Weekend gig at the Virginia City Grand Prix

[Brent Dowell]

Well, That was a weekend for the record books.

My Buddy/Rhythm guitar player got our band Off Yer Rocker a gig at The Old Washoe Club for the VCGP Virginia City Grand Prix dirt bike race. The Old washoe club is the oldest saloon in town and is purportedly one of the most haunted places around. They were featured on one of the ghost hunter shows and run regular 'ghost' tours of the building.

3 of us rented a motorhome and drove up and camped on the Rhythm guitar players buddys house a couple blocks walking distance from the bar and that seemed to work out fine

It's a whole nother world for sure with a bunch of dirt bike riders starting right on main street in Virginia City then headed out onto one of the gnarliest dirt bike races there is.

We got setup on Friday and then proceeded to do a sound check that with a mini set that seemed to work out well.

Saturday Micah took me to see the start of the race which was just amazing to see over 450 racers lined up on main street. Later he took us to the Combination Mine shaft which was over 3 thousand feet deep and was right on the race course.

I'll admit I had some trepidations over this gig but everything went smoothly and a great time was had by all. It does seem like a lot of work moving big heavy equipment and running cables for a few hours a fun, but the new wireless mixer I bought on the advice of Vaughn makes setup a little faster, although it's maybe a bit more complicated than one of the old analog consoles. Got there on saturday and freaked out for a bit as I couldn't get the mixer app to load up on the tablet, but after a few reboots the ghosts relented and let things work fine the rest of the night.

The owner of the bar loved us and has told us to plan on making it an annual event. When we were playing the bar would get just packed in tight and the people really seemed to appreciate what we were doing. We're basically an 80's rock cover band and the set list was tailor made for dirt bikers. It was kind of nice to hear a lot of compliments on what we were doing, even though I heard every mistake and probably could use some work on fine tuning our sound.

We had a negative ROI on the whole deal, but we weren't in it for the money anyway. 3 of the members of the band were desert racers back in the day. 2 have done the VGCP before, and the rhythm guitar player has done it 26 times. He's friends with EVERYBODY in town. You could not go 10' without saying hi to another friend of Micah's, and playing this gig was on his bucket list. We got paid in t-shirts and free beer. The owner also gifted me an 18" powered subwoofer and another little monitor that were just taking up space. I think he just wanted to get rid of them.

Anyway, That's how my weekend went.

The Old Washoe Club


View from the stage


View of the Stage


Me on stage, with my Rickenbacker


The Combination Shaft - Thats 3000' deep under the gratings.


Start of the race

From a hill next to the Combo Shaft

Video from one of the riders.

 

[Tom Niemi]

Sounds like a great time all around

 

[Vaughn McMillan]

Awesome! Glad the gig went well and you had a fun weekend.

Do you know what caused the problem with the mixer? You're using an external router as I recall. Did an IP address get changed? Do you have the router WiFi hidden so every smartphone in the place isn't constantly pinging it? Might be a good idea to start bringing a laptop and cable to hardwire into the box if you need to. (That's advice I should take, too. I already have the laptop there in case I need to fix something on my Fractal rig. I think I'd just need to have a spare Ethernet cable...which I do.)

Oh, and before your next rehearsal, save a snapshot of the mixer. That way, the next time you play at The Old Washoe Club, you're already dialed in for the room. We do very little PA tweaking from one venue to another, but I still have snapshots for all the places we play.

 

[Brent Dowell]

Do you know what caused the problem with the mixer? You're using an external router as I recall. Did an IP address get changed? Do you have the router WiFi hidden so every smartphone in the place isn't constantly pinging it? Might be a good idea to start bringing a laptop and cable to hardwire into the box if you need to. (That's advice I should take, too. I already have the laptop there in case I need to fix something on my Fractal rig. I think I'd just need to have a spare Ethernet cable...which I do.)

I'm thinking it was the ghosts! At least that's what my guitar player thought

I think it was that there were a lot of people around. I have the ssid hidden and all. It might have been the mixer, since I could connect to the wifi, and my chromebook would start to open the interface but never fully load it.

After a couple power cycles, it all came back fine and was solid the rest of the night, when there were even more people packed in the venue. I was immediately thinking, "Wow, I wish I had a way to hardwire login".

I'm going to take a look at the chromebook and see what it would take to get a little usb dongle so I could run hardwired in the future.

Oh, and before your next rehearsal, save a snapshot of the mixer. That way, the next time you play at The Old Washoe Club, you're already dialed in for the room. We do very little PA tweaking from one venue to another, but I still have snapshots for all the places we play.

Great advice as usual Vaughn. I did save a snapshot of the settings we were using (And have for our other venue and practice space). The stage up in VC was so small we couldn't use all our monitors, so I'll probably spend a little time and edit that up a bit to fully represent what we have. I basically started with out practice snapshot and tweaked from there. Usually at practice all we use are the monitors though, as theres no need to run the mains.

Apparently at some point our singer was talking to some guy who has his own dj and sound company who was talking a bit about how we could better our sound. He liked our setup, but had some tips. The Singer didn't steer him my way because he thought it might hurt my feelings. If I'd talked to that guy for 30 seconds, I would have handed him the chrome book and made him run sound, lol. He also works with our Rhythm guitar player, so hopefully we'll be able to get him out to practice someday to help set things up. Heck, If I could get another bass player in to stand in for me it'd give me a chance to fully concentrate on setting up sound while we play. I'm getting a bit better with it, but running seperate mixes on 4 monitors and a seperate mix for the mains WHILE playing bass and having other members of the bands make requests mid song can be a bit challenging. I've got our guitar players mic'd up, but the challenge is keeping them from messing too much with their volume during a gig. Practice they seem fine, but at a gig they always want to hear more of themselves and keep turning up, lol. That just totally destroys the monitor mixes and screws up the mains, but what are you going to do with 60 year old adolescents that have never worked that way before, claim they understand, but still do the same thing.

 

[Brent Dowell]

Do you know what caused the problem with the mixer? You're using an external router as I recall. Did an IP address get changed? Do you have the router WiFi hidden so every smartphone in the place isn't constantly pinging it? Might be a good idea to start bringing a laptop and cable to hardwire into the box if you need to. (That's advice I should take, too. I already have the laptop there in case I need to fix something on my Fractal rig. I think I'd just need to have a spare Ethernet cable...which I do.)

I have a spare Chromebook and just happened to be able to find a usb->ethernet adapter in my stash. The router I'm using is ridiculously over sized for what I need so I'm going to swap it out for a little mini router with only 2 lan ports on the back. Got the spare chromebook and router configured so I should be able to do a plug and play swap next time I go to practice. I'll now have the ability to hardwire right into just in case I have any other issues. Might even pack up a little switch and set the chromebook and mixer up to use static ip addresses as a back up in case I have issues in the future.

Fortunately, we had already gone through sound check and I wouldn't have needed to do much during the gig, but still would be nice to have alternatives in case something goes south.

Now I just need to get myself a bass amp system that doesn't way 200 pounds, lol.

 

[Vaughn McMillan]

I'm thinking it was the ghosts! At least that's what my guitar player thought

...having other members of the bands make requests mid song can be a bit challenging. I've got our guitar players mic'd up, but the challenge is keeping them from messing too much with their volume during a gig. Practice they seem fine, but at a gig they always want to hear more of themselves and keep turning up, lol. That just totally destroys the monitor mixes and screws up the mains, but what are you going to do with 60 year old adolescents that have never worked that way before, claim they understand, but still do the same thing.

Dang guitar players, lol. If they can't hear enough of their instrument, drown them in guitar through their monitors. Also, if you're not doing it already, have them point their amps at themselves, not the audience.

I feel your pain when it comes to mixing and playing at the same time. That's why Drummer Donnie (who's also a legit sound engineer) runs monitors and I run FOH. Teamwork makes the dream work, lol. Lately we've also had our buddy Art manning a tablet in the audience. Initially it was only to turn off the effects on the vocals between songs (so we weren't talking to the audience with reverb and/or slapback delay on the PA), but now I've given him the capability to also adjust instrument and vocal levels in case something needs to be balanced out. (I like the fact that I can set up a custom layout in the tablet I give him so he only has access to the sliders I want him to move.) Fortunately, we have a pretty set & forget mix and each individual member is good about not turning up in the middle of the show, while still playing with dynamics as the song necessitates it.

 

[Brent Dowell]

Fortunately, we have a pretty set & forget mix and each individual member is good about not turning up in the middle of the show, while still playing with dynamics as the song necessitates it.

That would be nice, lol.

 

[Vaughn McMillan]

That would be nice, lol.

There are indeed some advantages to working with guys who collectively have about 150 years of pro level experience, lol. It also helps that both of us guitarists are using modeling rigs with no backline, just the wedge monitor in front of us. We run those wedges pretty hot, though. A couple of years ago we played the whole first set of a gig at the Dragonhorn before realizing I'd forgotten to turn on the FOH speakers. Friends in the audience said we sounded a bit weird, but they could still hear the music fine, lol.