It’s where the battle of the bands meets the battle of the birds. The competition can be viscous, and at this year’s Guitar Strings vs. Chicken Wings Sept. 5 at Palisades Tahoe, the stakes are even higher.
“It’s been a minute since we won,” said Randy Rogers, owner of the Auld Dubliner, a regular wing-and-tunes contender. “We had a run there for fi ve or six years. It’s time to take it back.”
To take it back, the Dubliner and the other valley restaurants will need to outduel the oldest competitor in the fi eld, PlumpJack Inn, the back-to-back champion whose grounds were built for the 1960 Winter Olympics long before today’s village eateries were ever a whirling notion in Alexaner Cushing’s entrepreneurial mind.
A TRADITION UNLIKE ANY OTHER: The Auld Dubliner will look to regain its championship stride at 2025’s Guitar Strings vs. Chicken Wings. Photos by Blake Kessler
“We’re not a village restaurant,” said Steve Lamb, PlumpJack’s longtime general manager. “So, we are grateful to get the invite and set up in the Tram Plaza. There’s a lot of good local camaraderie, a lot of locals out and about on a Friday night. It’s a great event to be a part of.”
Sure, it’s great if you’re winning. Last year’s dry rub, pickle-back wings with house-made buffalo sauce got PlumpJack the Wing vs. Wing Champion Trophy, and their house band, Tim High & the Mighty, played their incendiary psychedelic rock tunes to victory in the battle of the bands for the $500 cash prize and yearlong bragging rights. The band will take the stage again for the restaurant in 2025, yet something new is planned for its wings.
“There’s a lot of haggling back and forth,” Rogers noted. “A lot of talking crap. The kitchen guys are always trying to come up with new recipes. It’s good competition.”
CHEERS: It’s all wings and smiles (and a puppy) at a previous Guitar Strings vs.Chicken Wings at Palisades Tahoe
Victors in each category are determined by votes cast by participants in attendance. For a nominal entry donation, patrons receive: wing tasting at each restaurant, access to the live music, entry into a raffl e, and six voting tokens (three each for music and wings). Additional voting tokens may be purchased to further push a favorite wing and/or string to victory. Wings will vary by spice-level and taste at each restaurant, and an eclectic mix of music awaits.
“This year we have Another Dam Disappointment,” Rogers said. “A.D.D. for short, a punk band out of Sacramento. We can get a little bluegrassy and a little dead-heady up here in Tahoe, so it’s good to mix it up.”
The Auld Dubliner’s sister restaurant, Tremigo Mexican Kitchen and Tequila Bar, will feature Suika T, the Latin fusion band known for getting the audience grooving.
Rounding out the six-team fi eld will be 22 Bistro and its band, WD Saw and Friends; Fireside Pizza with Vice Grip, and Rocker with Coburn Station, all duking it out for top wings or strings or both. Musically, two village stages will alternate every hour, and bouncing around from venue to venue, wings in hand, is encouraged.
Good Cause
Like every event in the Village at Palisades Tahoe, Guitar Strings vs. Chicken Wings has its own benefi ciary — TINS, the Tahoe Institute for Natural Science.
For the past 15 years, the local, member-supported nonprofi t has sought to advance the natural history, conservation, and ecosystem knowledge of our region. It does so through education, outreach, and citizen-science programs, engaging children and adults alike in its stewardship mission.
Per its website, a long-term goal of TINS is to establish a local, world-class interpretive center and permanent educational facility for “awakening student curiosity and … inviting them to become engaged in their immediate natural surroundings.”
Last year’s event raised over $10,000 for the organization.
The TINS bar will be set up in the Village, where attendees pick up their entry tickets, and it will be offering specials on beer, wine, and cocktails starting promptly at 4 p.m. Music and wings typically kick off around 5 p.m., and while the fun is scheduled to go to 9:30 p.m., no one ever quite knows when the rooster will crow at Guitar Strings vs. Chicken Wings. Attendees who wish to stay the night can book Village lodging for 15% off.
ABSOLUTELY SHREDDING: Bands in the Battle of the Bands portion of the event vie for a $500 cash prize and heck-tons of bragging rights.
“It’s one of my favorite events because it takes place during kind of an off time of year,” said Patrick Lacey, public relations manager at Palisades Tahoe. “It’s more of a local’s event for sure — and who doesn’t like live music and chicken wings?”
And if you like friendly-but-ultra-super-heated competition with cash-money prizes and a year’s worth of bragging rights, all the better.
Plus,” Lamb of PlumpJack culminated, “TINS is awesome.”
For more information about Guitar Strings vs. Chicken Wings, and to learn more about getting involved with TINS or volunteering for the event, visit tinsweb.org.
There’s the golden ratio and the Fibonacci sequence. There’s the a2 + b2 = c2 of a right triangle. And then there’s the acoustically perfect concert-hall ratio known as “the shoebox.”
“It creates the perfect environment for sound to essentially enhance itself,” says Ken Hardin, artistic director of InConcert Sierra, which is building the organization’s very own shoebox as part of the new Crown Point Venues in Grass Valley. “The basics are that the ceiling is half the width [of the room] and the width is half the length, which allows the note to bellow after the sound is made, letting it live in the room for a longer time so it can make a richer sound.”
(The reverb knob on an electric guitar essentially tries to mimic what the shoebox design does naturally.)
Hardin proceeds to orate on the shoebox and acoustics at length, sounding like some Merlin of music as he spins phrases and philosophies on intervals and intonation, octaves and overtones, resonance and reverb. He speaks eloquently of the acoustic genius of the European cathedrals built in the 900s to 1300s, and how the modern shoebox design evolved from them as more of an everyman’s solution to sound.
Still, when it’s completed in the latter half of 2026, Crown Point’s shoebox concert hall will be one of only 12 of its kind in the United States, one of only two with a seating capacity under 1,000 — and the only one in a rural setting.
Crown Point Venues will be worldclass, and it will be right here in the Sierra Nevada.
STANDING OVATION at a recent InConcert Sierra show at its current temporary home. Photo courtesy Valle Visions Photography
A Long Journey
It was the German writer and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who told us that if we are bold, mighty forces will come to our aid. That sure seems to be the case with the little shoebox that could.
“It’s been an ambitious project from the outset,” says Julie Hardin, InConcert Sierra’s executive director and Ken’s wife. “And there’s been serendipity everywhere.”
Crown Point Venues is the latest effort by InConcert Sierra to find a permanent home. Founded in 1946 to provide classical and choral music to the region, InConcert has gone through at least seven significant home bases over the years, starting out in the Grass Valley Veteran’s Memorial Building and moving around to local churches, schools, theaters, and cultural centers. It is currently back to putting on its concerts in a church, which does have high-end acoustics but presents limitations on scheduling flexibility, the types of music that may be presented, and overall growth potential.
Thus the continued search for the forever home. The organization got close to purchasing something in 2015 but it ultimately did not work out. Still, the effort was not without a boon — a patron saw the struggle and approached Ken to ask him what it would take to keep the dream of a dedicated concert hall alive.
“Well,” Ken joked, “if you had a million dollars in your back pocket, we could make some progress.”
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CONCEPT ART of the completed Crown Point Venues, which will house a ‘shoebox’ concert hall, a black-box theater, and a conference center. Courtesy photo
WHAT WILL BE: Concept art of the completed shoebox concert hall.
The woman looked at Ken. “I was thinking more along the lines of $2 million,” she said.
After many conversations and considerations, the gift was ultimately made in 2018. InConcert continued its search for a building, and then March 2020 and the pandemic came along. Before the real estate market soared, the bottom fell out, especially in the office-space segment.
“We identified a building that had been home to a big tech company,” Hardin says of a potential home for their new concert hall. “The place was huge.”
Roughly 1 whole acre under roof, the asking price had already dropped due to the pandemic, and InConcert was able to purchase it for even less. A building that was appraised for tax purposes at $8 million was obtained for $2.1.
“It was crazy,” Hardin recounts, speaking to some of that serendipity his wife speaks of.
After cutting through the red tape, InConcert finally took possession of the building in March 2023. Seventy-seven years after its founding, the organization had finally found its forever home. Thirty-six hours later the roof collapsed.
“It was devastating,” Hardin acknowledges. “That Snowmaggedon storm hit and about 14,000 square-feet of roof collapsed under the weight. The storm kept on and 3 days later another section of about 10,000 square feet collapsed. We were reeling.”
But all was not lost. In fact, the silver lining came to shine through rather bright.
“After a while we came to see that Mother Nature had done us a big favor,” Hardin says.
InConcert was already planning to remove a portion of the roof in order to raise it and achieve the vital ratio for the shoebox. Mother nature simply accelerated the demolition and got them an insurance payout to boot. Mighty forces indeed.
Versatile Venues
In addition to the shoebox acoustic concert hall, a completed Crown Point will also feature a black-box theater with state-of-the-art lighting and sound, a 35-foot ceiling, and a moveable stage and seating.
“Any theater group can come in and do whatever they want,” Julie says. “Plays can be put on traditionally or ‘in the round’ [the stage located in the middle of the seats], and the catwalk for the lighting will be top-notch.”
Further, a designated conference center will feature an on-site kitchen and over 300 banquet seats to fulfill a need for the many area nonprofits, as well as for outside entities desiring a destination retreat. As icing on the cake, Crown Point will have ample parking, a rarity in the locale.
Tours of the in-progress venue are being offered on a reservation basis. And the shoebox has already received its share of awed visitors.
“We literally have musicians from all over the world coming by to experience it,” Ken says. “They usually walk in, talk or sing a bit, and then ask, ‘Can I go get my instrument??’”
