Earlier this month, the Queen City got a bit quieter after Sergei Ushakov died. Ushakov was the main sound engineer at Nectar's in Burlington and its upstairs venue, The Lounge, formerly Club Metronome, since 1994.
Ushakov liked it loud, and Ryan Clausen, Nectar's talent buyer, says he didn't mince words. "If it didn't sound good on the stage, Sergei would tell you, 'That sounds s—-!’ Like, I'm not going to attempt to do his accent, but he would tell you."
Clausen said Ushakov also was a stern adviser to singers who performed at Nectar's. "You know, 'Sing from your diaphragm! You need to eat the mic!' is a classic Sergei trope."
He says Ushakov's approach wasn't mean-spirited, but came from a professional responsibility toward the music blasting from his speakers.
"I watched him make many a singer cry on this stage, and he would apologize afterwards, but he he was going to take the straightest line from Point A to B, because what mattered was how it sounded in point B," Clausen said.
Ushakov's long connection to the Queen City began back in his native Russia. In 1959. he was born in Yaroslavl, where he eventually began running sound for a music fest known as Jazz Over the Volga.
Yaroslavl was a sister city with Burlington, and bands would travel between those two locations to perform as part of a cultural exchange program. It was in this time during the late '80s and early '90s that Vermont musicians first encountered the legendary gruff but sweet sound man. He came to Vermont for a show and ended up staying.
And Ushakov did have a softer side. Tyler Nettleton is Nectar's general manager and said Ushakov was known as sort of the "house granddad" at the bar. "The amount of times that he would come in here with a ginormous bowl of borscht and offer it to everybody in the building," Nettleton said.
Nettleton said Ushakov was also passionate about finding just the right piece of sound equipment on eBay, then fixing it up to use at the venue or sharing his skills with musicians who needed help repairing their own equipment.
After news of Ushakov’s death came an outpouring of grief and love on social media from many whom he worked with in the local music scene. Kyle Thompson, a DJ and musician known by his stage name, Fattie B., knew Ushakov from his long-standing stint as the DJ at Club Metronome.
"He demanded the best out of you as a professional, and if he thought you had it in you and weren't delivering that, he made sure you knew that he expected more, and I loved him for that," Thompson said.
It was Ushakov's keen ear and ability to "dial in a room," as Nettleton put it, that made him a legend in the local music scene. He said Ushakov was a master at determining how each individual piece of equipment from any given band would sound inside Nectar's and during a band's live set. He said Ushakov could scan the crowd in front of the sound board and determine specific tweaks and changes needed based on the number of people filling the space and dancing on the floor.
And Nettleton said each piece of sound equipment at Nectar's that made a band roar to life in front of a crowd has Ushakov’s stamp and fingerprint all over it.
"Everything has been done by him. He spent 30-plus years in this building, in every single way that a wire is placed, how it's traced. It's him," Nettleton said.
Clausen said that while the loss is heavy and the grief still feels new, the venue itself is beginning to figure out next steps.
"There are shows and people need music as a healing source and and this club is too legendary, and Sergei is too legendary of an engineer to do anything other than move forward and turn it up f——— loud as hell," Clausen said.
Ushakov died unexpectedly at his home in Burlington on Jan. 8. Nectars will celebrate his life on Saturday, Feb. 15, both at the bar downstairs and upstairs at The Lounge.
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