6 minute read
Positive Feedback
Positive Feedback
AUDIO ENGINEER VICTORIA BROOKS DIALS IN AT THE REPLAY LOUNGE
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By Sofia Mongillo
If you’ve ever taken a trip to Lawrence’s rock and roll pinball bar, the Replay Lounge, chances are musician and sound engineer Victoria Brooks was in the booth working her magic for a night of tunes.
Growing up in Fort Scott, Kansas, with an audio engineer for a parent, Brooks’ first exposure to running sound came early.
Each Sunday, she watched as her father dipped back and forth between the soundboard, running live audio for their local First Presbyterian Church.
“I’ve been playing music and climbing on stage basically since I could walk,” says Brooks.
As a teen, PA system in arms, Brooks did her best to help cultivate a local music scene in Fort Scott, playing bass in her brother’s punk band, occasionally running sound for middle school dances, and dabbling in light DJing gigs on the side.
“There was a local band that some friends started that inspired a lot of us, myself included, to want to start a band,” says Brooks. “To me, it was very similar to transness—seeing people wanting to do this thing, starting it, and doing it right in front of you. It was sort of demystifying it a little bit. It was like, I want to do this, and I could do what they’re doing.”
After her younger brother kicked out the original bass player of their band, Army of Prawnz, over a typical teenage feud, Brooks got the opportunity to make her rockstar dreams come true.
“Because none of them were old enough to drive yet, I was in charge of driving them around to take instruments back and forth, and since I had a bass, I ended up taking his place,” says Brooks. “So yeah, it’s my senior year of high school, and I’m in a punk band with a middle schooler and two freshmen. It was great, I got to play on stage and do music and some fun covers with them.”
In her 20s, Brooks decided to pick up the art of home recording and spent the better part of the last 15 years improving her craft, largely self-taught with some help from friends. At the same time, she was working towards a bachelor’s degree in economics and psychology as well as a minor in math and philosophy at KU.
“I didn’t have a plan for what to do after I got my degree,” says Brooks. “I was just following the notion that you’re supposed to get a bachelor’s degree and it’ll help you get a job. You know, I probably should have listened to my gut. I knew from a young age that music and performance were home for me.”
In pursuit of honoring this gut feeling, she made a move back to Lawrence in 2019 all while coming out as trans to the people closest in her life.
“I was really nervous to try and navigate this town where I’ve been since 2004,” says Brooks. “I can say that I’m really lucky to be in a town like Lawrence. People have been surprisingly accepting. I have to remind myself that I actually have a very in- teresting perspective, having been a musician who has been doing this before and after my transition and interacting with people on both sides of that. You definitely get treated differently. And nothing that would surprise anyone. I feel like I deal with the occasional old white guy who doesn’t think to take me seriously, which is bizarrely a gender-affirming experience.”
Brooks says she was in search of a job where she could be authentically herself without judgement, which she feared wouldn’t be easy.
“I had a friend running sound at Replay who made a post on Facebook saying they needed a sound engineer on Friday,” says Brooks. “I sent him a message, got trained on their setup, and that was August 2021. I’ve been at Replay doing live sound since.”
Now a pillar in Lawrence’s music community and a staple audio technician at one of its hottest live music spots, she’s no stranger to working with bands, DJs, hip-hop acts, experimental musicians, and whatever else walks through the door.
“It’s one of those things where if I’m doing my job right no one even notices that I’m doing anything at all except for the performers,” says Brooks. “The show is not about me. I get the occasional shout-out, but most people in the crowd aren’t paying any attention to me, and I kind of like that. I help our performers get set up on the stage and get everything plugged into the PA system and mic. But I’m making sure audio levels are balanced, adding things like reverb, compression, and equalization so that the sound comes through the way it’s intended to. I really want to make sure that performers have a good show, that they’re not frustrated with the way their experience is translating to the audience, and that they can hear themselves on stage.”
A performer herself, Brooks understands the ins and outs of both sides of the job.
“A good example would be an acoustic guitar—you would think an acoustic guitar is pretty straightforward and minimal,” says Brooks. “But a lot of times they have to be equalized slightly differently so that they don’t sound too sharp or too dull, or too bright or too dark. There are a lot of little things that you do just to make sure the sound is pleasing.”
Like every artist, Brooks has her own methods to her madness.
“I’m an overthinker so sometimes if I know who’s performing beforehand I can start to overthink the show,” says Brooks. “A lot of times I’d rather go in clean. I’ve talked to sound engineers who do the opposite— they love to know who they’re mixing a few days in advance and will listen to all of their music. For me, it tends to work best to just kind of, like, show up and be present in the moment.”
In addition to being Lawrence’s sound tech wiz, Brooks jams with several bands, including her own, Something and the Whatevers, which she describes as “a kind of theater punk laptop post-emo weirdness.” She also recently hopped on bass for Hannah Navarro’s Party Helmet.
“While I can’t take too much credit for this, I have loved my two years at the Replay,” says Brooks. “It’s a community where I’m surprised if I don’t see fellow trans and queer people out on any given night. There are also plenty of straight cis people hanging out as well. We’ve created a space where we really don’t tolerate hatred and bigotry and a lot of macho bullshit that has pervaded for a long time. I’m really grateful for that and the opportunity it’s given me to thrive in this community.”
