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Great Taste, Less Lame

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At 44, it isn't so strange that Ray Carbone has turned to punk rock as his salvation. When he was 17, growing up in New Jersey, he'd journey across the river and stay with friends in New York City — friends who loved hanging out with the Ramones at CBGB. Carbone got to know the band and started amassing a library of loudness as it was produced. He'd collected thousands of records by the time he moved to South Florida in his 20s. The Violent Femmes, Black Flag, the Damned, and the Smithereens figured heavily, but that didn't mean he cherished his original vinyl copies of rare Miles Davis and Charlie Parker releases any less.

Soon enough, more than 3,500 albums cluttered his 1,100-square-foot house. "Minor Threat, Fugazi..." he muses, thumbing through the stacks. "I swear, I don't even remember buying some of this stuff."

During the '80s, Carbone worked in real estate property management, pulling down close to $100,000 annually. That career, he says with a shiver, was so stressful that it affected his health. "So amazingly horrible. I wouldn't go back to that for all the money in the world."

Taking his life savings — roughly a year's salary — and sinking it into an old coffeehouse, Carbone muscled his way out of the daily grind. With his typical go-it-alone flair, he decorated the club himself, creating a beautifully tacky treasure as well as a way to put his love of music to work. "I got into blues later in life, when I worked as a DJ," he says. When he opened Ray's Downtown Blues Bar in June 1995 (his first live show took place that Labor Day weekend), his mainstays included Bill Wharton the Sauce Boss and the Nighthawks. Ray's became a roots-music destination.

But the punk spirit and DIY entrepreneurship became the club's salvation when, by the late 1990s, blues, caught in a cyclical rut, lost some currency. When the fancy, thematic Bamboo Room opened in Lake Worth, many of the top-tier touring acts transferred there. Carbone started working with young local bands like Doorway 27, Black River Circus, and Boxelder, cultivating a younger crowd. Not just a commercial choice, he genuinely enjoyed the vigor of the new music.

Just rolling with the changes, Carbone shrugs. "I do whatever I've gotta do to make it work. I pissed off some of the blues regulars, but, you know, I can't afford to bring in acts that cost $2,000 to $3,000 and only have 50 people in the room. Unfortunately, I don't have that luxury."

Adding in the Lounge, Respectable Street, and Spanky's, the 500 block of Clematis became a youth-oriented party zone. The odd blues guitarists or harpists would still come down for the occasional weekend show, but Carbone had become the official manager for Black River Circus, a twin-guitarist modern rock band, and an increasingly younger crowd found the dive-bar ambiance at Ray's irresistible. It was a cool place to play.

Stumbling through a midlife crisis and a painful (and expensive) divorce, Carbone sought solace at the club. But during the day, he worked as a manager at the chain-mall music store FYE. "I'm single for the first time in 20 years," he said then, "but I'm happy. Yeah, I gotta get up to get here at 10 a.m. after being at the club until 3. But I'm hanging out with people who're genuinely having a good time. It's better than digging ditches."

On a Sunday night, mid-January 2001, the darkened streets near the west end of Clematis were unusually crowded with parked cars. Collegiate-looking white kids parked Jettas and Civics, pumped change into meters, and hustled into Ray's. At the front door, a big-biceped guy in a tight T-shirt and a frown checked IDs and ushered couples inside. The front room was packed like never before — hundreds of kids squatted, kneeled, or sat as close as possible to the stage.

The pool room in the back was uncharacteristically, uncomfortably full, every tattered couch occupied, more 20-somethings pacing, drinking, smoking under the fluorescent bulbs and graffittied ceiling.

Rocking Horse Winner, a chiming, melodic band with a winsome frontwoman, was on the stage, spinning out its stunningly simple, pretty pop song "Elementary." Earlier, singer Jolie Lindholm had breathlessly informed a fan that she'd also done some singing with Dashboard Confessional — the new project from Boca Raton singer/songwriter Chris Carrabba. "He already has this huge national following," she reverently reported. "He's gonna be superfamous!"

Up next, on one corner of the stage, under a single white light, Carrabba played a set of songs on an acoustic guitar. At the time, "emo" music was in the process of defining its canon and marking its territory, and it was clear that Carrabba had grown to become the genre's bellwether. The cross-legged kids on the floor fidgeted with anticipation and awe.

Carrabba was performing with just a small PA system, and Lindholm joined him onstage for one song, but the sound had strangely filled out somehow. At first, it seemed like some prerecorded magic was at work, but suddenly, the real answer became apparent: The crowd, the young women in particular, had been singing along to every single word of each and every song. With a smile that belied his own amazement, Carrabba would move his face away from the mic, stop singing for several lines — and the audience would fill in for him.

Afterward, Grant Hall, the stunned promoter that evening, counted a stack of bills and mused, "Was that wild or what? It was like being in church!"

The strange scene repeated itself two or three more times, with Carrabba's flock hovering near their savior to glean lyrics or guitar lines, getting as close as possible to the songs of heartbreak and regret that seemed to have been penned exclusively for them. But the legendary shows — Carbone remembers 350 in paid attendance one night — quickly outgrew the confines of Ray's. Now Carrabba belongs to the world (he's currently recording a new record with producer Daniel Lanois of Peter Gabriel/U2/ Brian Eno fame).

"Dude, it was amazing," Carbone said at the time. "It was really weird, like a cult. He'd stop singing, and they're still singing his songs. I was blown away. I've never seen that, especially not in my club. I haven't seen that for the Rolling Stones, for God's sake."

Other successful national pop-punk acts, including Sum 41 and the Offspring, with teenaged throngs in tow, also stopped by Ray's on their way up.

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