Bill Woody is the owner and manager of the Musician Rehearsal Center, which rents out practice spaces for musical groups on a month by month basis. For more information, visit www.musicianrehearsalcenter.com.
Since you opened in September of 2010, what’s been happening?
Well, we’ve reached between 75 and 80-percent occupancy on our monthly rental rehearsal spaces. We’ve opened what we call our “center stage” room, and we have improved and expanded that. Primarily, what the center stage room is for is performance rehearsals. It’s one thing for a band to rehearse in their room, but if they really want to perform and rehearse on a large stage, getting ready for a bigger show, such as the Knitting Factory or The Underground or The Alley, where they can really have room to move around, they need to really do it on a stage. … It’s a first-class stage, and we really want to represent a full-functioning venue—even though we aren’t a venue. The lighting, compared to most clubs, is pretty darn good. The sound system is awesome. Our stage is maybe a little bit smaller than the stage at the Knitting Factory, so it allows a band to be able to really rehearse their show.
And there’s a video production company there now?
Yes. [Advanced Media] is just going into operation. We actually use that room for music videos. We have a pretty elaborate editing suite, and the music video shoots are anywhere from six to eight, nine camera shoots. It’s quite a production. … The video shoots are done here, and all the post-production is done here. Kind of a specialty is live music videos. All of the live tracks are recorded to a 24-track digital recorder. And we now have Nevada Casting in here as part of the community. We have a shoot coming up where they really want to replicate the feel and the look of a first-rate nightclub—larger than a nightclub. So Nevada Casting can bring in 40 to 50 extras to act as crowd during shooting.
You said you’re at 75 or 80 percent capacity. How many bands are there now?
We’ve got about 37, 38 bands in here. … Sinister Scene, Seasons of Insanity, The Schall Adams Band, Courtesy Call, Pinky Polanski, The Luminus Empty, Authmentis, Hollywood Trash, Enslave the Creation, Uprising—which is a great reggae band. … These are all local bands, and the genre goes from reggae to heavy metal. All the ones I named are bands that are out there playing in clubs, make a little bit of money, promote themselves and see where it can take them.
What’s the relationship like among the bands?
What we’ve found, and what seems to be happening, is the bands are networking with each other. And having one place where everybody gathers instead of after a show or before a show, they really get a chance to talk with each other and get to know each other outside of a nightclub or bar situation. They end up playing gigs together, planning gigs together. That’s really a pretty big part of it. When you combine that with coming into the big room and rehearsing—when bands come in to rehearse in the big room, our center stage room, a lot of the other bands will come in, listen to them and give them feedback. And with the video part of it, Gene [Larson], who owns Advanced Media and is the video producer, he’s a musician himself. He’s in a position to produce a … music video for a quarter of a cost that you could do it anywhere else. That just brings a whole other aspect to it where musicians feel comfortable here. They like to be here. They like to be a part of it. … People ask, “What about a recording studio?” And I say, “Well, we aren’t a recording studio.” There are a lot of real good recording studios here in Reno. My original intent in this business, and I believe I’ve really kept to it, is to fit into a niche where I’m not competing with anybody else, but at the same time providing a service that is beneficial to the whole musical community.