On a sunny May 20th at Toronto’s Duke of Westminster, ECC members new and old were treated to an Atlantic Canadian original: Sons of Maxwell musician and internet sensation Dave Carroll. Speaking at ECC’s Coast and Cocktails as part of his tour of Canada, Carroll entertained the crowd with his “United Breaks Guitars” experience, explaining how his life has changed since then, and then performing several songs, much to the pleasure of the crowd.

“I would never have seen myself doing this a few years ago,” said Carroll of his presence as a speaker. “Normally it’s my brother Don who does the speaking at our shows.” While his brother still does most of the talking when they tour as Sons of Maxwell, Dave has found his voice to be much in demand on his current speaking tour. It’s all thanks to the runaway success of “United Breaks Guitars,” the customer service complaint that went viral and took the internet by storm.

Carroll told the story behind the now-legendary “United” and its sequels – his conversations with United Airlines customer service, and his frustrations at feeling treated like a nuisance rather than a valued client. It took “a year-long saga” of Kafka-esque phone calls and faxes “from New York to New Delhi” to reach someone who could explain the situation to him, and when they did, it was to tell him that United was in no way responsible for the destruction of his Taylor guitar.

“In the heat of the moment, I told Ms. Irlweg that I would write three songs about United Airlines, and post them on YouTube,” said Carroll. “I have no idea why I said ‘three songs,’ but I did, and we’ve had an incredible response to them.”

“Corporations really have to understand the power of social media,” Carroll noted. “Many of them don’t get it yet. Social media is changing the face of customer relations. United didn’t understand, and it turned into a PR disaster for them.”

He celebrated the empowering and democratic nature of social media. “This video only cost a couple of hundred dollars to put together. And look at the effect that it’s had.” Carroll seemed ambivalent about whether anything had changed at United: “It took them a long time to even register the effect that the video was having.”

The musician also discussed the strange experience of being part of a viral phenomenon. “You can’t really plan this sort of thing,” he said. Carroll described the unusual feeling of watching the numbers climb on the YouTube video: within ten days of posting, it had over three million hits. He also noted that the nature of viral media was fickle: “The second and third video have had many fewer hits than the first one. So it’s really hard to anticipate what’s going to be popular.”

Life has certainly changed for Carroll, who has been featured on CNN, the View, and the pages of Rolling Stone. “The CD sales have certainly improved,” he noted. His mother, who handles sales and distribution of his music, came up with an interesting measurement of success during a recent sales spike: “We’ve just sold the third sofa-full of CDs!”