Tenor: Fred Carlson
Lead: Fred LaRosa
Bass: Fred Clay
Bari: Fred Hine
FRED is anything but your typical barbershop quartet. In fact, from their distinctive sound and unique sense of humor to the speed in which they have risen to the top of the craft, very little about FRED is normal.
FRED (Jared “Pookie” Carlson, tenor; Rick LaRosa, lead;Clay Hine, bari; Joe Clay, bass) was less than one year old as a quartet when they won the 1991 Dixie District Quartet Championship.
As members of the Marietta, Georgia chapter they gained a huge following in International quartet competition between 1992 and 1999 with their creative and off the wall sense of humor with parodies and poking fun at the audience, judges and themselves.
To the delight of their fans FRED won the barbershop quartet gold medals in 1999. They have gone on to entertain extensively across the United States and around the entire world for a wide variety of corporate and public audiences and have produced several top selling CDs.
Clay has been a popular coach and director taking the Big Chicken Chorus to International competition several times and more recently, and a new chorus, The Atlanta Vocal Project.
As they openly admit, a quartet by any other name would be another quartet.