LAS VEGAS – There are outdoor venues for live music where the most important consideration for live sound reinforcement is to be considerate to residential neighbors and ensure that the decibels from the stage don’t violate local sound ordinances.
At the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, however, located on a 1,200-acre parcel between the runways used for fighter jet pilot training at Nellis Air Force Base and hundreds of miles of open desert wilderness, nobody is going to ask you to keep it down.
Along with NASCAR and a full array of other car, truck and motorcycle motor sports events, the Speedway has hosted the largest EDM music festival in the U.S., Electric Daisy Carnival, since 2011.
From March 17-19, the venue welcomed auto hobbyists to the 2023 edition of Muscle Cars at the Strip, with three car shows (Chevy, Chrysler and Ford), drag racing, autocross and a swap meet for car and truck restoration enthusiasts.
One of the 2023 event’s highlights was live music, with none other than Danny Koker of the History Channel’s Counting Cars fame performing with his hard-rocking band, Count’s 77, performing on March 18.
For those not familiar with Counting Cars, the reality TV series dates from 2012, and like another History Channel series, American Restoration, it’s a Vegas-focused spinoff of the hugely popular Pawn Stars reality TV series, which launched in 2009 and is still going strong.
While you might think that Koker launched the band only after the success of Counting Cars, Count’s 77 actually formed before the reality TV series made its debut. Koker, who also launched a rock music club in Las Vegas, Count’s Vamp’d, grew up in a musical household. His late father, (also named Danny Koker), played piano and sang baritone for the Cathedral Quartet in the 1960s. The rock club happened to host a weekly jam session led by guitarist Jony Zito, and one week, Koker, as club owner, decided to try joining in. The vibe felt legit, and a rock group embracing the music of the 1970s (hence the reference to “77” in the band’s name) was born.
Along with Koker handling lead vocals and Zito on guitar, the Count’s 77 show at the Speedway showcased the talents of lead guitarist Stoney Curtis and bass player Barry Barnes, with Tommy Paris on keyboards/vocals and Jeff Tortora on drums. Their set list kicked off with “War Pigs” from Black Sabbath and wrapped up with the Doors’ “Break On Through,” with a number of their own songs, including “Sin City Boogie Man,” interspersed with other vintage rock tunes.
Count’s 77 performed on March 18, following and another Vegas-based rock act, The Charade, that performed March 17 and earlier in the day on March 18. The musicians turned to Las Vegas-based New World Audio for a sound reinforcement assist.
Along with New World Audio founder Sonny Maupin, a musician himself who’s been a fixture on the Las Vegas scene for decades and handled FOH duties with a Midas M32 digital console with a DL32 stage box, system tech Craig Tanaka set up and tuned a sound system that included four Meyer Sound MSL-4 speakers as mains, four Meyer Sound 700HP subs and two Turbosound iQ10 speakers that served as front-fills.
True to its retro styled roots, Count’s 77 performed with a monitor setup consisting of eight L-Acoustics 112P speakers. For miking, New World Audio provided Shure SM58 for vocals and Shure Beta 91, SM57, KSM137 and Sennheiser’s e 904 on drums. The setup also included Sennheiser’s e 906 for guitar and Radial D.I.’s.
“I was a little concerned on Friday when we were setting up the system,” Maupin said, noting the noise coming from the Dodge Chargers and Challengers burning up a test track near the stage.
Then came the sound of the fighter jets from Nellis AFB, which were “taking off every 15 or 20 minutes or so,” Maupin said. And while the sounds from the 750-horsepower muscle car engines were load, the sound of the fighter jets was louder. “These guys were doing crazy runs around the track every five minutes or so,” Maupin noted. “The jets drowned out ALL of this —they were excruciatingly loud.”
Fortunately for the bands, the fighter jet takeoff schedule didn’t overlap with most of the performances. “The jets stopped early Friday afternoon, and there was no activity on Saturday,” when Count’s 77 took the stage.
Maupin first got acquainted with Counts’ 77 years ago after hearing them perform at Koker’s club, Vamp’d. He had also run sound for lead guitarist Stoney Curtis, who also has his own band, a few years back. “He’s a great player —in fact, the entire Count’s 77 band is extremely good. It was a pleasure working with them.”
