Green Bay's Jim Runge has toured the world with rock stars. Now he's taking on his Parkinson's diagnosis with no regrets.
GREEN BAY - The experiences Jim Runge has had across the world with some of the biggest names in music could fill a book.
During his 30 years as a tour manager, he’s been on the road with The Black Keys, Wilco, The Replacements, Lucinda Williams, Imagine Dragons, Empire of the Sun, Eels and Rickie Lee Jones, to name a few. He’s been on phone calls where it was just him, Mick Jagger and the Keys’ Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney. He’s been kissed by Emmylou Harris and thanked by Nancy Sinatra. He’s gotten high with Willie Nelson.
The Ashwaubenon High School graduate and one of the founding fathers of Green Bay’s punk scene will be the first to tell you he has lived a charmed life.
Then in 2022, while on tour with Demi Lovato in South America, he noticed something wasn’t right. His walking was troublesome. He found himself staring at his computer for hours. He wasn’t sleeping.
“The stress level was mind-blowing,” he said.
He flew back to Green Bay and saw a doctor, thinking perhaps it was connected to a stroke he suffered in 2020. It was Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative condition of the brain associated with tremors, slowness of movement and balance problems.
“The main thing I have is the tremor in my hand and my walking. I haven’t fallen or anything,” said Runge, who turned 59 on Monday. “The biggest part is eventually I probably won’t be able to walk and then not be able to swallow and not be able to dress myself. That’s all coming.”
Known and respected in the touring industry for his openness and honesty — not one to sugarcoat — Runge shared his diagnosis on Facebook. Then this winter he asked his wife, Stacy Stanton-Runge, to help him create a YouTube video series he’s calling “In Real Life.” It’s a way for him to share memories of the local punk scene in its infancy, tell stories from the road that people so often ask him about, reconnect with friends and offer an unfiltered look of what it’s like to live with Parkinson’s.
It’s an oral history of his life. He wants to tell it while he can. In a powerful moment in the first episode of “IRL” on Feb. 5, he talked about how he expects the disease to gradually steal from him.
“Chances are, in, you know, five-plus years, I’ll be in a wheelchair, feeding tubes, not being able to swallow. That stuff has already happened already so it’s only a matter of time before ...” he says, before breaking down.
Stanton-Runge was there to comfort him, as she has been since they married in September 2020. They wed under the Mason Street bridge and streamed it live to 600 viewers on Facebook during the pandemic. Their first date included dinner with John Doe of influential punk band X.
They’re a team on the videos (the graphics are all her) and as they navigate the unpredictable path on which Parkinson’s will take them. Most people know somebody with the progressive disorder, but many aren’t familiar with the ins and outs of it. Sometimes people’s perception of it is worse than it is, Stanton-Runge said.
“It doesn’t kill you, but it does destroy your life, it does destroy your body,” Runge said.
The impact of “IRL” as an educational tool for others living with the disease will become more apparent as time passes, but six episodes in, it has already proven therapeutic for the two of them.
“I think both of us were feeling incredibly isolated and like we’re dealing with all of this really alone sometimes,” Stanton-Runge said. “Now he has people calling him and checking. It has created a more connected life.”
From punk shows at Northside Bowling Lanes to tour manager for The Black Keys, he's been a part of music history
Runge, who won the prestigious Road Warrior of the Year honors at the Pollstar Awards in 2014 for his work with The Black Keys, was fresh off his latest accolades when he and Stanton-Runge sat down at St. Michael’s Pub for an interview during an early-April snowstorm.
He became the first Lifetime Achievement recipient at the inaugural Bay Area Music Awards held in March to honor Green Bay music makers and supporters. Local music promoter Tom Smith, himself a nominee for the same award, bestowed the honor, wearing a No Response T-shirt as a nod to the punk band Runge formed in the ’80s.
Runge was moved by the recognition. He and Stanton-Runge both cried, and it was especially meaningful to have his son, mom, sister and cousin at The Tarlton Theatre that night. He left Green Bay for 30 years and somehow got all the credit when he came back home, he says.
He was among those who promoted Green Bay’s first punk shows at Northside Bowling Lanes, where bands like Suburban Mutilation, Art Thieves and The Minors became key players on the city’s early punk and hardcore scene in the early '80s. Those were the days when you could get beat up for playing original music, Runge said. If you were in a band, you had to play cover songs at the bars. The Northside shows were born out of having nowhere else to go.
“We were just looking for something to do and just accidentally created something much bigger than ourselves,” Runge said.
The five bands on the bill for the first show expected to be playing for no one but each other and their girlfriends. Somehow they had to make $50 to cover rent of the building.
“I remember sitting outside the window at Northside, we were on the ledge just watching parents dropping off kids. There were probably 100 kids at the first show. We were like, ‘Where did they come from?’” Runge said.
He’s an executive producer of “Green Blah! The History of Green Bay Punk Rock, The First Ten Years or So.” Filmmakers Chris Pretti and James Baker have been working on the documentary since December 2012, conducting hundreds of hours of interviews, including two extensive talks with Runge. Information about its long-awaited premiere is expected to be coming soon, according to a March 29 update on the project’s Facebook page.
Runge also appears in the new music documentary “This Is a Film about The Black Keys,” which traces the highs and lows of Auerbach and Carney's journey from a basement jam session in Akron, Ohio, to rock stardom. He flew to Nashville, Tennessee, last year to be interviewed for the film, which premiered in March at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.
He toured with LL Cool J last year and hopes to get back out on the road
When Runge moved back home to Green Bay from Nashville in 2017, he had started to ease up some on his tour manager schedule. Then came the COVID-19 shutdown of the industry, his stroke and now Parkinson’s. It has put a significant strain on the couple’s financial situation. Friends turned his birthday party on Monday at the new Orsetta Craft Kitchen & Bar in De Pere into a helping hand with a silent auction of donated items.
He’s had some discussions about going back out on the road this year if the right opportunity comes along. There’s some anxiety that comes with the thought of it, but he can’t retire and he doesn’t want to go on disability insurance yet. He’s been honest about his health situation when talking with acts about potential work. While Parkinson’s limits some of what he can do, it can’t touch his 30 years of invaluable experience in the industry.
He’s not looking to do major tours that play arenas and stadiums for months on end, come with rigorous travel itineraries and can sometimes mean three nights of no sleep. Last year, he went out with LL Cool J for six weeks in more of an assistant’s role and it went well.
“There’s definitely some stuff that has changed mentally and physically that I have to deal with but nothing that I couldn’t do with the right team and the right support,” he said.
Runge’s treatment in the first year after the Parkinson’s diagnosis included medication, but it was expensive and the side effects made him sick. His quality of life was such that he felt he wasn’t getting anything in return, so he stopped taking it.
“At this point, I’m just letting it go,” he said. “To be honest with you, I don’t want to live in a body where I’ve got to be fed by a tube and can’t walk and can’t swallow, but I’m still alive. I’d rather go when my body goes. She’s younger than me. I don’t want her to spend her life taking care of me and not enjoying life.”
The couple has plans to renew their wedding vows for their five-year anniversary in September 2025 — same place as before. With any luck, a train will unexpectedly roll through smack in the middle of the ceremony like it did in 2000. Some of their guests still talk about how much they loved that.
Runge is a man who treasures his friendships, and he knows he’s fortunate to have so many. Some are famous, some are scattered all over the planet and some date back to his youth in Green Bay. An introvert by nature, he’s always been the friend who finds a reason to gather people and then delights in watching the room come alive with conversations.
In their younger days he and fellow Green Bay punk figure Norb Rozek, aka Rev. Norb of Boris the Sprinkler, would joke that Rozek was the cool "Get off my lawn!" guy and Runge was the guy who would invite them into the house to listen to records.
Some of that kindness is coming back at him now. There’s seldom a day that goes by when he doesn’t hear from five or 10 friends, just checking in to see how he and Stanton-Runge are doing. It goes a long ways in keeping them positive on this latest journey. For Runge, it’s also a reminder of lucky he is.
It’s that whole charmed life thing again.
“I got to see the world and got to meet my idols and live this life that I couldn’t even imagine. I have no regrets,” he said. “I could die tomorrow and be like, 'I’ve done everything I wanted to.' Not that I don’t want to do more, but certainly there’s not a lot of my life that's 'God, I wish I would've been able to do that.' I’ve been pretty lucky.”
Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or [email protected]. Follow her on X @KendraMeinert.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Tour guru Jim Runge has punk roots, rock star pals and now Parkinson's
