By KY3 Staff
Published: May. 23, 2024 at 8:18 AM CDT|Updated: May. 23, 2024 at 8:14 PM CDT
RIDGEDALE, Mo. (AP/KY3) - The Rolling Stones and the Ozarks don’t seem like the most natural pairing. But nature itself, and of all things fishing, have brought them together.
Tickets for the concert will go on sale Friday, May 31 at 10 a.m. For ticketing information, visit www.rollingstones.com.
The Stones announced Thursday that they will end their summer Hackney Diamonds Tour on July 21 at Thunder Ridge Nature Arena, a brand new monument to mountain beauty in Missouri built by Bass Pro Shops founder and CEO Johnny Morris.
The Missouri native hopes that Thunder Ridge, which opens with a Morgan Wallen concert Saturday — will be a name heard alongside Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre in Colorado and The Gorge Amphitheatre in Washington state when people talk about the nation’s most beautiful music venues.
“I just I really love my home here in the Ozarks,” Morris told The Associated Press in an interview. “I’m happy to share it with the world.”
For him, the site is as personal as it is pristine. Since he was a boy, with his father and grandfather, he fished the White River and Table Rock Reservoir — both visible from the venue’s seats — in the deep-green Boston Mountains section of the Ozarks that surrounds it.
Morris entered the first national bass-fishing tournament — full of future fishing legends — on the reservoir in 1970, and the competitors’ hard-to-get lures convinced him to start selling tackle to fishermen on the way there out of his father’s liquor store in the early years of what would become Bass Pro Shops.
The 20,000-capacity arena in Ridgedale, about 10 miles from Branson, is downright tiny compared to the 80,000-plus-seat MetLife Stadium, where the Stones will play Thursday night.
Mick, Keith and their crew coming to these mountains also had its origins in fishing. About a decade ago, Morris took his friend Chuck Leavell, a former member of the Allman Brothers Band who has been the Rolling Stones’ primary touring keyboardist and musical director since the early 1980s, on a fishing trip to Canada.
“We were on this pristine little stream, he hooks on this big fish, he said, ‘John this is like the happiest day of my life. If you ever need a favor, you let me know,” Morris remembered with a laugh. “A couple years ago, we were working on this, and I said, ‘Chuck, remember that day you asked if there was anything you could do for me? How about you get the Rolling Stones to Ridgedale, Missouri?”
Morris has for years dreamed of putting a venue on the site. Many musical acts have played in more makeshift set-ups for summer camps and fishing tournaments. Garth Brooks played to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Morris’ stores.
“It just inspired me to see if we could expand this facility,” he said, “just to share the beauty of the Ozarks.
The site won’t necessarily require roughing it. Its 12-story “Nature Tower” — designed to look like the old fire-watching towers in national parks — rises over the back of the venue. The amenities in the VIP suites inside it include bedrooms. Morris later plans to have it re-dubbed the “Veterans Tower” to honor, among others, his father, who fought in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II.
He takes the “Nature” part of the name seriously. Morris and those promoting the site say its structures were designed to blend and peacefully coexist with their environment. Along with 1,200 acres of surrounding land, they have been permanently set aside as part of a not-for-profit foundation committed to the cause of conservation, to which all the proceeds will also go.
“Hopefully, it’ll be undisturbed,” Morris said. “You won’t come there in the future and see condos or nothin’. Only beautiful nature.”
The Thunder Ridge venue has seen considerable change since a concert by Garth Brooks in late 2022 which came under criticism from fans who complained about long traffic lines , parking issues, no way for those with disabilities to get around and miles-long walks that caused a number of fans to miss the concert.
“The experience getting from the parking lot down to your seating area has been improved,” said Kate Girotti, the Vice-President of Marketing for ASM Global, a venue management and services company. “We have built entirely new roads to get people into expanded parking lots that have gone from 3,000 to 6,000 spots. We’ve added new turn lanes to Highway 65 and two additional lanes and roundabouts on Highway 86 to help people get in-and-out quickly. But as with any major event, anytime 20,000 are trying to get somewhere at the same time, there’s going to be some traffic. We will have open-air trams that are available for guests and we’ve actually paved paths throughout the venue so anyone who has a wheelchair or other problems walking through grass or wood chips should have a more seamless experience now because we want to make sure everybody has an enjoyable experience.”
Girotti also pointed out that feedback from concert goers is appreciated.
“We can’t get any better as an organization if we don’t hear from our guests,” she said. “So we will definitely send out a post-event survey to guests that should be in their inbox within 24-48 hours. It will go to the e-mail address of the person who purchased the tickets but people can also contact us on social media as well.”
“Read more at: https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article266801696.html#storylink=cpy With concerts at Thunder Ridge starting this weekend, fans are anxious to see if the parking nightmares, long walks and lack of wheelchair acessibility from the Garth Brooks concert have been addressed..The staff says it has..
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