He's not so much brilliant as perhaps knowledgeable in how people do
things
like this.

Better than an empty room is a full room. Preferably a room with the
desired
acoustics. Achieving that is left to your creativity.

I can only add that after you re-record your tracks, play with mixing a
bit
of the original and a bit of the re-recorded tracks to suit your taste.



A local rock bar might allow running the track through the PA between acts,
then you could get the room chatter too. Perhaps even direct the crowd to
make noise.