The night that 16-year-old L.A. native Karrie Keyes attended a Black Flag show, she hadn’t the faintest idea that it would change her life. She snatched a post-show seat on the stage and met audio adventurer Dave Rat who was running sound for the band. She struck up a conversation—a challenge for the self-described introvert—and he taught her to wrap mic cables. After she’d worked with him for two years, in 1987 Rat needed help with a daytime gig: scrappy L.A. upstarts Jane’s Addiction. She quit her regular job to do the show and has never looked back. She’s since worked as the monitor engineer for an enviable entourage of artists including Red Hot Chili Peppers, Neil Young, and Pearl Jam, a gig she’s rocked for a staggering 35 years.
After decades in audio, Keyes has concluded that engineering the monitor mix is the most challenging gig on a tour. “That’s because it doesn’t necessarily have to do with sound,” she asserts. “You’ve got five to 10 musicians on stage, although with Pearl Jam now I just mix Ed [Vedder]. There’s too much going on and breaking that connection with the singer is no longer workable. So you’re dealing with that, bad acoustics, weather, and the performers are vulnerable and you have to be their ground.”
“When Pearl Jam goes on, I always tell the guys ‘Don’t ask me for anything until the third song,’” she says. “Because the audience noise will drop by then, front-of-house has dialed in its mix, and you guys are now settled on stage and can actually pay attention to what you’re missing. Most of the time after three songs we’re good and don’t need any changes.”
One of her favorite anecdotes from the road is the night that Pearl Jam wrapped the 2004 Vote for Change tour. “I admire, respect, and love my boss [Vedder],” she begins. “That being said, he is challenging to work for because he has a specific way he wants things. But he always comes back and apologizes [if he gets heated]. That night we had Scott, a replacement lighting director. Ed had yelled at him a few times to kill a light. At the end of the night, Scott came to me and said ‘Ed is so cool. Look at this [apology] letter he wrote me.’ I was like ‘What the fuck? I never got an apology letter.’ When Ed was getting ready to leave, I said to him ‘Hey Ed: how come I never got an apology letter?’ He replied ‘Karrie, there isn’t enough paper in this world.’”
In 2013 together with Michelle Sabolchick, Keyes launched SoundGirls, a free networking group for women in audio, although it’s now wholly inclusive. It started with a mere handful of members and has since grown to more than 15,000. The seed for the idea germinated a year earlier when Keyes and four other women were asked to sit on a panel at AES. “Five of us were invited and we connected within 30 seconds,” she recalls. “We all stayed in touch and wondered how different our careers would have been had we known each other earlier. It’s a labor of love but it’s worth it.”
Pearl Jam’s drummer Matt Cameron retired from the band in July, 2025. Keyes hopes that a replacement is found soon so that the band can hit the road again. Since 2018, her go-to piece of gear has been DiGiCo’s SD5 console, although recently she upgraded to their Quantum 5.
Contact soundgirls.org; soundgirls@soundgirls.org
