of those Grammy awards.  Thanks Patrick!