Prairie Dog Brewing was founded by musicians, and there may not be anything that connects us more to our local community than our involvement in the Calgary music scene today. Having musicians on our big stage gives Calgarians a taste of local art and gives those artists a high-quality venue to play in, where they sound great and look amazing up on stage. Our stage also enables us to perform a myriad of different events with all sorts of A/V requirements.
Stage Construction
After 5 years of operating with inadequate facilities to support live music, we undertook a project in late 2023 with the help of a big supporter of Prairie Dog Brewing, Gerhard, who was crucial in making the stage a reality, as well as his wife Julie and several of his friends, like Paul and George, as well as Wade Topp of the band Suckerpunch, who all made big contributions of time and technical assistance. We placed sixty 8-foot by 3-foot handmade sound baffle panels around our space, cutting down the noisy reflections from the concrete/metal surfaces that dominate our brewpub. After sound baffles, we spent about a month constructing and installing our stage and A/V systems.
The stage is spacious enough to support bands of up to about 7 people, with ample power, lighting, and sound baffling, as well as a highly capable PA system, which we talk about more below.
PA System
At the heart of the Prairie Dog Stage PA system is a large, 30-channel QSC digital mixer, shown at left. Six floor boxes around the edges of the stage contain both power and mixer inputs/outputs for patching to instruments, microphones, and stage monitors. To support sound distribution to the stage and around the brewpub, we have:
- At least three 12″ active stage monitors
- Six high 12″ and 15″ PA speakers distributed throughout the dining room
- Two 18″ subwoofers
- A speaker management system to distribute sound and add delays for distant speakers
- Loads of XLR cables, several spare microphones and stands
We routinely get compliments from artists that play the stage, and from their fans, that the sound is amazing both on stage and off. Artists rarely need to show up with more than their instruments and microphones.
Visual System
Above our stage is a prominent projector screen measuring about 15 feet wide and over 7 feet tall, and several large televisions surround our bar. HDMI video input boxes located either at the stage or around our brewpub accept inputs from laptops and other video-emitting devices, and transmit them to receivers at the bar and the projector, so we can beam artists’ video either above the stage, above the bar, or to both locations at once. This comes in useful not just for bands, but for trivia nights, customer event bookings, and more.
About 15 feet in front of our stage is an aluminum rail hanging from the ceiling. We have several lighting units installed on that rail to light up performers and speakers on stage, as well as some portable lighting units, and can accommodate cameras.
On-Site Expertise
Most musicians arrive at bars with a huge set of PA equipment because they don’t know what they’re walking into. Even when the bar has a PA, it’s often just a pile of cables sitting in the corner on top of a small mixer, and the bar staff know nothing about how to use it, leaving the band to do double duty — both playing music and running sound for the venue. That is a real disservice both to the musicians and to the venue’s customers, who have to put up with rough, poorly mixed sound.
At Prairie Dog Brewing, we have owners and team members with backgrounds in music recording and mixing, who dedicate their weekends to running the sound at our live shows and ensuring that bands sound their best, every time. These same people assist with setting up sound for stage events and trivia nights.
Music Booking
We handle music bookings two different ways:
- FRIDAYS:Â These nights typically focus on solo and duo acts, and are booked for us by Jamie Allanach, who personally vets musicians and acts as an agent for them. You can contact him using the information on his website.
- SATURDAYS: These nights are typically booked by our team member Kelsey, who also does most of our live sound mixing and promoting. Reach out to us at music@bbq.beer and provide links to your EPK, Instagram, SoundCloud or YouTube channel.
- OTHER DAYS: We don’t typically have live music on other days of the week, but may expand to support them in the future.