Production News

Unleashed

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When the Brian Carn Unleashed Tour blew into Greensboro last weekend for a two night engagement at the Marriott Downtown it wasn’t the only star of the show. CareySounds latest version Dynacord Cobra V.2 System shared star billing at the event drawing rave reviews from the attendees. Major upgrades to the Cobra system include the addition of the new EV DVX 15” loudspeakers and new power and processing provided by EV TG Tour Grade amplifies with built-in RCM 26 system processors and new F.I.R. presets.

The unprecedented power and clarity in the newest version of the compact Dynacord Cobra was clearly evident as the high-fidelity system performed flawlessly throughout the engagement. The new V.2 version of the Cobra is now exclusively available in America through CareySound.
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Oh The Weather Outside Is Frightful

Oh the weather outside is frightful,
But inside its all warm and delightful,
So if you’re still deciding on whether to go,
On with the show, On with the show, On with the show.

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The bad weather we are experiencing all across the Carolina’s is not going to deny the North and South Carolina Association of Festivals and Events their conclave in Charlotte this weekend. The 2010 Combined Showfest will continue as planned at the Hilton Charlotte University. CareySound is here and ready to provide the audio and lighting production for the artist showcase on Sunday evening. So please be careful traveling if you are going to be joining us.

Production Update

Having provided quality production services for thousands of events over our 31+ year history, CareySound Productions enters its fourth decade of service with new energy saving technologies and a host new services. CareySound takes great pride in offering it’s clients the highest degree of expertise and customer service in specialty event production services.

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New Technology -

  • Call it Cobra ver. 2.0. We have expanded our inventory of Dynacord Cobra boxes to over 24 boxes including Cobra 4 Far long throw boxes and upgraded our popular systems voice with the best signal processing and the most powerful EV amplifier ever, the 7,000 watt TG-7 with RCM-26 remote control DSP module.
  • EV Phoenix subs and monitors. This new implementation of the Electro-Voice Manifold Technology provides even more output per cubic foot of cabinet than it's predecessor, the venerable EV MT4 System. The new Phoenix Subs produce more acoustical output at lower frequencies with two 18" loudspeakers each than the original did with four 18's. The new Phoenix Monitor produces a spectacular 6 db more output than any other contemporary rival and does it in an amazingly small low profile wedge.
  • Roland RSS V-Mix digital system. More than just a digital replacement for an analogue mixing desk, the M-400 is the control surface for a complete end-to end digital audio system. Just add microphones on one end and stacks n' racks on the other and you have a complete sound system.
  • We were so impressed with the new Roland digital gear we added new Roland Ethernet Audio Communication (REAC) digital backbones to all of our systems providing high quality 24-bit/96kHz audio over Cat5e cables. No more bulky audio snake systems with all of the noise, buzzes and signal quality losses associated with analogue audio over miles of copper wire.
  • No longer do you need to use massive amounts of electrical power to light a concert stage. Elation Lighting is leading a revolution in the lighting industry with their new line of fixtures utilizing new high-output/low-power usage Light Emitting Diodes (LED's) as light sources.

Production Bundles

We have a solution for the Recession Blues - Bundle Up & Save.
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Our services and expertise now go way beyond just sound and lights. Utilizing over 31 years of industry connections CareySound has formed a partnership with a group of other like minded production professionals. Drawing upon their respective fields of expertise and extensive inventories we now offer a complete event production experience. With the formation of The Production Partners Network we now offer the following:

Sterling AV
Sterling Audio Visual is a full-service supplier of audio-visual equipment, staging, and technical support. They offer the most modern equipment and the highest quality of technology. Sterling 's most valuable asset is their team of trained audio-visual professionals.

SRO Entertainment
As one of the fastest growing artist booking agents on the east coast, last year SRO booked more than five million dollars in national talent including the biggest and hottest Nashville stars. The company produces events from small private single family celebrations to major corporate events for Fortune 500 companies.

Joe Mama's Mobile Stages
Professionally designed from the ground up to work outdoor shows, concerts, festivals and special events, we provide fast, hassle-free setup service, with many flexible configurations to accommodate both small and large events.

Road King Backline
No more guitar amps that don't work and drum kits missing parts - our newest production partner, Road King Backline, provides the best rental band gear in the Southeast. They maintain meticulous care of their large inventory of new and vintage band equipment.

Call us today at (336) 292-8282 and we will coordinate the best production team in the Southeast for you. We offer special bundled packages that deliver the finest production values anywhere.

One Enchanted Evening

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As college students everywhere deal with budget cuts and tuition increases, Winston-Salem State University (WSSU) is working hard to provide financial aid for students who qualify academically, but fall short financially.

“It’s paramount that we provide young, talented minds with access to a university education,” said Donald J. Reaves, Ph.D., chancellor of WSSU. “To increase the number of scholarships we are awarding, we need the support of our communities, alumni, members of the faith community and other friends of the university to support scholarships.”

“One of my strategic goals is to improve the student experience,” Chancellor Reaves continued. “A way to do that is to provide the financial assistance deserving students need.”

To assist in that effort, WSSU hosted an evening of musical enjoyment featuring GRAMMY® award-winning songstress, Patti Austin on campus in the Kenneth R. Williams Auditorium. Along with performing classic R&B and jazz numbers, Austin also performed with the WSSU Burke Singers under the direction of D’Walla Simmons Burke, director of choral programs at WSSU. To complete the evening.

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CareySound technology on display at WSSU concert.

CareySound Joins NCAF&E

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CareySound is a proud member of the North Carolina Association of Festivals and Events. The 20 year old association was formed as a year-round forum for Festival and Event coordinators, key volunteers, and vendors to the industry. NCF&E facilitates information sharing, training, networking, and identification of resources for Festivals and Events throughout North Carolina and serves as a clearing house for information on Festivals and Events staged throughout the year in North Carolina.

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CareySound has a long history with festivals in North Carolina having provided production assistance for some of the states most prominent events. Festivals including: Fun 4th in Old Greensboro, Lexington Barbeque Festival, Everybody’s Day Festival, The Heritage Festival, NC Seafood Festival, The Eastern Music Festival and, as recently as last week, The Festival of LIghts in Greensboro.

Please join us at the NCAF&E annual Carolina Showfest 2009 this February 7-9th at the Hyatt Hotel in Greenville, SC. Click here for more information.

Greensboro CROP Walk 2008

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The Greater Greensboro CROP Hunger Walk is an annual 5k community walk that raises desperately needed funds to feed the hungry, not only in Greensboro, but all over the world.

This year's walk was in memory of a friend and colleague of CROP in Greensboro, Bill Glasgow (1926-2008). Bill cleverly enlisted and orchestrated the 5,000 participants to march in solidarity against hunger through downtown Greensboro, raising over $230,000.

Last year, $57,500 (or twenty-five percent) of the money raised went to Greensboro Urban Ministry's Potter's House Community Kitchen which provides a free meal to over 350 people every day. Seventy-five percent went to Church World Service, an international relief agency that provides emergency aid and supports sustainable self-help development.

Over the past 28 years, the Greensboro CROP Hunger Walk has raised a cumulative total of over $4 million with more than $957,000 going to Potter's House.
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John Carey - HE

CareySound joined the Carey family (Lynn, John and James) in this years CROP Walk. They have walked in all walks since the inception. CareySound provided the audio for this years event. It is not too late to contribute to CROP. CLICK HERE to contribute online.

No More Wine(ing)

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It’s harvest time at Chateau Morrisette in Floyd, VA and that means today was the last event in their annual outdoor summer concert season. CareySound was honored to be chosen to provide audio for the series. The challenging event site is a large natural amphitheater built into the side of steep hill next to the winery. They expressed that they had never been satisfied with the sound in previous years as they tried various solutions from a plethora of sound companies. In particular they were concerned with the sound being able to project to the back third of the seating area at the top of the hill.
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CareySound employed many new technical innovations to address their concerns and to help them to keep the series in budget. Reaching the far upper regions of the audience proved an easy chore for the powerful Dynacord Cobra 4 FAR boxes flown in the stages built in speaker bays. The near field coverage was handled with Cobra 2 TOPs sitting on top of EV Phoenix manifold technology sub cabinets. The system was powered with the new Dynacord Power H and EV Tour Grade amplifiers.

At the heart of the system beat the RSS V-Mix Digital System by Roland. With the new Roland V-Mix comes a whole new definition the term “briefcase engineer”. It’s not simply a digital replacement of a mixing console, but an entire digital audio system that only needs the addition of microphones and ‘front of house’ stacks & racks to complete the picture. It is delivered in two small cases that can be carried by a single soundman and includes; 48 mix channels, 16 aux/monitor busses, 24 channels of insertable comps, 24 channels of insertable gates, four stereo digital effects processors, system graphic eq’s, a digital two track recorder/player, a digital REAC baackbone carried over a single CAT 5e network cable, stage drop boxes AND, with the addition of a small laptop computer run wirelessly over Wi-Fi, a complete 12 mix monitor system driving our new powerful low profile EV Phoenix Manifold monitor wedges.

The stage sits at the bottom of a steep bowl and every piece of the system had to travel to the stage in a 4WD pickup truck. Even adding the time it took to get the system to the stage with the time needed to fly the Cobra boxes, it took only slightly over an hour to have the system up and running.
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Appearing at this years festival were:

July 12:
Bob Margolin and Scott Perry

July 19:
Adrian Duke and Robin Wynn

August 9:
West End Mambo and Scott Perry (Front Porch Swing)

October 11:
The Catalinas and The Key West Band
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John Carey - HE, Randy Hart - System TECH, Ken Carey - System TECH

Vengeance

It was a no holds barred cage match as mixed martial arts stars Mark “the Titan” Kerr and Jeff “the Snowman” Monson and 24 other fighters battled it out at the Cabarrus Arena in Concord last saturday night. CareySound was on hand to provide the lighting for the Vengeance Fighting Championship.

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Randy “the LightJockey” Hart - LD, Mike “the AluminumMan” Birney - Structural TECH
Dimming & control by Applied Electronics
LED Lighting and movers by Eleation

Star-B-Q-Fest

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For the second year the City of Salem, VA Parks & Rec. chose CareySound to provide audio production and our partner SRO productions to provide the entertainers. In addition to local favorites Acoustic Endeavors from Roanoke, country stars Heartland and Billy Currington provided the music. One of our Dynacord Cobra systems proved once again to be the perfect solution for the sold out show. This year we added the Roland V-Mix to FOH duties. Our new Phoenix monitors were controlled by a MacBook Pro on stage connected wirelessly to the FOH desk running Roland M400-RCS remote control system software.

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Heartland
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Billy Currington
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Dynacord Cobra II (6-Cobra II Tops & 4-Cobra II Subs) and sold out crowd.
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EV Phoenix PX1122M monitors.
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10,000 watts of EV TG-7 for FOH and 5.600 watts of EV CP400S for four mixes of monitors.

John Carey - HE, Ken Carey ME, Kent Martin of SRO Productions - Artists

Production Tagteam Partners

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It’s been a productive month for our production department and the fulfillment of a dream of mine.

I love being a SoundMan. It’s the reason I went into business and it is my passion and, if I might be excused for a moment of self-effacement, I’ve gotten pretty good at it. Even after 40 years of being a SoundMan I still find it exciting. CareySound is the embodiment of that passion for audio excellence, never being satisfied with the status quo of ‘state of the art’, always searching for the perfect wave. That’s where issues arise. In this age of convergence it’s not enough to focus one one specialty. To stay in business you are increasingly expected to provide it all, hence our growth into staging, backline, lighting, video, recording and, as I later declared “we provide everything but the band,” booking agent. As a matter of fact I was the creator of One Call - Simple. And it was a success, but it did not grow out a sudden interest in lighting or staging for instance. It was born out of necessity.

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I was being asked to provide these services and I could not find any willing partners to provide the requested services so it was left to me to add them to our repertoire. Now, everybody is doing everything and the quality of service is going down the tubes. ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ comes to mind and not in the sense of true polymaths like Leonardo da Vince, Isaac Newton or Thomas Jefferson. More like “Hi, I’m Larry and this is my brother Darrel and this is my other brother Darrel” and their ‘Anything for a Buck’ business as portrayed on the 80’s sitcom Newhart . Suddenly, expertise and experience was taking a back seat to ‘anything for a buck.’ This has gone to the extreme where I found a picture yesterday of my staging specialist operating a video camera on a competitors web site proclaiming him to be a video specialist. He is a really great person and a handy guy willing to tackle whatever needs to be done, but he is not a video professional, he was just available. There is a solution, this is where my dream comes in.

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As I announced last week in my post Old Friends - New Partners that a great friend and colleague of mine, Jim Reese and his company Joe Mamas Mobile Staging, is the latest specialist to partner with CareySound joining Sterling AV (A/V specialist), Road King (backline specialist), Here 2 Hear (recording specialist), SRO Productions (artist booking specialist) and GoodBuyGuys.com (expendables specialists). All of these respected, like minded businesses working together as a team to bring you the best possible professionals to provide you the best possible experience not one company trying to everything to everybody. So when you call CareySound or any my friends you get an entire team of professional specialists working their hardest for you. God has blessed me with a lot of great friends and any friend of CareySound is a friend of yours.

One Call - Production Tagteam Partners - Simple

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A Week At The Homestead

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I am never in short supply of volunteers when we get the call of duty from The Homestead Resort in Virginia, so to settle the issue I assigned myself to the task. It seemed the like the perfect way to get back in the work grove after my vacation spending the week at The Homestead. If only all of our jobs were this enjoyable.
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The Electro-Voice family of products once again provided the perfect tools for the job this time featuring the Qrx loudspeakers. Utilizing their unique asymmetrical horn patterns, small horizontal profile and wide bandwidth made covering the entire grand ballroom a breeze. A perfect fit. Call us now to provide the perfect solution for your next event.

The local crew really knows how to treat a SoundMan there. Thanks again guys.

I'm A Believer

We just can't get enough of that Monkey stuff. The Davie Jones concert was such a success in Knoxville last month that another date was scheduled with him in Asheville this past weekend and once again CareySound was there.

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We broke out the new EV REV wireless microphone system with RE410 capsule.

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Midas Verona - Dynacord Cobra - FOH, DDA C12M - EV Qrx - MON

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EV Precsion Series amplifiers is the power behind the monitors.

John Carey - FOH, Chris Burney - LD, Ken Carey - HE

Scratching An Niche

CareySound has been providing event production expertise for almost 30 years. We have always been a leader in providing the newest high tech solutions to the table. In our revamping of the production department over the last six months we have recognized the growing demands of our corporate clients and have added a host of new specialized high end gear to our inventory to met those demands. It''s one thing to be known for concert audio, we've been doing that for 30 years, but there are unique needs in the corporate event world which have much more demanding requirements. It's just not expectable to bring the same old rock and roll rig to the high stakes world of corporate AV.

To meet this demand we have strengthen our partnership with Sterling AV of Winston-Salem to provide the best in professional video services. This partnership has given us the ability to focus on our key strengths of audio and lighting. Included in all our our new gear is three complete Dynacord Cobra systems.
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One of our Cobra rigs accompanied us to Knoxville this past weekend to the Downtown Marriott for a private corporate event featuring Davie Jones, formally of the Monkeys.

Music Fills The Air

CareySound's production division has been busy providing music to thousands of happy concert goers throughout the summer with over 40 events in July alone and we still have another month to go. Her are a few of the highlights.

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Aaron Tippin

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Mike Birney - Staging & Lights, Randy Hart - LD, Ken Carey - HE, Gus - BE

Elvis Sighting

If you take one part American Jailers Association Annual Training Session & Trade Expo and add one part Oryland in Nashville, now add in a pinch of Elvis, stir it all up with a Dynacord Cobra System and you get a recipe for one interesting show this last week for CareySound and crew.
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John Carey - FOH, Ken Carey - LD