Changes afoot at North Myrtle Beach’s HOB and Marion’s troubled amphitheater
End of the year new hires, and music venue rebirths dominate the music news along the Grand Strand this week. Here, in encapsulated form, is the latest we could dig up.
HOB Keeping it in the Family
Jacki Giardina, the Booking and Promotions Manager, Concert Promoter, and Junior Talent Buyer at the House of Blues in North Myrtle Beach, announced her resignation effective at the end of the year. She will be leaving for an unspecified “career opportunity,” that she says she’s not at liberty to divulge quite yet. Eric McCrickard will take on the role of Concert Promoter starting Jan. 1.
First employed by HOB in 2007, Giardina left North Myrtle Beach for Charlotte, N.C. two years later to work with the Live Nation-owned The Fillmore Charlotte. In 2006 Live Nation purchased the House of Blues’ eight amphitheaters and 10 clubs making it the market leader in live entertainment venue operation, with some 150 clubs and theaters under its umbrella. In 2010 Live Nation merged with Ticketmaster, further consolidating its entertainment holdings.
Giardina returned to the North Myrtle Beach House of Blues in 2012 charged with recreating and branding The Deck, the venue’s outdoor stage and bar. She also took on expanded roles in promotion and booking.
McCrickard had been living in Charlotte employed by Live Nation and Ticketmaster. This will not be his first stint at the beach, as he also once worked for the now-defunct Hard Rock Park in Myrtle Beach during its one-year of operation. From Las Vegas, where he’s being trained, McCrickard said this via e-mail: “I’m ecstatic for my role as Promotions Manager for the House of Blues. HOB is an incredible venue with a rich history of great shows. I look forward to continuing that tradition.”
Giardina, too, had been off and on at the beach, twice in the same role at the House of Blues, and says she obtained invaluable experience in her nearly eight years with the company. “It’s been a great ride,” she said, “and definitely a bittersweet end.”
Music in Marion?
After years of sitting dark, the 3.5-acre outdoor amphitheater, the Carolina Entertainment Complex (formerly the Carolina Amphitheater), is set to reopen in 2015 with a new name and a season’s worth of shows to be announced. With 7,000 stadium seats and room on the lawn for 20,000 more, the site off U.S. 501, 45 miles from Myrtle Beach, has had a notoriously troubled past, though new executive chairman Robert D. Hartman Sr. sees a bright future ahead. The new ownership group just needs to close the sale, which may be easier said then done.
“We’ve been in negotiations for four-and-a-half years,” said Hartman, “[The property] has had entanglements of all sorts. Every time we’ve turned around to close one thing after another keeps popping up, but we think we’ve got all the legal issues out of the way, and it looks good to close [next week].”
Opened to great fanfare in 2001 with a show featuring the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, and a reported attendance of 12,000, hopes were high in the little town of Marion. Jobs, new hotels, and business opportunities seemed ripe for the picking. The rural complex sits less than an hour inland from Myrtle Beach, and not too much farther from Columbia and Wilmington, N.C., its intended markets from which to draw.
In its first season Dwight Yoakam, .38 Special, Reba McEntire, and others came to town and rocked large crowds, all before promoter and con man Dennis Cerilli ripped off, lost or mismanaged more than $5 million in assets and investments, for which he pleaded guilty to mail fraud and was sentenced to five years in prison. In subsequent years, in between long periods of inactivity, the complex would open for bike rallies and random shows including Korn, Gretchen Wilson, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and others, but still steady success eluded the owners and promoters.
With the ghosts of the past hopefully placated and resting peacefully, Hartman, like others before him, sees the potential for the large outdoor venue, which sits less than a half an hour off I-95.
“We plan on having camping, and array of gourmet food, plus hot dog, hamburgers, and a pig roast,” said Hartman. “We’re planning an EDM (Electronic Dance Music) Awards Festival in June, and a Country Music festival in September. The Town of Marion has been very supportive, and we hope to bring a lot of jobs and some first-class entertainment to the area.”
This story was originally published December 11, 2014 at 5:05 PM with the headline "Changes afoot at North Myrtle Beach’s HOB and Marion’s troubled amphitheater."