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What does a band manager do?
“Nobody knows,” said Tom Carrico, who has managed bands in Washington since 1965, when he simultaneously managed his high school band, the Showmen, and played bass in it. “It’s different for every manager and every artist.”
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What does a band manager do?
“The manager does everything that no one else wants to do,” said Mark Wenner of venerable D.C. blues band the Nighthawks, which Carrico managed in the early 1970s.
What does a band manager do?
“He helps mold the trajectory that an artist has,” said Michael Shereikis of the Carrico-managed Chopteeth Afrofunk Big Band. “He tries to figure out all those questions that musicians often don’t have the bandwidth to think about.”
And what is a band manager like?
“The traditional manager is kind of an oily, unctuous kind of guy,” Shereikis said. That’s the stereotype, anyway. But, he said, “You meet Tom, and it’s not like that at all. You trust him right away.”
On Sunday, some of the artists who have trusted Carrico with their careers will celebrate his with a night of music at Rosensteel Hall in Silver Spring. At 72, Carrico is retiring from the biz.
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“I just realized, who am I kidding?” he said. “It’s time to move on.”
Carrico was 15 when he started managing the Showmen, an R&B cover band composed of students from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High. It was by default. The band practiced in his basement. He would book the group at teen clubs and VFWs around the area, anchored by a lucrative regular gig at St. John’s College High School. As a hardcore music fan, he would go to the Howard Theatre to see the likes of Otis Redding, James Brown and Martha and the Vandellas.
When he was a student at Montgomery College in Rockville, Carrico began booking such artists as the Youngbloods, the Guess Who and the Earl Scruggs Revue. Then he got into managing, working first with the Nighthawks, then such acts as Mary Chapin Carpenter, Billy Price and the Keystone Rhythm Band, Evan Johns and the H-Bombs, the Slickee Boys, Bobby Thompson and Eryn Michel.
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What is the key to the manager/artist bond?
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“It’s different for every manager and every artist,” Carrico said. “It’s how you craft a relationship that has you representing others while advising them — and trying not to take over or assume any power position. I think that’s one of the errors people make when they ask about a manager. They’ll ask clients of mine, ‘What’s it like working for Tom Carrico?’ I’ll go: ‘Hold on. I’m working for them. They don’t work for me.’”
He started working with Chopteeth 18 years ago, after walking into a Colombian restaurant on Georgia Avenue. Somebody said he might like the band, which boasts a dozen members.
“He plucked us out of obscurity,” said Shereikis, guitarist and singer in the band. “He saw something in us we’re not sure we saw. Tom is a big part of whatever success Chopteeth has had.”
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Like the music in D.C. itself, the type of music Carrico has worked with is diverse, from country to rock, blues to African funk. Is there something his clients have had in common?
“Great material,” he said. “I tend to favor songwriters. I tend to not favor bands that aren’t songwriters, not due to any built-in prejudice, just this is a rugged business. If you’re going to go for it, you’ve got to have all the goods to go for it.”
As for Carrico, he’s spent his five-decade career being … decent.
“Carrico has always been an absolute straight shooter. No shenanigans,” said Wenner. “He wasn’t cutthroat. I’ve met band managers that could whine their way into getting something done or just were so aggressive, these bullying kind of characters. And Carrico is just a nice guy.”
Ouch. A nice guy in the music business.
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I asked Carrico if a manager needs to be a jerk, except I used a different word, a ruder two-syllable word.
“I can see the advantages to it, for sure,” he said. “I tried to avoid falling into that.”
And it’s unlikely a jerk would get the warm send-off Carrico will receive Sunday, with a lineup that includes the Nighthawks, Chopteeth, King Soul, Goin’ Goin’ Gone, Billy Price and others he’s worked with. The show is a fundraiser for the After Dark Fund. Tickets are $25. For information, visit facebook.com/AfterDarkFund.
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