DJ Carbo

Ace of Hearts, 1980

Kates traces his working life in music to 1980 and to a Mission of Burma show outside Boston. The band's post-punk had an immediate effect, and rather than simply following them he went to work for Ace of Hearts, the label that released them. It is a detail worth holding onto: forty-six years later Mission of Burma are clients of his management company, which closes a loop that very few people in the business get to close.

From Boston he went to Los Angeles and Big Time Records, where the roster included Love and Rockets and Alex Chilton. That was the apprenticeship — independent label work on both coasts before the major-label years that made his name.

Geffen, Grand Royal and the back catalogue

Kates spent roughly ten and a half years at Geffen and its DGC imprint. He built the label's alternative promotion department from nothing, then crossed over into A&R. The signings credited to him there are Beck, Jawbreaker and Elastica; he also carries A&R credits on records by Nirvana and Sonic Youth, and worked with Hole. For a stretch in the early and mid-1990s he was one of the people deciding what a major label thought alternative rock was.

From 1998 to 2001 he ran Grand Royal, the label the Beastie Boys had built for themselves — three years at the head of an operation whose identity was never going to be corporate.

Then he went home. Fenway Recordings was founded in Boston in 2001, initially as an independent label that also managed a handful of acts. It put out records by State Radio and The Kickovers before stopping releases in 2006 and turning into a management company full time, with offices added in New York and Los Angeles. Management is the day job now; the label line on the business card is history.

The Sessions, and the name attached to them

The DJ alias predates the Boston era. As DJ Carbo, Kates held a residency at the Los Angeles club Atmosphere before he moved back east. What the name attaches to now is The Fenway Recordings Sessions, a concert series he has hosted and curated since early 2004.

The format is simple and has barely changed: small rooms around Greater Boston, a touring act with something to prove or something to revisit, and Kates on the decks either side of the set. The series has run through the Paradise Lounge, Great Scott and, most consistently in recent years, Brighton Music Hall on Brighton Avenue in Allston. The alumni list runs from Echo and the Bunnymen and Robyn Hitchcock to Diplo, Ellie Goulding, Alt-J, The Wombats and MGMT, who he also manages.

The counting matters to him. The Sessions marked twenty years and 500 shows in 2024; the company now puts the total past 550. That is a promoter's record of attendance as much as a DJ's, and the two roles have become hard to separate.

Twenty-five years, marked on 14 August 2026

The 2026 season gives a fair picture of how the series is pitched. Courtney Marie Andrews played on 22 April and Drugdealer on 29 April; Maya Hawke took an evening on 1 May, Carol Ades on 12 May, Old Mervs on 3 June. Robyn Hitchcock returned on 14 June under the billing Live & Electric, with Arts Fishing Club on 17 June, Vincent Antone on 16 July, ford. on 24 July and Riff Wood on 7 August.

On 14 August 2026 the series staged a show billed as 25 Years of Fenway Recordings — the company's own anniversary rather than the concert series'. Two weeks later, on 28 August, Com Truise played with Kates opening; Tyler Ballgame followed on 19 September. The autumn has kept the same cadence, with Kelsey Lu on 4 October and Rushadicus on 13 October.

Across a single calendar year that is country-leaning songwriting, synthwave, noise-adjacent indie and a reunion-flavoured anniversary night in the same room. The through-line is curation, not genre.

Standing now

Fenway's management roster is the real measure of where Kates sits in 2026: MGMT, Doves, The Cribs, Mission of Burma and Josh Klinghoffer. Alongside that he has co-promoted Hot Stove Cool Music, the twice-yearly benefit show that has raised more than half a million dollars for the Jimmy Fund, co-founded the Shout Syndicate Fund, and sat on a city arts leadership council supporting after-school arts programmes.

His live profile is the oddity. Ticketing listings treat DJ Carbo as a touring artist with a Ticketmaster and Live Nation artist page and ten dates on sale, but every one of those dates is a support slot in the same venue. Songkick logs 197 past appearances and 42 people tracking him — numbers that describe a working house DJ rather than a draw. Published criticism of his sets is correspondingly thin; reviewers who cover the Sessions write about the headliner, which is the point of the arrangement.

The room, the slot, the diary

Brighton Music Hall — the former Harpers Ferry, capacity 300 — is effectively his residency. Doors are at 7pm for most of these shows, which is early for a DJ and tells its own story about where the set falls in the evening.

The booked run reaches into spring 2027. LØLØ on 26 October 2026 is followed by Blu DeTiger at the start of November and Porch Light with The Nautics on 7 November. King Buffalo and Handsome Jack take 10 December. Two consecutive January 2027 dates follow, the first of them with Seb Lowe on 26 January. Jon Spencer brings his noise-blues to the room on 13 February 2027, and Death From Above 1979 on 3 March 2027. Tickets for the Jon Spencer night are on sale through Ticketmaster and SeatGeek.