John Shearer: Carla Pritchard Has Turned Childhood Music Interest Into Successful Business Career

As the presenter of such musical events as Nightfall, Carla Pritchard has become like a key producer of the beat of Chattanooga.

But in contrast to the musicians she books, she is usually very behind the scenes except for an occasional interview on the TV news about an upcoming event in which she is involved in the production realm. In fact, you might not know she is in charge when you see her casually sitting behind a table at the Waterhouse Pavilion by Miller Plaza during Nightfall or slowly walking amongst the crowd.

It is actually one of several jobs she has in her now-large portfolio of event-related operations with her Chattanooga Presents! company. It has been a slow growth, though, and began in similar work helping non-profits when Chattanooga was trying to revitalize its downtown back in the 1980s and make music and arts part of the redevelopment.

“I had no vision to have my own business,” Ms. Pritchard said with a laugh regarding how her career has evolved almost naturally. “I assumed I’d always be in non-profit work.”

Ms. Pritchard is actually one of several women in Chattanooga who have held the same or similar high-profile jobs for multiple decades in such positions ranging from being media personalities to being the public face of a familiar Chattanooga attraction or entity.

To me, it marks sort of a subtle milestone for women’s achievement in the Scenic City. Three or more decades ago, about the only women who could have said they had held the same position in the public eye for years were maybe school principals, department store fashion show coordinators, family business or family restaurant officials, or simply volunteers of visible boards.

Now, of course, all kinds of women are successfully working their way up the professional and career ladder, and without many of the hindrances that were around in past decades. Many have also found elected local office at age 40 or younger and possess a self-confidence of what they can achieve, a feeling female pioneers of yesteryear could have only dreamed about enjoying.

As a result, I thought it might be worthwhile to try and highlight some of these women of multi-year accomplishments as the subjects are willing and time allows, with Ms. Pritchard kindly agreeing to be the first to be interviewed.

As she sat at a table outside the Granfalloon event building on Main Street by the connected Adelle’s Creperie – which was started several years ago by her now-college-age daughter, Adelle, who is already carving her own career niche – Ms. Pritchard seemed as relaxed as someone at an outdoor European café while on vacation. You would never know she was juggling a variety of businesses by her soft and casual manner that almost outwardly seemed free of stress. In fact, her life deceptively seemed as stationary as the double-decker British bus parked nearby in her lot.

With her dog, Ricco, sitting patiently by her feet, she said her career in many ways followed a passion in music that began as a child. Her mother, Glynda J. Brown, whose family was involved in the M&J grocery stores, encouraged her and older sister Audrey to enjoy and take part in the world of fine arts. For her, it was primarily music, while Audrey has gone on to do theater-related work outside Chattanooga.

“I always loved music,” said Ms. Pritchard, whose late father, Bob Brown, a Korean War veteran of the Air Force, worked for Provident Life & Accident. “I was always trying to convert my childhood friends to the Beatles.”

As a sixth grader at the now-razed Red Bank Elementary on Dayton Boulevard where Food City sits today, she recalled that her teacher, a Ms. Brewer, would let the students bring a favorite record to play on Fridays, and she took advantage of that with Beatles records and other music.

A piano player who took lessons for 12 years and encouraged her teacher to let her play the popular songs of the time, although she was admittedly not a natural talent, she also remembers harmonizing and singing and playing instruments with friends some evenings.

She quickly deduced that she had an appreciation for music as much as anything, and making mental notes about songs and singers she liked became as much a passion as simply playing notes.

After finishing at the also-now-razed Red Bank High in 1982 during the last year it was located on Dayton Boulevard before that campus became the junior high/middle school facility, she enrolled at UTC. Majoring in public relations, she would soon develop other skills important in staging musical events, although not realizing all that at the time.

“I didn’t have any clear picture,” she said of her plans. “I enjoyed writing and just the nature of dealing with people. Every part-time job I had (from making funnel cakes at the Incline station on top of Lookout Mountain to working at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo) dealt with the hospitality industry and showcasing Chattanooga. I was interacting with the public and enjoying that aspect.”

While continuing to stay focused on people and writing, she enjoyed at the end of her UTC schooling an internship with the Chattanooga Downtown Alliance, which was part of the Chamber of Commerce.

“They focused on bringing downtown back to life and promoting the few merchants still there,” she said, saying the work there continued after graduation.

She remembered they had three activities she helped with: a downtown block party, which one year featured the Charlie Daniels Band in the parking lot behind Warehouse Row, as well as the Downtown Arts Festival in Miller Park and an Octoberfest on Market Street.

“That introduced me to the world of events as related to PR,” she said. “And I said, ‘This is where I see myself.’ ”

She also spent a couple of years with Allied Arts and got acquainted with the local arts community.

To use music and fine arts terminology, all this was considered rehearsal for her crowning job that would involve Miller Plaza.

She eventually went to work with Chattanooga Downtown Partnership. It was tied in with the non-profit River City Co. that was started to help redevelop downtown Chattanooga, and in 1991 she had become program manager. As part of that, she would get to book shows for Nightfall, an event that had actually started in 1988 when Miller Plaza opened. Brian McMaster and Carlotta Cooper of Center City Corp., another non-profit entity, had originally done the coordinating of musical performers.

“The only reason they asked to come on board was they saw that the Center City Corp. was going away,” she said jokingly. “But that is exactly what I wanted to do.”

She had already been to some Nightfall shows before and enjoyed this programming that not only echoed music out among the downtown buildings, but also proverbially called people back into the city center in return.

With the limited budgets due to funding, she could not get the then-top touring talent like at the local performance halls or the Riverbend Festival. But she did help get such past or future hitmakers as Dave Mason, John Prine, Bela Fleck, Lucinda Williams, Alison Krauss, Nickel Creek, Barenaked Ladies, the Black Keys, Keb Mo, Percy Sledge, Doc Watson, and the Derek Trucks Band.

As a sidenote, she remembered that Ms. Krauss, who has gone on to be basically a bluegrass legend, actually forgot her fiddle before her Nightfall performance. “I called Fletcher Bright (the late fiddler and front man with the Dismembered Tennesseans and local Realtor), and he brought one over and she was proud to play it,” Ms Pritchard recalled.

Another anecdote she shared dealt with jazz performer Mose Allison, who was used to playing in a more intimate nightclub-type setting and felt a little uncomfortable in the outdoor and more festive stage setting of Miller Plaza. In fact, longtime Nightfall stage manager John Rawlston had to coax him along a little, Ms. Pritchard recalled.

Among her general memories of Nightfall, she said the way performers are booked with evolving technology has changed, although what she is looking for with her ears and eyes has not. Early on, she would use a thick Pollstar booking agency directory, which was considered the Bible for those trying to line up musical acts.

She also remembers attending a gathering in New York early on, where potential musical acts would be playing in every available convention room or nearby club.

And, of course, she received a lot of CDs and cassettes over the years to line shelves at her office and even at home, although now she can easily check out music online. She usually knows within a quick listen of a song or two if the music is good enough, or has the right sound or energy level, to be a good band for the festive but relaxed atmosphere of Nightfall.

The work has been fun for her, even though she has to do her due diligence like a competitive college football recruiter trying to find no stone unturned in looking for potential talent. And she wants the musicians to be groups who play mostly their own songs and not simply be cover bands.

“I read about folks and try to keep my ear to the ground about new and interesting music that is affordable,” she said. “And I have had a lot of conversations with other people. I go out and hear live music and go to houses and hear them play. I get a lot of input.”

Besides looking for the right band or group, she does take one other factor into consideration, she added. “I enjoy bringing bands to town who have not had the chance to play live here,” she said.

This formula continued to crank out hits for Ms. Pritchard and the Chattanooga Downtown Partnership in terms of appealing to the Friday night audiences in the summer looking for some free musical entertainment, with grants and corporate sponsorship helping.

She even helped book concerts briefly for the Tivoli and Memorial Auditorium when manager David Johnson was retiring as Mayor Bob Corker’s term in office was in its last six months before he left office in 2005.

But a few years later, River City dropped its programming and events arm that had presented the concerts. But in 2010, she had an opportunity to continue programming the Nightfall concerts on a for-profit basis after she started Chattanooga Presents!

For her, going from the non-profit world to doing it as a business opportunity was not much different from switching from a guitar to a banjo, to offer another musical analogy.

“What I discovered was that you don’t have to be not-for-profit to do work like this,” she said, adding that Pete Cooper of the Community Foundation had helped her by encouraging her to think of her new operation simply as a small business.

And with the corporate sponsors that had been supporting Nightfall on a charitable basis, she was able to convince them to switch into making the concert part of their marketing budget.

“It’s really been a great model,” she said of the overall switch.

Ms. Pritchard has also seen changes in her personal life over the years as well. Although known during the early years of her coordination of Nightfall as Carla Watson after growing up as Carla Brown, she met and married British-born Kenny Pritchard in the late 1990s.

They met after his father moved to Tunnel Hill, Ga., after retiring from FedEx and opened a women’s gym and pulled in Kenny to run it. The two soon met, although Carla said with a laugh that it was not at the gym.

They have two children, Cameron, who just finished at the College of Charleston, and Adelle, who at a young age had become interested in crepes during family travels in Europe. She is heading for her second year at George Washington University. Both attended Baylor School.

Kenny, known for regularly wearing a smile, has done real estate- and property-related work and that in part led in late 2007 to the purchase of the old warehouse building at 400 E. Main St. where they now live. Granfalloon – which got its name from a word by novelist Kurt Vonnegut to describe a certain group of people with a meaningless connection and was suggested by Carla’s late brother-in-law, Graham Smith – opened as an events center in 2013 behind the warehouse.

They have even thought of one day finishing the basement of the larger building closer to Main Street as a business of some sort as well.

Ms. Pritchard’s business also has the wintertime ice rink operation, Ice on the Landing, that in recent years has been at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo. And last year, her business bought NOOGA Splash, an inflatable aqua park that is at Chester Frost Park in the summer. Chattanooga Presents also produces Pops on the River around July 4, the Lighted Boat Parade in late November, and the 3 Sisters Bluegrass Festival in the fall, although the latter is owned by the family of the late Fletcher Bright.

Despite the enjoyment and achievements in her life, she has faced one difficult obstacle when she contracted breast cancer in recent years and had to face chemotherapy treatment. But it did result in one more way she has tried to be an inspiration to women and others.

But this person who still regularly attends her childhood church of Red Bank United Methodist is grateful for all the opportunities she has received.

And like many other Chattanoogans, she is particularly thankful for the opportunities with Nightfall, although of course from the perspective of working with the entertainers instead of being among the entertained.

The Friday night warm weather concert, which now stretches across streets and racial groups, has been a mainstay in downtown Chattanooga for 35 years in getting people to stay there after hours, even though that is no longer needed with so many wanting to live near downtown.

It has literally added a little rhythm to the life of downtown Chattanooga.

And for 32 of those years, Ms. Pritchard has been at the helm, or has been empress of the plaza, as one local musical aficionado once called her.

“Hopefully it has a good place in people’s current experiences,” she said of Nightfall, adding that she can imagine newcomers deciding they have found their ideal place to live after attending a concert. “It helps people build community.”

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jcshearer2@comcast.net