First Avenue’s rock-star stage manager Conrad Sverkerson dies at 66

When First Avenue hosted its first concert in 16 months following COVID-19 lockdown in 2021, the club’s management left it up to Conrad Sverkerson to make the audience feel at ease and welcome, as he had long done for the bands who performed there.

“We want you to enjoy the show and each other’s company,” the widely recognized stage manager stoically said from the 7th St. Entry stage to kick off the night.

For the first time in 37 years, Sverkerson’s steadying, sturdy presence will no longer be a part of what makes nights go so smoothly at Minneapolis’ most famous rock club and its sister venues around the Twin Cities.

The longtime stage manager for First Avenue Productions died Tuesday afternoon of lung cancer. He was 66.

The Twin Cities native, who started working at the club in 1988 (first show: Duran Duran), was scheduled and eager to go back to work in October after taking much of the year off while undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments, family members said. Instead, he was admitted to Essentia Health-St. Mary’s Medical Center in Duluth last week, near his woodsy property in the township of Holyoke, where he stayed during the COVID pandemic.

He died at the hospital surrounded by family and friends, his older brother Lee Sverkerson of Minneapolis said. Many of his First Ave crewmates visited him there, as did Low singer Alan Sparhawk, who sang him some songs.

“It was a beautiful, peaceful sendoff,” Sverkerson’s brother said.

“Where’s Conrad?!” Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard asked in feigned distress when his band moved up to Northrop auditorium in 2006.

Flaming Lips singer Wayne Coyne remembered running into Sverkerson backstage on the Lollapalooza tour in 1994 and thanking him for a rug he gave the band at an earlier gig to keep their drum kit from moving around the stage: “We don’t have the same drummer, but we’re still using the rug,” the singer laughingly recalled.

“One of the big reasons people love playing that place is Conrad,” Coyne said.

Minnesota musicians from the 1980s scene on up to recent buzzmakers paid tribute to Sverkerson on Wednesday as news of his death began circulating.

“We would go out on tour for two months, and whether it went well or not, we were always happy to come home to play that final show at First Ave because we knew Conrad would be there to greet us,” Babes in Toyland’s Lori Barbero said.

Chan Poling, bandleader of the Suburbs, also said, “I was always happy to see Conrad when I arrived backstage. One of the kindest, most stalwart men I knew.”

Belfast Cowboys singer Terry Walsh posted a humorously fitting letter to Sverkerson on Facebook that summed up the stage manager’s knack for coolheadedly dealing with not-so-levelheaded rock stars or inexperienced musicians:

“Dear Conrad,

Thanks for never being a [jerk] when you probably should have been.

Signed,

The seventh of 10 siblings who grew up in New Hope, Sverkerson wound up following his other brother Billy into the nightclub business when he went to work with him at the 400 Bar in the mid-’80s. After he abruptly quit the 400 Bar one night in 1988, Conrad headed to First Ave for a beer and almost as quickly wound up working there, starting as a doorman.

He credited his large family as one of the reasons he succeeded so well in the stage manager role at First Ave, starting under longtime general manager Steve McClellan, who also visited him in the hospital this past week.

“I think [they] liked my people skills,” Sverkerson said in a mid-2010s interview. “That came from my upbringing, being in a family of 10, dealing with different personalities. That’s what makes my job kind of fun and interesting: You don’t know the mood of the person you’re going to be dealing with.”

Except for a few months here and there when he went on tour as part of bands’ production crews — including Soul Asylum during its “Runaway Train” hitmaking era — he never left the club, whose staff he regularly referred to as his extended family.

Working through tears Wednesday — while they also had to figure out how to keep the shows running without their longtime production guru — First Ave owner Dayna Frank and the rest of the company’s crew issued a statement that said, “Our communal First Avenue heart is shattered.

“To say that Conrad was the face of First Avenue to the artists for so many over the years would be an understatement. Throughout the past 37 years, Conrad’s spirit is indelibly woven into the very foundation of our star-studded building and we will work to honor it every show. We’ll miss him every day.”

Outside of the nightclub, Sverkerson was known for two other hobbies: bicycling, which was usually how he got to work; and golfing, for which his skills were said to rival those of his brother Mark Sverkerson, once a certified pro golfer.

“He had a beautiful swing and could hit the ball a mile,” confirmed Poling, also an avid golfer, who relished going to high-end courses with Sverkerson during the many years he wore his hair in dreadlocks that went down below his waist.

“Every head on the course would turn when he stepped to the tee looking like a wild Rastafarian,” Poling recalled. “But I think everyone knew he had the soul of a saint.”

After cutting off his dreads in 2006, Sverkerson made an even bigger lifestyle change in 2014 when he cut himself off from drinking alcohol, his brother said — an extra challenge in Conrad’s case, given that he not only worked in bars, but he also lived above a famous one, Dusty’s in northeast Minneapolis.

Sverkerson is survived by his longtime partner, Dina Bizzaro of Minneapolis, and seven of his nine siblings, plus 14 nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents, Billy and Kay Sverkerson, and one other sibling, Lynn Knutson, in addition to his brother Billy, who was also a longtime employee at First Ave.

Billy has his name on a star on the club’s iconic exterior wall — not far from his brother’s star, which simply says “Conrad” and is centered on the side door through which he loaded in innumerable bands’ gear for nearly four decades. Recounting how Conrad would also often sit in a chair next to that door, Lori Barbero said, “That’s where I’ll always picture him.”