Let's Active

CareySound's first tour was with Mitch Easter's band Let's Active shown playing here at Washington & Lee University in Virginia.
Let's Active

Papillon's

What can you say about Papillon's. My best friend Simon Ritchy, first opened this club in the Quaker Village Shopping Center as a disco following the success of the movie Saturday Night Fever starring a young John Travolta. When the disco craze abruptly ended he started booking national rock acts in the room and for several years Greensboro was host to the biggest, most successful rock club in the state. In an era of drugs, sex and rockin' roll, perhaps the biggest unknown secret of it's success, and then it's eventual down fall, was that Simon was the most honest and honorable promoters in the south. In that he stood alone.

In the picture bellow Elvin Bishop performs to yet another sold out crowd.
Elvin Bishop?

Blackfoot

One of my favorite bands at the time, Blackfoot performed at the Kenneth R. Williams Auditorium on the campus of Winston-Salem State University. We have done a lot of shows at WSSU over the years but this one was notable for being the only rock show we ever did there.
Blackfoot
Blackfoot 2

Central Campus Craze

This was a outdoor festival at NC State featuring the first Brown system.
NC StateCenteral Campus Craze 3
NC StateCenteral Campus CrazeNC StateCenteral Campus Craze 1

Coffee

There are two people that are most responsible for our success in the audio business here in Southeast. Both are great friends. One is Simon Ritchy owner of the states biggest rock night club Papillon's and the other is James " Coffee" Yourse founder of the legendary band Covacus. Coffee and his band Covacus helped us make the move from nightclubs to major concert halls. Coffee's current band is Sweet Dreams.
Covacus 2
These pictures of Covacus were taken at a show in the collisium in Roanoke, VA. The first person to the left in the picture below is Barbara Weathers who was still in high school at the time. She latter went on to be the featured female vocalist in the band Atlantic Star (thanks for the correction Arron) and was responsible for their biggest hits with her knock out ballads.
Covacus 1

Secret Garden

Located on Davies Street in down town Greensboro, Secret Garden was the second club to open in this spot after the Boardwalk closed. It was owen by Que Lee (his second club in Greensboro) and here we are loading in for a show.
secret Garden Load-in 1

Cosmos II

Richard Bowling's dad owned Greenboro's first sound company Bowling Sound. Richard owned a succession of Greensboro night spots. We started doing shows for him at his Florida Street Club Cosmos II and worked with him until he stopped doing shows. This is a picture of one of our many nights at the club.
Cosmos II ?

Alkaphonic's

The many faces of Greensboro's own, The Alkaphonic's. Mike Armeniox was their Soundman.
Alchaphonics
Alkaphonics 1
Contact Sheet 17

Friday's

Tate Street at the campus of UNC Greensboro, believe it or not, was the center of the music scene in Greensboro, It boasted no less than four live music venues in one block. The biggest was a restaurant during the day named Friday's that they turned into a club at night. Among the many bands that we did at that club was R.E.M, The Bad Brains, The Fly's and the db's. Pictured below was a the local favorite The Alkaphonic's. Keith Roscoe had his guitar shop upstairs across the street.
Contact Sheet 24Contact Sheet 14

100% Failure Rate

This was one of the first AHB (Allen & Heath Burnell) consoles sold to the US market and it had the unfortunate notoriety of having a 100% failure rate (it was officially 50% but all four of the ones we got broke immediately). It was the first desk that the British manufacturer had farmed out to another company to be made and it was on of the most poorly made desk I have ever had. It wasn't that it was a bad design, it was just badly made. The company that made the desk for AHB stole the next design and sold it under their own name Sound Tracks who went on to become DiGiCo. It's a small world isn't it.

I had designed a monitor console that I was ready to build when AHB sent me one of the desks for all of the trouble we had had. Like I said earlier, the design was fine, it was the workmanship that was terrible, so I decided to use it as a platform instead of starting from scratch. Here I am starting to dismantle the desk. I completely striped it down, removed the faders and the subgroup buttons and rebuilt it into a our first dedicated monitor console. It had twenty inputs and was capable of 14 mixes when I was finished.
Contact Sheet 27

& Son

I would never have thought that John would have grown up to be a SoundMan. Here he is at less than one year old at our warehouse on East Sycamore St.
Contact Sheet 28

East Sycamore St.

This warehouse on East Sycamore was another of CareySound's many home's. This was the sales counter. This picture was taken 25 years ago. showed up to work one day to find Mike standing on the front poarch and cops and police cars all over the place. They had found a dead homeless man across the street and were looking for his shoes. We moved shortly thereafter.
Contact Sheet

The Catalina

The console, not the band. This was Electro-Voices first concert mixing desk before they bought Greg Mackies TAPCO and introduced their second series the PANJO. This is an early picture of the desk taken at Simon Ritchy's club Papillon's.
Contact Sheet 20
Here is another shot of the Catalina with three side cars making for a 36 channel desk. An unheard of number of inputs for that era. The desk was eventually sold to Jim Reese of Audio and Light Rental.
NC StateCenteral Campus Craze 2

Once More Back In The Back Yard

I've lost track of exactly how many different homes that CareySound has had over the years but needless to say it's been a lot. I started out in my backyard and then returned their a few years later for a short while. Here is a picture of Jay Speetjens helping to put up a work building in my back yard where he built a lot of loudspeakers for us and Associated Sound Products of Raleigh. My neighbors "encouraged" me to move back into a more suitable building.
Jay working om Shop Normandy
home office IMG_0007

David Emory

David Emory
Dave was a co-owener of Associated Sound Products in Raleigh with his partner Steve Foley. We were very close to them and traded shows from time to time. I guess they call that networking now. Dave and Steve are now rich after selling their business to their employes a few years back and are living the good life that comes to all hardworking soundmen. OK - so I lied a little and they aren't even rich in spirit but they did sell their business, or was it give it away, I forget. David is now one of our sales reps working for Bob Edsall who owns Applied Audio Marketing out of Asheville.

The Hayes Brothers

Burly Hayes, owner of Somewhere Else Tavern, and his brother Steve produced an outdoor concert on a farm. I remember that Bill Kennedy talked me into doing it for next to nothing (I'm not exactly sure what he had to do with the Hayse brothers) but I had insisted that we get get extra money if it rained. It's bad enough doing a show for next to free in the middle of the sweltering southern heat, but add rain and it can be down right torture, hence the hazard pay. It rained and we didn't get the extra pay, but at least it was hot and the only toilet that was in a small cabin behind the stage plugged up really early in the day. On retrospect, looking at that strange pile of speakers, I guess that we were lucky to get any money at all. We all had to start somewhere and we started Somewhere Else. Thanks Burly.
Hayse Broth Show

Greensboro City Stage

Ok, this wasn't an official stage at City Stage. It was an alternative festival that was at the same time and in the same place as City Stage. If I remeber the City didn't want to have two street festivals so close together and they made the Arts Council integrate this event into their festival. The stage was located next to the parking garage on Davie St. If you look real close you'll see a young Jay Speejens with his Soundcraft 400B desk doing monitor duty. This was the first of our Brown systems. Also not my favorite performer vocal microphone of all time the EV PL80.
Alternative City stage

Edwin McCain

Edwin McCain at ECU about 1995.
Edwin McCain ECU 3
Edwin McCain ECU Edwin McCain ECU 5
Ramsa WRS-852 and EV MT4 system.