Meet Vince ‘Big V’ / Dave ‘DB’ Riha / Burzanko | Music Producers and Engineers

We had the good fortune of connecting with Vince ‘Big V’ / Dave ‘DB’ Riha / Burzanko and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Vince ‘Big V’ / Dave ‘DB’, what is the most important factor behind your success?
The single most important factor in being a successful audio producer/production company is to be a fan first. Technical know how and theory only reinforce the artistic vision and soul of a song. As producers we train our ear to seek out anomalies and unpleasant sounds but are they really all bad? If the soul of a piece of work needs a dissonant tone, a misplaced breath, or even something out of time it should be there. There is the learned practice to drop everything on the beat, quantize, de-breath or de-ess but often when these steps are taken the end result is flat and soulless. Sure its a risk to leave imperfections in but that is where being a fan of the artist, genre, or message comes in to play, The art of leaving these artifacts comes down to knowing where leaving them makes the most impact. This is not known from following a recipe, reading a book, using some higher level math, this comes from within. When hearing a piece of music that makes the hair on your neck stand up, gets you choked up, or even causes you to daydream that’s when you know the soul is there and its speaking to the listener. Dave and I have such variegated and deep backgrounds and these play to our success even now after so many years in and around music we are enlightening each other to works we may have overlooked, forgotten or never knew. Being music fans still to this day we are always looking to put a little old with a little new and put in a whole bunch of soul.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Being both entrepreneurs and artists we have worked in many different roles in this industry and finding successes and failures in these roles have guided us to this juncture in time. Do we know it all? Absolutely Not! But we know enough to ask the right questions , engage the right people and provide options to our clients to minimize their failures. Odd Block is all about options we don’t operate like conventional studios or traditional labels. We want all our clients to be successful and also become part of the Odd Block Family. To these points we don’t have pre-packaged plans, stringent hourly rates and sessions times. We work for and with the client to get the best results whatever options they need to do so. When we are working on a project with a client we work at a pace where the client and production team are comfortable. We often find ourselves trying other options even if we have something that sounds great but, we are not feeling the soul we may start over or just go back a few steps, just to make sure we aren’t missing, over producing, or trying to fit something in when it doesn’t need it.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Wow, this is a difficult one, it would definitely depend on the friend but we would have to hit Happy Dog, The GoldHorn brewery, and Slymans for food and beverage and we would probably take in local and regional acts and places like Maple Grove Tavern, The Spitfire Saloon, The Beachland ballroom, The Grog Shop, Mahalls, and Brothers Lounge. The thing about Cleveland is the vastness of original music venues while they may not pack in every show pretty much every night of the week you can find something for just about every genre. More so now with all the towns putting in amphitheaters or gazebos. We would also have to take in some of the sites and Cleveland points of lore, like the William G . Mather, Lakeside Cemetery.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Yes without the support and partnership from Steve Gang and Mannequin Odd Productions, Odd Block Entertainment might never have come to be. Vince was working at Mannequin Odd with Steve when the pandemic and economy was forcing Dave to shut down 40 Block Studios. Keeping in contact with Vince and Steve led to the 3 sitting down and coming up with the concept for Odd Block Entertainment.

Website: https://oddblockentertainment.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OddBlockEntertainment