Today we’d like to introduce you to Chrissy Rivera.
Hi Chrissy, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I was born and raised in Queens, NY. Ever since I can remember, I was interested in all aspects of the Entertainment industry, and pretty much followed that path over the years. In the 1980’s I was working at NBC and Paramount Pictures in Manhattan, as well as managing several rock / metal bands around the tri-state area. I grew tired of the cut-throat corporate world and quit my Paramount Pictures position to work on a horse farm on Long Island for 1/2 the salary. I didn’t care about the money, I just wanted to work somewhere peaceful. I stayed away from the Entertainment field for quite a few years. It was more rewarding for me to care for horses – they showed me instant gratification for all that I did for them, more so than humans. As hard as the work was mucking stalls and grooming horses, my horse world gave me the calm I left the corporate world for. Eventually I moved to Upstate, NY, bought a house and some property that had several buildings on the land, and I opened up my own cageless Animal Boarding facility. Shortly after that, my husband, Pete, and I, started a band called BedRock – a fun 80’s Hairband Rock / Hard Rock cover band. He played bass and organized the musicians, I managed the band, recruited musicians for it, booked gigs, put up ads and promos, etc. We had a very successful run in NY with BedRock, the band performed at casinos, festivals, sporting events (hockey games, car races, polo match), amusement parks, shopping malls, Orange County Choppers Cafe (at that time, the headquarters of the TV show), radio station appearances as well as the radio station’s Halloween event. Our band members were like family to us, there was a wonderful sense of belonging, deep communal harmony, and a tight knit bond that is very hard to describe unless you were part of it. There were a few musician switches and changes over the years, but for the most part many of us enjoyed working with each other. A lot of laughs and great times. The BedRock NY years are something I treasure fiercely in my heart, those years managing the band mean the world to me for so many reasons. The band was in NY for 7 years. Financially it just became too much of a burden to pay $10,000 in property taxes on our home, and $17,000 on my boarding facility each year, The Upstate NY Winters were also taking their toll on us, so in October of 2020, Pete and I decided to move to Florida. This was right in the middle of the Covid Pandemic. We began recruiting Florida musicians for BedRock to then convert it from a NY band to a Florida band. Gary, one of the guitarists from BedRock NY moved to Florida too and remained in the band. They did one performance at a local fair, and did one other performance at a local venue. Just after that 2nd performance, sadly, my husband, Pete, passed away from Covid complications just 9 months after we moved from NY and after he played just 2 shows in BedRock Florida.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
After Pete passed away, that was, of course, a major devastating blow to me in so many ways. I didn’t even want to be alive anymore without him. He and I were super close, the two of us were inseparable, it crushed me to the point where I could barely function. Everything I knew and loved about life was ripped from me so violently. Mentally and physically I was a mess, not only because of my home life being shattered, but there was the big decision of what to do about the band. BedRock was our baby – mainly his baby. But something we worked so hard on together to build, something that was very successful in NY, we were only 9 months into our move to Florida when tragedy struck, we didn’t even know if we could make BedRock a success in Florida with the two of us, and now I was faced with the decision of whether or not to continue the band without him to try to do that myself. I can tell you at that time I was vehemently against keeping the band going without him. His role was crucial in NY. Not only was he the bass player, but he also organized everything else musically in the band, worked very closely with all of the musicians there, went over song parts with them, they all figured things out together, every single one of the band members worked together with him in NY to create magic. I had no idea if I could match that here in Florida. But to me, the band was a connection to Pete. In my heart, I knew if I let the band end, it would be more devastating to me than to try to make Pete proud by keeping his dream band going. So after talking to guitarist Gary and the other Florida band members we had at that time, the decision was made to keep the band going and to try to make Pete proud. The road has not been easy. There have been many obstacles and challenges in the Jacksonville Florida music scene from the start. The difference between the NY scene and the scene in Florida was like night and day. The size of the clubs, the size of the stages, the pay scale, NY / CT venues pretty much all had sound engineers on staff at the clubs, whereas in Florida, I could barely find someone to run sound for us, and they weren’t cheap and they were all in their own bands. Many of the venues had their regular acts that they booked several times throughout the year, and they weren’t willing to even look at anybody new. The same 5 bands you just keep hearing over and over. I see a lot of missed opportunities for venues to be packed every weekend, and the decisions and choices have caused so many venues to close up since I moved here. At least 10 off the top of my head. Which is insane. The mind frame of the musicians was very different than what we were used to in NY as well. In NY, you needed to be at the top of your game to get into a good band or for your band to get booked, whereas many musicians here have the mentality of playing things “kind of” like the album, which continues to be an issue with BedRock many times, where you have some band members at one level and you try to recruit new talent, but they don’t want to apply themselves to getting the songs down correctly, which I find very sad. Why not try to be everything that you can be and go as far as you can? I’ve always tried as hard as I could in whatever I do, and I don’t get when others don’t want to do that too. I’ll take something to the end before letting it go. No, BedRock Florida has not achieved the same success of BedRock NY, but I will always keep trying. The word “quitter” is typically not in my vocabulary.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Right now, I’m just focusing on doing what we do, weekly rehearsals with BedRock and playing a few shows each month. I like to organize our own events. We do a big Halloween event every year, The Headless Bangers Costume Ball. It will be our 10th year this October 24th, and we also added a Valentine’s Day event earlier this year which we’ll be doing again in Feb. 2027. I’m giving serious thought to putting an expiration date on BedRock. It’s something that I want to do in my own way that my husband would have approved of if he were still alive. Coming from the NY music scene, I find many aspects of the scene here boring. There are some venues and musicians that get it and do great here, I love working with them, and we’ve done fine so far, but so many are not business savvy and are extremely unprofessional, don’t answer back, so many double book, don’t run their venues right so the money to pay bands a decent salary isn’t there, there’s very little support of each other, a lot of jealousy and backstabbing, mean girls mind frames. I’ve honestly never seen anything like it before, and it’s a huge part of why this scene is sinking. I’m a professional, and I prefer to work with people who are the same. So many here need to do better. I love the venues and musicians we do work with, they are awesome, which is why I work with them, and I’m thankful for the venues that continue to book us, who gave us a chance to begin with, who love us, and who are so good to us. We bring them money and they pay us well, which is what it’s all about. Everybody wins. When I contact a venue, if the first question they ask me is “how many people can you bring?” I run, because I know they’re already doing something wrong, lol. Most of all, everything I do in regard to BedRock, every decision I make with this band, always involves my husband in some way, shape, or form. I run the band as close as I can to the way Pete and Chrissy ran the band together before he passed. Many times when there’s a question about what to do, I can hear him guiding me in my head, what he would do or say in that instance, and then the answer just comes to me. He is always around me. Pete will always be part of BedRock.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Life is about taking risks, and boy am I always riding that wave, lol. I believe in giving a person a chance, so we take risks on recruiting musicians all the time. What that person does with the opportunity given to them is up to that person. In this business you are taking risks constantly – risks on hiring a musician (will they work out, will they learn the material correctly, will they be reliable and a team player, etc.), we take risks with venues (will they keep their promise about what they agreed to pay, will they double book, will they advertise your show on their social media, etc.), when you hire sound engineers, a lot rides on their skills and ability to make the band sound good or bad. Are they going to do a good job that night, or is it going to be a bad night? Many people don’t realize how important your sound crew is. They can make or break your band. If they make your band sound bad, the audience is not going to think “the sound engineer did it” They will automatically blame the band for not sounding right. We even take risks driving home late at night from a gig, lol ! Do you know how many drunks are on the road late at night on the weekends? 😀 In the band world, you take risks every single day. But it’s about the journey and the challenge of trying to have fun while doing what you love to do.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.bedrockband.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bedrock_band/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bedrockbandusa
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@bedrockband8645/videos
Image Credits
Frank Vacante
