‘WHO the hell is Carman?” is one question nobody in New York has to feel bad about asking. Just watch your language.
Carman Licciardello – just Carman to his fans – is a singing, dancing sky pilot who has sold millions of Christian rock albums while flying under pop music’s radar. And he’s landing here in Gotham for a free concert at Madison Square Garden Thursday.
The 44-year-old singing preacher wraps his politically incorrect judgments in snappy sound bites, but he’s very serious and vocal about wanting prayer restored to schools, abortions to stop and old-time values to return to an America he compares to a modern-day Sodom and Gomorra.
“When it gets to the point where people would rather come out of the closet than clean it, that’s a sure sign that God’s judgment is going to fall,” he quips.
A Carman show is a version of rock ‘n’ roll from the AC/DC school, complete with eye candy, fireworks, cranked amps and dancers. The music is stylistically diverse. “Satan Bites the Dust” is set to a rockabilly beat, there’s a light metal treatment of “I Feel Jesus” and Carman even raps to “Who’s in the House (Jesus).”
The shows cost an estimated $150,000 a pop, according to Billboard magazine, but Carman doesn’t charge a penny – that’s out of the question.
“I could probably do 2,000- to 3,000-seat theaters a night charging, but I’d rather open up the doors and fill up 20,000 seats and have everybody who wants to come, come. Families and kids from the inner city who have no money can come. Once you’ve done that, there’s no going back.”
To pay for the indoor fireworks, the nine-piece band, eight dancers, costumes, lighting, video screens and amps, and the arena rental fees, he passes a hat.
“In all of the years of my concert ministry we never collected enough to completely cover the production costs of a show,” he says, adding that he supplements it with merchandise sales and personal donations.
This practice has not made Carman a rich man. If he were to stop working the concert ministry, he’d lead a “modest life – pretty much like an average blue-collar worker.”
“When I go out on tour, everything I have is at stake. My house, savings account – everything. But I can’t worry because that’s the way it’s been for 25 years,” he says.
New York is uncharted territory for Carman, who’s had no problem packing arenas in other cities – including the 71,000-seat Texas Stadium, where his 1995 concert was one of the biggest Christian music events staged in America.
According to his manager, Rendy Lovelady (who also manages top rated Christian act Jars of Clay), Carman has been averaging crowds of about 10,000 a night on this tour.
Will he fill the Garden’s 19,000 seats? God only knows.
Carman appears at Madison Square Garden Thursday. Show time is 8 p.m. The concert is free.