by Chris Bryson
Have you ever wanted to see some awesome heavy local bands live from your living room couch? Red Tie Productions has been working at bringing you just that.
Red Tie Productions brought down Stylus to Bedside Studios for the third installment of Red Tie Live. Amid the spacious and beautiful wooden paneled studio, local heavy metal outfit Waster ripped through song after vicious song as the crowd of the crew and I, along with the Facebook viewership, basked in the savagery before us.
Red Tie Productions stemmed from when owner Clint Chaboyer put on his first annual charity 90’s tribute show. The tribute show, which hit its fifth anniversary this year, led to Chaboyer putting on more events, including the first-ever metal shows to be held at Cowboys, a venue that some might not expect to be hosting that sort of thing (but is nonetheless set up for a hell of a good time).
The idea for Red Tie Live came after Chaboyer’s Southern rock band Wreckin’ SO played Winnipeg music promoting Facebook series, Live at The Roslyn, (via the Village Idiots) and one of his friends who plays in a metal band wanted to do the same. “That kind of gave me the idea, well maybe I should do a metal one,” says Chaboyer. “So I talked to Kevin (Repay) and Rylie (Saunders), because I didn’t want to step on any toes or anything like that. I just kind of got the idea to them and said would it be cool if I started a metal version of it, and they were like yeah!”
The first two episodes of Red Tie Live were hosted at the Jam Shack, but it was decided to change locations for economic frugality. “They make money by renting it out for rehearsals so time is money to them and where we are right now we’re not making money off of it so I can’t pay out of pocket,” says Chaboyer. “So we thought it would be a good idea from here forward to do every episode somewhere different. But Bedside Studios was a pretty wicked place. It sounded good in there. The whole atmosphere is a great place. And Len (Milne, the owner) was super happy. He liked having us there. He said we can do more there so I think the plan might be to keep it there now.” Chaboyer also says staying in one location will prevent them from needing any new location to increase their Internet capabilities and equipment to account for the show’s streaming requirements.
With the selection of bands that get to go on the show, Chaboyer says it’s similar to Live at The Roslyn in that they’re looking to give the best portrayal of the scene in the best way they can. “It’s kind of been picky so far the selection process of the bands. But I mean we also want to help bands that are pushing to get out there, that are eager to break onto the scene,” says Chaboyer. “With the three we’ve had so far, Waster, Inverted Serenity, and Endless Chaos, they’re three of pretty much the best in the metal scene right now.” Chaboyer also hopes to start doing Red Tie Live with more frequency, which would enable him to cover more of what the local scene has to offer.
“Right when it started it’s like ‘Oh I want this band, I want this band, I want this band,’” says Chaboyer, “but we’ve got to kind of think more like big picture like a: what do people want to see, b: is the band actually pushing to get out there.”
At the Waster Red Tie Live, Village Idiot and Live at The Roslyn host Rylie Saunders was in front of the camera taking hosting duties. Videographer Sean Perrun was at the visual helm, with Village Idiot Kevin Repay behind the equipment rigs, photographer Karen Cottrell taking shots of the action, Taylor Hingey covering Red Tie’s social media, and Chaboyer mixing the audio.
When Stylus was there for the Waster Red Tie Live some technical issues arose leading up to the start of the show, but with some talking and troubleshooting, the team was adept at working things through.
“Technology with this kind of stuff I think the reason why we handled it so easy was because there’s always something. For us this is only the third episode but we’ve had major problems each time,” explains Chaboyer. “The first time literally ten minutes before we were going live the computer died. Ten minutes before we were like ‘Shit! What the hell are we going to do?!’ And then a guy had a laptop in his car. We’re like ‘Okay can we use it?’ So yeah there’s always been issues so just got to stay calm, just go over stuff step by step. That’s all you can do really.”
“Just knowing the fact of okay you should probably set up four hours prior in case anything major happens you have enough time to work it out,” says Chaboyer. DIY has always been a Winnipeg thing, and that ethos runs true here.