Chicago quartet Mungion (pronounced ‘Mung-yin’) sold out their hometown venue Tonic Room three nights in a row—without repeating a single song— before they had even been a band for three years. And singer and guitarist Justin Reckamp could not have been more enthusiastic about their recent victory. “The band was just really excited to play our first three-night run in our home city for all of our friends and family,” he says. “Once we start feeding off of the crowd, there is an unexplainable back and forth that takes place. The end goal is to construct something in the moment that is created by the band and the crowd alike.” Mungion’s most devoted fans, who are known as the Mung Force, feel equally invested in the experience. Last fall, a mere weeks before beginning their first headlining tour, the band’s van and trailer were stolen in Detroit, along with all of their gear and a lighting rig that can only be described as “not cheap.” The financial damage of the robbery was north of $41,000, but the Mung Force kicked into action—after starting a GoFundMe campaign, they managed to raise more than $33,000. Reckamp, Joe Re (keyboards/vocals), Sean Carolan (bass/vocals) and Matt Kellen (drums/vocals) technically formed Mungion during the spring of 2015, though the four musicians have been balancing their jamband-friendly mix of technical prowess, deep improvisation and fun, onstage theatrics for far longer. “We all started at the Parn Kournt Method School around the age of 8, and we did that until we were around 21 years old. We learned a lot there; I even did a weeklong course on slap bass fundamentals,” Carolan says with a smile. “The school year was 730 days long.”