Chris Munson, a longtime stage manager at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, will be celebrated at a “second line” parade on the Downtown Mall before Fridays After Five on May 8. Photo: Rich Tarbell
Johnny Sportcoat & The Casuals finished soundcheck at the Carolinian in Nags Head, North Carolina, and headed to their dressing room to relax. The Charlottesville-based rock quintet left behind their sound man, Chris Munson, to make a few more adjustments.
While Munson set to work, the club’s PA system remained on, and that spelled trouble at the Carolinian. Once a crown jewel of the Outer Banks, the venue was—to put it mildly—in disrepair by the time The Casuals arrived to play it in the mid-1980s.
“The Carolinian was a fucking dive. It was horrible,” says Bob Girard, otherwise known as Johnny Sportcoat. “But it was the biggest bar down there, so when you played there, you had a good crowd.”
With few in the room other than Munson and idling staff, one of the Carolinian’s speakers burst into flames. Munson grabbed the nearest thing he could find to put the fire out—a pitcher of beer. He doused the blaze and averted a full-blown disaster. “The good news is he solved the problem,” Girard says. “But there was no saving that speaker.”
It was classic Munson. The University of Virginia philosophy major improvised throughout his career, moving on from college to learn sound design and fashion himself into one of the most important figures in the Charlottesville music scene over the decades to come.
The sound man, show promoter, band manager, and booking agent, proprietor of multiple successful music agencies, died of natural causes on March 5 at age 65. He leaves behind a wife and an adult daughter.
Munson, who grew up in Northern Virginia, came to UVA with a deep love of music. When he arrived in his dorm, he dropped his bag and told his unsuspecting roommate he was going to see the Grateful Dead. He said he’d be back in a couple days.
“His roommate said, ‘but we have orientation,’” says Susan Munson, a local musician and Chris’ beloved wife of nearly 30 years. “The Grateful Dead was a big part of his life. The lyrics of so many of their songs meant so much to him.”
Munson eventually made it back to Grounds. In 1981, he joined the struggling PK German student club, responsible for booking campus music venues. Munson, along with lifelong collaborator Al Hinton, became the club’s co-chairman in 1982. That fall, the pair would spearhead PK German’s biggest get—bringing the Grateful Dead and more than 7,000 deadheads to University Hall.
“It sold out at 6,500 seats, but unfortunately the ushers at U-Hall were not great. I think another 1,000 people snuck in,” Hinton says. “That was towards the end of our reign at PK German, but we passed it off into very capable hands.”
Munson and Hinton formed Rising Tide Productions in 1983. Along with managing bands like The Casuals, Rising Tide operated The Mineshaft, a 500-seat nightclub that would be the epicenter of Charlottesville’s music scene for seven years. Before closing in 1990, the venue hosted Mary Chapin Carpenter, The Neville Brothers, Gregg Allman Band, John Lee Hooker, Buckwheat Zydeco, and Emmylou Harris, among many others.
Hinton says he and Munson went their separate ways after the club’s closure, with the former heading east for a straight job and the latter staying in Charlottesville to continue his work as a production manager and audio engineer. Through the late ’90s, Munson worked with venues from Trax locally to The Floodzone in Richmond and with artists Delbert McClinton and Michelle Shocked. He ran festivals for Red Light Management and managed production and booked bands for Starr Hill Music Hall.
“Before I was in the music industry, I looked at what he was doing and thought, ‘he’s really finding a path,’” says Kirby Hutto, former Pavilion general manager and a UVA friend of Munson’s. “When I started doing Fridays After Five in the early ’90s, Chris was a mentor to me. He had all the relationships. He went from being a friend to a mentor to a colleague.”
Hinton—much like Munson after a few days on the road with the Dead—eventually found his way back to Charlottesville. The old collaborators reestablished their agency in 1998, this time as 20 South Productions. The firm has booked talent and promoted and produced events in Charlottesville and beyond ever since.
“He was just a pillar of Charlottesville music, and he did most of it behind the scenes,” Hutto says. “Most people didn’t know who Chris was, but he was making the connections and making it all happen. In my world, Chris is right up there on the Mount Rushmore of Charlottesville music.”
It is Munson’s carefree spirit, generous nature, and ready smile that the people closest to him will remember. He never missed an opportunity to pass on his industry knowledge to others, hold a benefit concert for a struggling friend, or to be in the front row of a local show, tapping his foot along with the tunes.
“When he decided to become a promoter, he did it because he enjoyed it. He wasn’t like, ‘I’m gonna do this and move to L.A.,’” Girard says. “In a way, it’s the same ethos that guides so many local bands. We want to have fun, and we want people to come and have fun with us.”
