MANSON — In the fall as the days grow shorter and cooler, Jesse Grossnickle is hard at work planning a way for lots of people to have a good time with live country music on a hot summer evening.

Since the shows began in 2017, he has been the lead organizer of the Crash My Crater concert held every year in conjunction with Manson Greater Crater Days.

The concerts, he said, offer an opportunity for people to see and hear “big-time artists in small-town Manson, Iowa.”

Over the years, the concert has featured Riley Green, Niko Moon, and Travis Denning, to name just a few. This year’s concert featured Parmalee, Matt Stell, Trevor Hill and Corey Waller and Emily Johnson.

But getting all those performers lined up requires months of advance work.

That’s why every year in the fall Grossnickle is busy making contacts with booking agencies in Nashville, Tennessee, to get artists lined up for Crash My Crater the following June.

Organizing the concerts is just one of many things Grossnickle does to benefit Manson.

“I’m involved in too much stuff, actually,” Grossnickle joked.

He said he pitches in with all kinds of groups and activities because he is “a local boy who just wants the best for my town.”

“I like seeing people enjoying themselves, taking advantage of all the things we have here in Manson,” he added.

He is a member of the Manson City Council and the Manson Trail Project Committee. He previously volunteered with a successful effort to renovate the Manson playground.

He is also a fixture of the Manson business community. He has owned the Shore Side Pub & Grub for 11 years.

He and his wife, P.J., bought the building on Main Street that houses the restaurant in 2011. They opened the doors a year later in 2012.

That was not his first foray into the food business, however. He has worked in restaurants since he was 14, when he started by washing dishes. From 2009 to 2012, he owned the Beach House Pub & Grub in Humboldt.

In addition to running his own business, he is teaching future restaurant owners how to someday manage their own eateries. He is doing that by serving as the coordinator and instructor of the hotel and restaurant management program at Iowa Lakes Community College in Emmetsburg. That is the same program from which he earned his associate degree.

He has been the program coordinator and instructor since 2014.

“I love it because the restaurant industry is something that I have an extreme passion for,” he said.

Grossnickle was 2 years old when his parents moved from Lehigh to Manson, and he considers Manson to be his hometown. He graduated from Manson Northwest Webster High School in 2004, then went on to Iowa Lakes Community College. He and his wife have three sons.