How does a high school dropout end up working for Prince and touring the world with the likes of Rob Zombie, Dave Matthews, and some of the biggest names in the music industry?
I recently posed that question to Carrie Charbonneau, the newly appointed Director of 4th Door Live, the live entertainment arm of 4th Door Media & Entertainment.
Her reply?
“It’s all I know how to do.”
Charbonneau dropped out of high school during her senior year because, in her words, “I just wasn’t into school.”
She did, however, get her GED and hopped right into the world of music.
It all started when a friend working at a Detroit radio station encouraged her to come on board as an intern.
She took the position and, as she puts it, “from there, I just kept going.”
Carrie says she dug the music side of the business.
But living in Detroit?
Not so much.
So she did what a lot of people do when they aspire to jump into the world of entertainment.
She moved to L.A., grabbed a coffee shop gig, and just tried to figure it out from there.
A short time later, she received a call from none other than Rob Zombie’s production team.
Yes, that Rob Zombie.
His team had heard about Charbonneau through industry connections she’d made while working shows in Detroit.
They invited her to meet with the band’s tour manager.
They hired her in part because, “I was willing to work cheap.”
Finances may have played a part, but make no mistake.
Her industry chops, even at that young age, made her extremely desirable.
What followed was more than two decades on the road.
Her résumé?
Mind-numbing.
It reads like a rock-and-roll Hall of Fame backstage pass:
Tour Manager for Prince’s Welcome 2 America Tour, Production Coordinator for Dave Matthews Band, Assistant Tour Manager for Jane’s Addiction’s Jubilee Tour, Production Assistant for Rob Zombie’s Demon Speeding Tour, and a key member of Poison’s Hollyweird Tour team overseeing travel, hospitality, and logistics.
That list only scratches the surface.
Heck, Carrie even says Prince—an artist she described as amazing, awesome, complicated, and demanding, including of himself—once asked her to be his personal assistant.
She said no.
“I loved working with Prince, but I didn’t want to move to Minneapolis or work at Paisley Park,” she explained.
What she did say yes to, though, was learning every aspect of the business she could behind the scenes.
Everything from touring and production to logistics, artist relations, hospitality, and the thousands of unseen details that determine whether a show succeeds or fails.
Over the years, Charbonneau built a reputation as someone artists and crews could trust.
Put simply, that’s not something that can be learned in a classroom.
It’s earned one show, one bus ride, and one challenge at a time.
But—and stop me if you’ve heard this before—life on the road often comes with a cost.
By 2020, she knew something had to change.
Yes, the world was shutting down, but her decision wasn’t solely driven by the pandemic.
It was personal.
After years of touring, she stepped away.
“I was done. Mentally, something had to change,” Charbonneau says.
She continues: “My mental health was deteriorating.”
The COVID shutdown canceled tours and forced Charbonneau—and the rest of us—to step back and take a break from our routines.
As bad as COVID was, there was at least one upside: what she describes as a timeout that was “helpful.”
That pause led to another major life decision.
It was time to get out of L.A.
So she packed what mattered, buckled in her Shih Tzu, “Hey You,” (which, interestingly enough, is also the title of a Pink Floyd song) and hit the road for Tennessee.
“Not Nashville. Not Vegas,” Charbonneau says.
Knoxville.
Her goals?
Simplify her life.
Slow down.
Collect herself.
She worked at the Tennessee Theatre.
Then, in 2023, a music opportunity knocked again.
She went back out on the road with Pink for her Summer Carnival Tour.
An experience she called “amazing.”
She was responsible for keeping a 150-person crew moving, handling hotels, buses, and just about anything the band and entourage needed along the way.
Since then, things have quieted down.
She’s been living quietly in Knoxville on her savings and spending quality time with what she lovingly calls her support dog.
When mutual friend Tracey Nauman (known as the hair stylist to the rock stars) introduced Carrie to Kevin Harold at 4th Door Media & Entertainment, who also lives in Knoxville, she was cautious.
“I was reticent, for sure.”
Understandably so.
But as conversations continued at XUL Brewery something felt different.
She said what she heard about the 4th Door culture sounded “too good to be true.”
But she heard enough to dig deeper.
She liked what she heard.
“It’s going to take me a minute to process this whole thing,” Carrie admitted during a recent conversation. “I’m always learning.”
She’s always learning, but her real value may come from what she can teach 4th Door artists and everyone working behind the scenes of the company.
She specifically mentioned her desire to help 4th Door artists & Peyton Cullen, the talented social media expert at 4th Door.
Peyton is bright, young, and full of ideas.
Charbonneau wants to make sure Peyton doesn’t go through some of the things she’s had to endure in her career.
That’s meaningful to her.
As Director of 4th Door Live, she will help guide artist development initiatives, live-event opportunities, venue relationships, and touring strategy while serving as a trusted advocate for the artists who become part of the 4th Door family.
Most importantly, she’ll help shape a culture centered around humanity, communication, and long-term sustainability in an industry that too often forgets those things matter.
And if her track record is any indication, 4th Door Live just got a whole lot stronger.