So You Wanna Be a Rock ‘N’ Roll Star? Ethan’s Life Before Radio

Before radio became my life, I wanted to be a folk rock 'n' roll star. I figured, if I didn't give it a go then, it would never happen. The adventure was mind-blowing.

After graduating from Ithaca College in '73, I immediately tossed my Bachelor's in Communications degree on the shelf, picked up my Guild acoustic guitar, and teamed up with my buddy, Garry Manual, to form the folk-rock group, Sunup. We played colleges, clubs, biker bars, coffee houses, or anywhere that would let us play.

The uniqueness of Sunup were our original tunes which Garry penned. Sure, we mixed in cover tunes from the Eagles, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan, etc. But our fans came in droves to hear our own stuff. We played a club near the University of Rochester every Sunday evening, for about two years, called The Bungalow, where Sunup fans would order up pitchers of Genny Cream Ale, and help us trash President Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon with an original tune called, "Open Up."

Over the six years we were together, we were lucky to have a dedicated enough following, where area concert promoters began to take notice. One of our most memorable moments of the band's short career was when we were asked to open a show for Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt at the Auditorium Theatre in Rochester, NY on February 6, 1974.

Before the show, we were warming up in a tiny practice room backstage when their tour bus pulled up. In walks Jackson and Linda, with Little Feat's Lowell George tagging along behind. Lowell was dating Linda at the time. Jackson sees us immediately and walks right in, asking Garry if he can play his Gibson Firebird electric guitar. So, here we are actually jamming with Jackson Browne. Yikes! About 40 seconds in, Jackson realizes there's a fruit basket in his dressing room. So, he turns around quickly, and proceeds to accidentally bang the Gibson into a metal pole that ran through the center of our tiny room, hands the guitar back to Garry with a quick apology, and races out to grab a banana from the fruit basket.

We were thrilled to be asked to open shows for Jimmy Cliff in Ithaca, and the James Gang in Rochester. For the James Gang show, we could tell that all the crowd wanted to hear was "Funk #49", and we're up on stage playing our rearranged medley of "Nights In White Satin" and "Day In The Life". Thank God nobody threw any rocks or bottles at us! Yeah, we cut our set short that evening to the delight of all the James Gang fans.

To make an incredibly long story very short, Sunup stayed together right up until I was hired here at I-95 in February of '79, and my partner, Garry, and I have remained close friends. There have been various reunions, and we recently played an open mic night at the legendary Cafe Lena's Coffee House in Saratoga, New York. We do have one CD for sale titled, Saratoga Sunrise, originally recorded, and available in June of 1995, which is available on iTunes. Occasionally, you can Mindy and I playing an open mic night at Widow Browns.

Listen to Ethan Carey on the Ethan & Lou Show weekdays from 5:30-10AM on 95.1 FM. You can listen online at i95rock.com/listen-live/ or by downloading the radioPup app for your mobile device.