The Haunt
Crossroads poster featuring Vision and Carlton (sitting in the front.)
With The Haunt established as a top reggae venue, new bands started coming, including a talented youngster named Carlton Bryan, and his band. Carlton Bryan wrote some great songs and had not only a strong voice but some serious lead guitar chops. Bryan teamed up with a well-established vocalist, Vision (Walker), who previously worked with The Wailers. He would work with Peter Tosh as well (becoming a member for the Mama Africa tour, and featured in my photos from that tour), and I believe he is still musically active today.
We would see Carlton before the shows, and he would always say how much he loved to play in Ithaca. In this era, Jon Peterson at The Haunt was making much of this possible by, among other things, letting the bands stay up at his house during stints in Ithaca.
We attended many performances by Crossroads in Ithaca and surrounding areas.
A couple of years later, I would go to see my third Steel Pulse show in New York City, and to my pleasant surprise, when the band came out I saw Carlton Bryan out there - he was playing lead guitar with them for awhile. I took the picture below at the 1984 Steel Pulse show. Carlton is playing the double-necked guitar that appeared on the cover shots of an album he put out around that time. (More on the Steel Pulse show is in another post here.)
Carlton Bryan soloing with Steel Pulse, 1984. Tyrone Downie, longstanding keyboard player with Bob Marley & The Wailers, also joined that night.
Above right and left: Setlists used by Carlton Bryan and Crossroads during performances in 1982.