'Mandatory Fun' Grammy a win for former Grafton man.

• Author: Duckett, Richard
• Position: Living

Byline: Richard Duckett

Brian Warwick liked what he heard at the 57th annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday.

Warwick, who was raised in Grafton and graduated from Grafton High School, was the vocal engineer for "Weird Al'' Yankovic's 2014 release "Mandatory Fun,'' which won a Grammy in the Best Comedy Album category.

"I'm blown away,'' said the 33-year-old Warwick, an independent audio engineer who lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Ashley Warwick. "My very first cassette tape was 'Weird Al's' 'Dare to Be Stupid,' released in 1985, and I've been a fan ever since. It's an honor to work with one of my music heroes.''

"Mandatory Fun'' is the third album Warwick has done with Yankovic, and he's also worked as an audio engineer on about a dozen other Grammy-nominated records, but Sunday was Warwick's first Grammy.

Warwick had a sense there might be something special about "Mandatory Fun'' as soon as it was released last summer and quickly topped the Billboard 200.

It was Yankovic's first No. 1 after a 30 year career and 14 albums. Warwick said he was at his home in Los Angeles with his wife just after the album's release. The phone rang, and it was Yankovic.

"I thought, 'Man, something must be wrong,' '' Warwick recalled. But Yankovic told him, " 'Just to let you know, you've engineered the No. 1 album in the country.' It was a pretty shocking moment. I don't think I could have scripted that happening in my life.''

"Mandatory Fun'' completes a major comeback for the 55-year-old singer, song-writer and satirist. "He's extremely focused,'' Warwick said of Yankovic. "We have a lot of good laughs, but he's very organized. A lot of thought has gone into every song he's gonna do. He had full arrangements...