FiftyPlus, October 2002
By F.T. Rea
Note: This magazine feature was written 16 years ago by yours truly.
 |
Detail from a postcard-style invitation to Chuck Wrenn’s
40th birthday party on the James River. My art (1985). |
Twenty-two
years ago, when it was generally accepted that large-scale outdoor rock
‘n’ roll events couldn’t be staged in Richmond, Chuck Wrenn put three
fully-amplified bands, including the impeccably authentic Memphis
Rockabilly Band, on a flatbed trailer in the cobblestone alley behind
his back yard. It was the fourth edition of High on the Hog, Church
Hill’s live music and pork-worshiping festival.
The
1980 event featured a serendipitous, career-defining moment for Wrenn.
It began raining. Rather than lose momentum by shutting off the
electricity and waiting out the downpour, host/emcee Wrenn broke out
rolls of heavy-gauge transparent plastic. Soon, with the help of many
happy hands, he had improvised a canopy to protect the stage and cover
part of the yard. In effect, he wrapped the whole shebang.
Yes,
the show went on. With electric guitars wailing in defiance of the
chilly rainstorm, the sense of common purpose felt by one and all was
remarkable. And, Richmond’s best-known bartender and most indomitable
impresario was emerging as the arbiter of what was valid to a generation
of Richmond’s musicians and nightlife aficionados.
To this day, when it comes to rock ‘n’ roll, Chuck Wrenn remains Richmond’s kahuna.
*
Charles
E. “Chuck” Wrenn began his love affair with show business in 1964 at
the Cary Street Coffeehouse, with its open microphone for folksingers
and the like. Then a senior at Hermitage High School, Chuck eventually
slid into playing with an amalgam of enthusiasts known as the North Pine
Street Jug Band.
Pat Jagoda, organizer of a couple of
reunions of the coffee-house gang, was also in high school (Douglas
Freeman) when she discovered the small folkie scene emerging in what is
now Carytown. Today, Jagoda books talent for the Virginia Museum of Fine
Arts' fabulously successful live music series called Jumpin’, a concept
that Chuck helped set in motion in the ‘80s by booking the bands for
its first three years.
“Chuck has remained true to
those very first experiences and brought an amazing group of people into
the musical circle for audiences to experience,” Jagoda says. “What has
become even stronger since those early years is his passion for music.”
Next,
as a fine-art student at Richmond Professional Institute (RPI was the
predecessor to Virginia Commonwealth University), Chuck became
fascinated with the shifting breeze of popular culture coming from San
Francisco, particularly the seminal psychedelic shows at the Fillmore
Auditorium. On August 4, 1967, to present their own version of a
Happening with music and lights, he and two friends rented Tantilla
Gardens on West Broad Street.
The band, put together
for the occasion by Ron Courtney, was called Actual Mushroom. The light
show was essentially Chuck and fellow art student Eric Bowman using an
overhead projector with various props. Chuck’s underground-comix-style
art on the handbill touted the promised spectacle as the “first
psychedelic dance in Virginia.”
“We sold out, but we lost money,” recalls Chuck. “Yep, been losing money ever since.”
Chuck
worked construction jobs and served 3.2 beer in student dives on Grace
Street to make money during college. Then, in a Fan District garage, he
started a business assembling custom-made stretched canvases called the
Square Deal Stretcher Shop.
*
After
VCU, Chuck and his wife, Myra, lived on Cape Cod for about a year. He
took work as a maintenance man at a seaside national park while she
learned to be a bartender, a trade difficult to pick up in Richmond. The
concept of serving cocktails, or what had been coined “liquor by the
drink,” was still new to Virginia. People had been accustomed to doing
their away-from-home drinking in exclusive clubs, neighborhood beer
joints, and shot houses (unlicensed bars on the wrong side of the
tracks).
When he re-turned to Richmond in 1972, Chuck
signed on to become one of the original staff members of the Biograph
Theatre, located a block from the VCU campus. Having been chairman of
the student film society at VCU, the role of assistant manger at the
town’s new repertory cinema fit like a glove. Chuck’s promotional savvy
contributed much to the establishment of the midnight show as a staple
for the plucky Biograph over its 15-year run (1972-87).
Myra
took a bartending job at Poor Richard’s, the city’s first downtown
watering hole that had a Georgetown air about it. In the fall of 1973
Wrenn left the movie business to become his wife’s trainee, hoping to
learn what he saw as a useful skill in changing times.
Today,
Chuck’s first wife and bartending instructor, Myra Daleng, is director
of dance in the University of Richmond's Department of Theatre and
Dance.
A year later Chuck became head bartender at J.
W. Rayle, where he eventually began booking local rock ‘n’ roll bands,
hoping to attract customers. It worked. Wood-paneled, with lots of
stained glass, Rayle (located at Pine and Cary Streets, on the site of
what is now a VCU dormitory), was a huge hit. But it came and went like a
comet (1974-77).
In 1978 Chuck began renovating a
100-year-old house on East Franklin Street, which connected him to a new
part of town and a lively set of baby-boomer neighbors, who the year
before had staged a small neighborhood party they dubbed High on the
Hog. Chuck’s band, Faded Rose, graced the second edition, also attended
by a small contingent of neighbors and friends.
Chuck’s
self-styled role with High on the Hog -- booking bands, serving as
emcee, and fronting his own group (later the Megatonz) -- was essential
to building what became a mammoth annual party. Anticipating the seventh
edition of High on the Hog in 1983, it became clear to its planners
that the party had outgrown its location in the alley. But the event had
become so popular that it was time to go legit. So with the City’s
blessing, it moved across the street to Libby Hill Park.
After
nearly a decade of frowning on mixing amplified rock ‘n’ roll with
fresh air and beer, Richmond’s official stance had changed. Thus the
door was opened for Jumpin‘, Friday Cheers, and the other mainstream
music events that are now commonplace in Richmond.
Among
the many acts to have appeared on High on the Hog’s stage in the public
park, three notables are Billy Price and the Keystone Rhythm Band (1983
and ‘85), NRBQ (1987), and Marcia Ball (2001). On October 12, 2002,
High on the Hog No. 26 will feature Julie Johnson and NRG Krysis, plus
others. Admission, as always, is free.
*
In
1982 Chuck began a 14-year partnership with friend Barry Gottlieb. In
character as Rockin' Daddy (Wrenn) and Mad Dog (Gottlieb), they
wisecracked and gave out the scoop on entertainment essentials to 2,500
callers per week, via recordings on a bank of telephone answering
machines. The enterprise was known as the Rockline.
“We
normally did it [the three-times-a-week tapings] in the morning,” says
Gottlieb, now a San Francisco-based writer. “Remember, he usually closed
whatever bar he was working at, so he came in after only a few hours
sleep. We were efficient, goofy, had fun, rarely if ever did a retake.”
In
the mid-‘80s Chuck began putting shows together (in various locations)
for Duck Baker, a chum from his Cary Street Coffeehouse days and today a
world-class jazz guitarist. Because Baker (still not a rich celebrity)
was living in San Francisco or various parts of Europe, those gigs
helped to pay for his trips home.
Similarly, while
working at Bird in Hand, a Shockoe Bottom restaurant/club in the
late-‘80s, Chuck began presenting reunion shows of the Good Humor Band
near Christmastime. During the late-‘70s and early-‘80s, that
Richmond-based group was one of the most popular touring rock bands on
the East Coast. In 1983 they disbanded, and most of the musicians
relocated to Nashville.
“I moved from Richmond nearly
twenty years ago,” says Mike McAdam, the band’s lead guitarist and
founder. “Whenever I visit, I always see my Mom, and I always go have a
beer with Wrenn. It confirms the fact that Richmond is still my home.
Come to think of it, my Mom and Chuck are nearly the same age. Jeez, I
hope they didn’t date in high school, or anything.”
*
In
1992 Chuck became a partner in a new Shockoe Bottom venture called the
Moondance Saloon. Due to the stresses of the nightclub business, the
original partnership soon fell apart. He took a beating, money-wise, but
new partners appeared, Chuck shrugged off his losses, and the show went
on.
Manny Mendez, one of the new partners, ran the
Moondance kitchen until he left to open his own restaurant, Kuba Kuba,
located in the Fan District. Of working next to Chuck for years, Mendez
says, “He made it fun! You’re having more fun than the people you’re
serving. He never has anything mean to say.”
However,
even Chuck’s determination and expertise couldn’t reverse a trend that
had the Bottom evolving into a loud, randy, and youth-oriented milieu
that intimidated many of the graying music lovers who had made up a
significant part of his crowd.
On top of that, the
two-headed monster of red tape, the City’s and the Commonwealth’s (ABC
Board), persistently hobbled his gritty efforts to keep what was the
favorite stage of area musicians from going dark. When the Moondance
closed in 1999, Chuck was lucky to get out with his shirt.
Fortunately,
at the same time Michael Britt, owner of Poe’s Pub, was looking for a
bartender with a following. Since then Chuck has worked at Poe's,
located at the foot of Libby Hill Park, doing basically the same thing
he’s done for more than twenty-five years: pouring drinks and booking
bands. Now he can walk home from work.
Ever the
optimist, Chuck took his third trip down the aisle on April 1, 2002.
And, for the first time he has become a father. Chuck's wife, Hollie,
gave birth to their daughter, Eliza Marie Wrenn, on May 9.
“Chuck
has taken like a duck to water to fatherhood” says Hollie, who received
an art history degree from VCU in 1995. “He keeps her when I need a
break, or go to work. He probably changes more diapers than I do.”
Hollie
worked as a waitress at the Moondance and upon Mendez’s departure ran
the kitchen. She says Eliza has already been to several live music
shows. “Eliza, like most babies, I think, loves music,” says Hollie.
“She listens to everything I do, from the Ramones to Mozart. She gets
very excited and kicks her legs and moves herself all around.”
Chuck’s
reaction to midlife fatherhood? He answers, perceptively: “Rather than
changing my life, it’s been a wonderful addition.”
*
How
does a silver-haired, bushy-eyebrowed 57-year-old who got his show biz
start in a jug band keep up with the latest? Must he follow Britney
Spears’ latest warblings, or which titles are climbing the hip-hop
charts?
No, he doesn’t. “I book and promote what I
understand, what I like,” he says with a smile. And so it continues. The
region’s veteran musicians, whether they play rhythm and blues,
bluegrass, or an esoteric genre of rock ‘n’ roll, can hardly remember a
time when they didn’t rely on gigs that Chuck provided, in one way or
another. Craig Evans and Billy Ray Hatley are two of them.
“I
don’t know a musician around who has a bad word about him,” says Evans,
who plays with The Taters, “which is quite a testimonial for someone in
his position.”
“Without Chuck there are a lot of
people and bands that would not have gotten their first gig,” adds
Hatley, of Billy Ray Hatley & the Showdogs.
Mike
McAdam, who has recorded and toured with a number of nationally renown
acts says, “He has single-handedly kept true rock ‘n’ roll alive in
Richmond.”
When Chuck started putting bands on stage at
J. W. Rayles in the mid-'70s, there was no rock ‘n’ roll scene in
Richmond, only garage bands playing at private parties. Good musicians
left town. In the years since, no one has done more to change that than
Chuck Wrenn.
But for his efforts, it’s unlikely he’ll ever get the key to the city.
Chuck
shrugs off his triumphs and defeats by snapping off a telling quip
about his near legendary career managing Richmond’s night life: “Every
night was Saturday night, every morning was Monday.”
