Mistress Carrie spent 22 years on air at WAAF, plus a few others in the promotions department. She has spent most of her life listening and loving the station. She figured one day it would all end with her "moving on" as many in the business do. But what she and many did not expect was for its parent company to sell the frequency to K-Love for ten million dollars; something that also happened to the Sound in Los Angeles. On February 20, WAAF ceased to exist, leaving Boston without the Active Rock station that gave birth to bands like Godsmack, and built hits like Shinedown's cover of Simple Man. (If you think we are making this up, the clip is in the podcast)
In this episode, we cover Carrie's early days at the station and how WAAF went from being a Worcester station to a Boston mainstay. Some of it had to do with people migrating to the suburbs, but it doesn't hurt that the station built relationships with artists, sports figures and actors.
For now, you can find Mistress Carrie on her new podcast which you should subscribe to immediately. You can expect participation from many of the people who have her cell number like David Draiman from Disturbed, Godsmack, Shinedown, Cory Taylor from Slipknot, Adam Gonthier from Three Days Grace and many others.
Fearless prediction: Her podcast is on Simplecast which was just purchased from Pandora/Sirius XM - there's room for her up there, isn't there?
We spoke about Carrie's new studio and at looks fantastic. Those a 4 SMB7 Microphones, and the console appears to be a Rodecaster.
Thanks to Jon Gay who we had on our podcast a few weeks ago. He hooked us up with Mistress Carrie so we could do this podcast. Jon interviewed Carrie as well and went a little deeper into her involvement with the Troops and work in the community. Something else that is really neat is Jon uses Simplecast's transcription feature - so you can read the podcast. Fancy!
Hear Jon's interview with Carrie below.
July 18, 2013, Shinedown came by Power 97 to play for about 20 listeners. First off, 99 percent of established acts NEVER DO THIS the day of a show. They were going to be opening for Kiss that night. Before the 2 song set at the radio station was to begin, Brent and Zack from Shinedown asked to speak with me. I thought, "Oh shit... the band isn't happy about something. Maybe it was the setup, or someone was weird. Turns out they just wanted to thank me for having them down to the station and supporting them. A few years earlier, I had told them that one of their songs was a catalyst to change in my life and somehow they remembered that. They were only scheduled to play two songs but played a third. I'm still moved by the gesture.