Wise Beyond Her Years
Monitor engineer Victoria Butash has already supported notable acts including Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit and Sylvan Esso. She’s currently out with Sleater-Kinney, and she attributes her success to never losing sight to what’s really important. “My favorite part of my day is to get up early and find a good coffee shop to have coffee at.” She is indeed wise beyond her years. Seems like that coffee has fueled Butash on a career that’s clearly headed for further heights.
A Musical Household
Butash grew up in the small rural town of Doylestown, OH, 30 minutes southwest of Akron. “My dad was always in bands,” she says. “So I was always around musicians, and it was inherent part of my life.” She went to Capital University in Columbus, OH, where she got a Bachelor of Music and Music Technology. “There was only one live audio class in the program, and that really appealed to me. I have experience in tracking and mixing, but I didn’t enjoy the repetitiveness of being in the studio. I enjoy the troubleshooting of being in live sound. Every day has a new challenge if you’re touring.”
In college, Butash had a friend who needed an audio assist, and that was her first paid live sound gig, when she was 19. “It was at King Avenue 5, a small club on the west side of Columbus, and it was all analog gear.” This included an Allen & Heath GL2400 with some basic outboard gear like compressor and stereo effects units. “That’s how I came up — I was never around Pro Tools or digital gear until later.”
After graduating, she headed west, taking a job at California State University, Monterey Bay, working their summer arts program as an audio tech. There Butash met one of her biggest champions, Greg Harbert, who was the technical director of the university. When she realized she wanted to make a living in live audio, she U-Hauled it to Austin, TX and got work at Miller Pro AVL, an event production house handling temporary installations and local concert gigs. “It was a big learning opportunity for me, because I met some intelligent audio techs that changed my life. But I liked those gigs, because that’s when you learn the most — those times when you’re setting up at a venue two hours from the shop and you realize that the shop person left a vital piece of gear off the truck. So you have to figure out how to make the show happen by flipping pins on an NL8 connector to put your subs on the same circuit as your tops because you don’t have enough amplifiers to power the whole system as-is.”
The First Big Gig
After a year and half of MacGyvering it, Butash made the jump to freelance. She worked at local venues including Austin’s 1,300-capacity Paramount Theater through Big House Sound, and then a friend recommended her to FOH mix for a Texas country band that featured singer/songwriter Kimberly Dunn. At that point she moved into “the Texas country world,” and started doing some touring. Along the way Butash met Jeremiah Karni of Adamson Systems Engineering. He mentioned that Sound Image needed a systems engineer for its Adamson rig, and did she think she could do it? It was the E Series, and she felt if she could get some training and some certifications first, she’d be game. She went to Kansas City’s Uptown Theater, helped install a system there, and the first show she worked on as a system engineer was for Rob Thomas. “It was my first big gig, and it was a huge learning experience.”
She must have pulled it off because she kept working for Sound Image, going out with acts like Imagine Dragons, Morrissey and others. “I had a great time with the Imagine Dragons’ crew,” Butash says. “I got to do Rock in Rio with them, and I did a gig in Saudi Arabia.”
And then came the pandemic. Butash pivoted and got on as an assistant professor of live sound at Austin Community College, working full time in their commercial music program. “I had become a little jaded about college programs for things like audio because it sometimes feels predatory” in terms of taking advantage of students (and their money) without really providing a real-world learning experience. But that wasn’t the case at Austin as they had just built a new facility and the learning experience was tangible. Even so, her general recommendation is that, “if you want to learn live sound, get a job at a production company and get paid to learn.”
When the world opened again, Butash did monitor mixing for the indie pop duo Sylvan Esso. “I could not have asked for a better reintroduction into the industry, post-pandemic,” she says. She’s been with them for more than three years, and during that time she’s been able to dabble in production managing duties. “I like it — I understand the mechanics of advancing shows and what to look for. And I’ve been around enough production to know just enough about lighting, scenic, etc., to wrap my head around what it means to gather information and pick vendors.”
A few months ago, she was recommended to work on the current Sleater-Kinney tour. Sylvan has a fairly light year, so that worked out (though she is doing two sold-out shows with Sylvan at Madison Square Garden where they are opening for Tyler Childers later this month, which is “pretty cool.”)
Let’s Talk Gear
When asked about what tools she likes to use, Butash perks up. “I have preferences that are mostly functional and not necessarily based on what I ‘like.’ I am predominantly a monitor engineer, so much of my job relies on functionality and being able to execute actions quickly. I feel confident that anyone who knows what they are listening for can use whatever tools they have to get what they want.”
Along with Sylvan Esso FOH engineer Jay Demkoon, Butash has used Avid’s VENUE S6L 24D and 32D at monitorworld and FOH, respectively. When Demko left and was replaced by Paul Vallette, the switch was made to Allen & Heath dLive. “There are things about that console I miss functionality-wise; but out of the box, the dLive is the best-sounding console on the market,” Butash says. “It sounds incredible, and the onboard processing is wonderful.” Now on Sleater-Kinney, FOH engineer Tim Nichols is using the DiGiCo Quantum 338, and she likes that as well, though she has stuck with Avid.
Outboard gear-wise, she says, “I’m not really a Waves person or for non-native plugs for mixing monitors, because there can be some level of instability with having an external server. I like to use whatever processing is onboard, with only a couple of non-native plug-ins — and only if I really need them. Monitor mixing is a sensitive thing. Artists want consistency every night in different places. And you can’t really punt a monitor mix if all your processing goes down.”
For Sleater-Kinney, Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker are using sE Electronics sE7 mics, and “they are awesome. The supercardioid pattern is great because the band likes to set up physically, tight,” and be really close to each other on stage. “The sE7’s have a tighter pattern, which keeps a lot of the drums and amp noise out.”
Moving “Up” By Staying Put
As for the future, Butash likes being a monitor engineer, so don’t ask her if she wants to “move up” to FOH. “It seems like that used to always be the goal, and monitor engineering was kind of a ‘lower thing,’ but in the last 10 years that idea has changed because monitor mixing is so much more complex now. I adore monitor engineering.” Another goal? “I would love to keep my streak of working with people who are respectful and fun to work for. I value this camp with Sleater-Kinney because it’s the first time I’ve been on a crew where most of the crew were non-heterosexual men, which is something for an industry that has less than 5% women/non-heterosexual-men identifying. It’s such a small community that we all joke we all know each other. But it’s also incredible to see the numbers growing.”
Butash notes there was a time early in her career where sometimes it was hard to be a woman, but only because backstage can be competitive. “But in my opinion, that competitive [mindset] has really diminished. I love to see other women out there and on my crew. I’m like ‘hell, yeah, let’s go,’ and I know it’s going to be a good day.”
For those looking to get into this work, Butash stresses the importance of knowing a system and the importance of being a sound tech first. Yet her main advice on how to survive and thrive is to be aware and comfortable of where your boundaries are — both personal and professional. “In live sound, I think the number one thing that makes people quit or get hurt is the inability to listen to your body. Know when enough is enough. We work long hours, sometimes many days in row, and I’ve been lucky to work for artists who understand that and are empathetic to it. Yet there are days when you’re going to have to hustle it out and be hard. But not every day has to be that way.”
