From Broadway Swing to Principal: Eight Shows a Week...with Victor Carrillo Tracey
Gig Gab - The Working Musician's PodcastShow Notes
Your voice is the most temperamental instrument you’ll ever own, and this week Victor Carrillo Tracey – original company member of Broadway’s The Outsiders – walks you through what it takes to keep one working eight shows a week. Hydration and sleep swap places at number one, alcohol and caffeine cost more than you think, and inspiration doesn’t get a vote when downbeat is 8pm. You’ll hear how a single college voice lesson with a head cold taught Victor to navigate around a compromised instrument years before he needed it on Broadway, and why nerves usually answer to preparation rather than talent. Book the room. Play your opener as the last song of soundcheck. Always Be Performing starts well before anyone’s watching.
Then it gets nerdy. Victor breaks down what a swing actually is (think relief pitcher), and how he covered nine tracks at once before working his way up to playing Paul full-time. You’ll pick up forced perspective, the staging trick that tells an audience exactly where to look and translates straight to your own stage. Plus the band sealed in the pit under the apron, monitor wedges in the floor and sidefills in the wings, a rig that tracks each voice around the house, watching a Broadway book get written in real time, and Dave’s case for mixing your in-ears in stereo instead of piling everything up the middle. Victor’s last Outsiders show is October 11th, right around performance number one thousand…and he still tells himself this is the best job ever before every show.
00:00:00 Gig Gab 548 – Monday, August 24th, 2026
August 24th: International Strange Music Day
Guest co-host: Victor Carrillo Tracey
00:02:45 The voice is the most temperamental instrument
00:06:04 The benefits of an education
Always Be Learning – Beginner’s Mind
00:08:54 Learning to navigate around your voice when things are non-optimal
00:13:28 Taking care of your voice
The most important thing is hydration.
Except Sleep is the most important thing.
Be aware of alcohol and caffeine
00:17:01 Inspiration won’t always strike
00:18:35 And taking care of your body
00:20:55 Preparing yourself for success
Play your opener as your last soundcheck song before the house opens
You can visualize this, too!
Book the room to rehearse in advance
Always be preparing
Having a preparation mindset
00:28:40 SPONSOR: Hims. With Wegovy® at Hims, lose up to 20% of your body weight when combined with diet and exercise. Visit https://hims.com/giggab to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you.
00:30:08 Being a Swing
Kinda like a relief pitcher
Nine tracks at once!
00:33:33 Ok, a detour into musical theater and The Outsiders
00:39:02 Forced Perspective
00:43:12 Missing playing a non-voice instrument
00:45:19 Playing with the band in a theater show
…without seeing your bandmates
00:50:46 Watching the Broadway book being built
And recording the Cast Album at Power Station at BerkleeNYC Music Studio
Jamie Eblen
Justin Levine
00:56:11 Mixing a musical…and hearing it on stage!
Monitor wedges in the apron
Sidefills in the wings
Cody Spencer
01:04:55 Previews are grueling, and great!
01:05:45 Mix your in-ears in stereo
Nothing up the middle: kick one degree right, snare one degree left.
01:07:43 Victor’s leaving The Outsiders after 2.5 years
Choosing your destiny…follow your gut
And make it happen!
Gratitude!
“This is the best job ever” before going on stage every time.
01:12:37 Gig Gab 548 Outtro
Follow Victor Carrillo Tracey
IG: @victorctracey
Contact Gig Gab!
@GigGabPodcast on Instagram
Sign Up for the Gig Gab Mailing List
The post From Broadway Swing to Principal: Eight Shows a Week – Gig Gab 548 with Victor Carrillo Tracey appeared first on Gig Gab.
More from Gig Gab - The Working Musician's Podcast
Your fellow working musicians just handed you a year’s worth of gig hacks, and this week Gig Gab pulls the best listener tips from Instagram and Facebook into one episode. You’ll get a hand-raise monitor check that knocks out soundcheck in minutes, a dedicated soundcheck song for when the room’s already full, and the mixing moves pros swear by: high-pass the bass at 80 Hz, sidechain it to the kick, and carve 2.5 kHz out of everything else so the vocals cut through. Then you’ll build a smarter set list. Space out the songs that wreck your singer, keep a back-pocket list of crowd-grabbers, mark who sings lead for the sound person, and track song lengths so you never blow past curfew.
Megan Ihnen and Alan Theisen of Neonautica went from contemporary classical recitals to headlining dubstep parties in New Orleans, and they brought a theater kid’s discipline with them. You’ll hear how they split band duties so nobody has to wonder who’s handling what, why the only correct response to a note is thank you, and why there’s no such thing as a good or bad sound, only the sound you meant to make and the one you didn’t. They also explain why they wrote an hour-long set the way a composer writes a symphony, and what it means to control the room instead of just reading it.
Chris Cron posted what he thought was a one-off video about how to sound like the Beach Boys, set his phone down, and came back to 10,000 views. A few days later it was near a million. A few years later, he’s a touring member of the actual Beach Boys. Chris joins Dave to show you what was underneath that “overnight” success: a full-time session vocalist gig since 2018, years of throwing content at the wall, and the social media lessons that made one video stick: Frame your post as a question, reply to every comment, and treat the haters as fodder for a lesson or a laugh. From there, the path runs through a John Stamos follow, a coffee with the band’s musical director, a one-off Post Malone fill-in, and a phone call you don’t say no to. When the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity shows up, you throw the door open wide.
Every club at SXSW sounds good, every night, all week, and we’ve often wondered how they maintain that consistency. This week Dave finally gets the answer from Nate Cross, SXSW’s Director of Production, who went from intern to Assistant Production Manager to running the whole show. You’ll hear how his team builds out 55 to 60 venues (down from 100+ before the pandemic), why they mic everything even when it looks like overkill, and how 20-minute changeovers actually run on time with bands who’ve never met. Then there’s the backline story: trading the free band beer for a drum kit and amps at every venue, which enhanced everything.
Skylar Hamilton is back by popular demand for round two of your questions, recorded across an Airbnb kitchen table in New York City where a roll of paper towels doubles as a mic stand, because it’s the right height and it kills table rumble.