The Birth of Deer Creek Music Center / Updated

A look back….

August 13, 1988 – May 20, 1989

THE BIRTH OF DEER CREEK MUSIC CENTER

Noblesville, IN

UPDATED

Last year I wrote this piece and many people enjoyed it. Here it is again with several updates, additions, and a few corrections.

Enjoy!

On August 13, 1988 a large farm field in Hamilton County Indiana was cleared for the last time as the property was sold to a local concert promoter, my employer at that time, Sunshine Promotions. The plan was to build an 18,000-capacity amphitheater.

On May 20, 1989 the first show took place at the brand-new Deer Creek Music Center starring Indiana native and multi–Grammy Award winner Sandi Patty.

Sunshine Promotions was formed in 1974 when two independent concert promoters merged. At that time there were three partners but after a few years one partner named Joe Halderman (RIP) sold his part to the other two partners Dave Lucas and Steve Sybesma. Sunshine promoted concerts in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and eventually Tennessee, West Virginia, and Puerto Rico. During this era there were many regional concert promoters throughout America. They all had several things in common. They were intelligent, cunning, fast thinkers, good marketers, good planners, not to mention they all operated on their own money…. this last part was a key to success.

In 1980 Dave and Steve flew to Detroit to check out an amphitheater called Pine Knob. Pine Knob was a summertime orchestra first venue that also hosted concerts. It was owned by The Nederlander Organization and they had similar properties in Chicago (Poplar Creek), Cleveland (Blossom Music Center) and Cincinnati (Riverbend Amphitheater). Having seen Pine Knob, Dave and Steve started thinking about building their own amphitheater. In the meantime, Sunshine Promotions began promoting concerts during the summer at The Indianapolis Sports Center, which was a tennis court stadium that could seat up to 9,000 people.

In the mid 80’s they really began to work on building an amphitheater in Central Indiana. The first potential site was North of Indianapolis in a small township called Westfield. This involved a large property sale but unfortunately the powers to be did not permit the deal and that site was scrapped. The next potential site was in Downtown Indianapolis at a park called White River State Park. Many people now know this area as the site of the boutique amphitheater now??called The TCU Amphitheater formerly The Lawn. Prior to this the entire west side of downtown was not developed. This particular concept had the stage butting up to The White River and it faced to the East. Had this venue been built it would have been a hard venue to work. The biggest concern was access to the stage as this only had one vehicle lane leading to the backstage. But, once again, the powers to be rejected the proposal. Another potential site was on the Northwest part of Indianapolis near West 86th?Street and I-465, but that concept lasted for a short time. The next and final site was a large 280-acre family-owned farm in Hamilton County. At that time Hamilton County had very relaxed zoning laws. More importantly, the Hamilton County leaders wanted this amphitheater. The original cost of Deer Creek Music Center was $14-15 million including land and construction.

A deal was made to buy the property and Sunshine hired a local architect named Fred Simmons / Simmons & Associates, who coincidently had their office in the same building as Sunshine. It was recommended that Shiel Sexton be hired as the general contractor. Also, Dave and Steve realized that we did not have experience at running a venue, so they hired Market Square Arena to be the venue management. They had assembled a great team. Nobody had experience in designing, building, and managing an amphitheater, but we all figured it out and figured it out well.

During the late 80’s many regional concert promoters built their own venues. Bill Graham built Shoreline Amphitheater located south of San Francisco and it opened in 1988. Also in 1988, Don Law opened Great Woods located west of Boston. Pace Theatricals built amphitheaters in Houston, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Nashville as well as several other markets. Cellar Door Productions built and managed several amphitheaters along the East Coast. Jam Productions built the largest amphitheater in the country in Chicago called The World Music Center, capacity 38,000. Another promoter that was very similar to Sunshine called Contemporary Presentations built Riverport Amphitheater located West of St Louis.

Just after construction began the venue did not have a name. Dave Lucas was driving one day and suddenly the words “Deer Creek” came to him, and that is how the venue name came to be. There is a creek on the property called Sand Creek and the corporate name of the venue was Sand Creek Partners which was a partnership between Sunshine Promotions and then Conseco, who was a silent partner.?

A few months after we opened we discovered by accident that there is a small town in Northern Indiana called Deer Creek, IN and there is a small creek in Indiana called Deer Creek. When we hosted the Grateful Dead for the first time several passionate fans called Dead Heads went to Deer Creek IN only to find out that they had to travel to Noblesville IN for the show.

During the construction a citizens action group tried to constantly stop us. This organization was called RADD, Residents Against Detrimental Development. I am going to say this, and I hope they are offended….these people were complete clueless idiots. The local press gave them some attention at first. Then they made baseless claims including that the music would cause the cows to make bad milk. They also claimed that we would host 80 concerts a year and sell 18,000 tickets per show with bands like Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crue and AC-DC. We wondered who the other 77 bands that could sell 18,000 tickets. Then they claimed that people were driving around the construction site in Mercedes Benz automobiles. Coincidently Dave and Steve both had Mercedes at that time. The media finally stopped giving them attention…but the RADD people didn’t stop. They would call and complain before and during the first few shows over the next month. During the first several weeks of Deer Creek being opened in 1989 we had two concerts cancel due to poor ticket sales. One was Bill Cosby and the other was a band called Poison, far from selling 18,000 tickets! The day after each of these cancelled shows we received calls to complain about the noise from the concert the night before. When they were told that the show was cancelled they would hang up…. we never heard from them again.

Back to the construction of the venue. The property had five homes on it originally. One of these homes still stands and it is called Sleepy Bear Campground. Many people notice that there are several lakes on the property. It was the dirt from those lakes that make the original angled lawn. There were also three lagoons on the north side of the property that became part of the wastewater management system of the venue. As we built the venue we had many challenges including having to redo the backstage access road. One may notice when looking up that the spotlight positions located in the roof are lower than the other steel. We discovered with the original spotlight positions that the spotlights would hit a structural beam when lighting the stage…thus the lower addition. In my opinion the biggest mistake at the venue is in the backstage loading area. There is a structural beam with 9 feet 2 inches clearance. This is too low. You always want to build with a semi-trailer in mind, and the inside height of a semi-trailer is 9 feet 6 inches. But, as mentioned earlier, we created as we went but this was one that got away.

We were very fortunate that the winter of 1988 was very mild, and this helped to keep the construction on time. I do remember the week leading up to our first show to not touch anything as most of the venue was just painted. This includes the backstage being painted the day before and morning of the first show.

In December of 1988 I flew with Dave Lucas and a few of the architects on a private jet to Boston to check out the amphitheater Great Woods. It was a beautiful venue. Coincidently the colors of Great Woods and Deer Creek were the same, light tan and bright green. We went through the venue and the one thing that stood out to me was the rigging grid over the stage. We climbed up into the steel and took many pictures and that was what we based the awesome rigging grid over the stage at Deer Creek from. Also, as it was in early December, it was extremely cold as we ascended into the grid. We had no hat or gloves. It was worth it. Did I mention that it was also windy??

The pavilion and the fan experience at Deer Creek worked well and it still does. One thing that was a pet peeve of Dave’s was to double the number of women’s restrooms from the recommended number. This was a smart move. The pavilion was designed well, and the “rake” of the pavilion is perfect. We had a lawn sound system installed annually called a delay sound system. Basically, this was mid and upper range speakers, and it was on a slight delay from the sound system at the stage. Once the mainstage sound would hit the delay system it was blended just right for those on the lawn.

We also had some county regulations that we had to meet. The first was a curfew. Sundays through Thursdays the curfew was 10:30, this is why most of the showtimes were 7:30. Fridays and Saturdays the curfew was 11:00, thus 8:00 showtimes. Technically the fine was $5,000 for violating this but we were only cited one time that I know of. We also had a sound ordinance of 75 decibels one half mile from our property line. My curiosity had me on this and our second show on May 21, 1989 was the band Cinderella. They had a big, loud sound system made by a British company called Tasco. Most of the harder rock bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Def Leppard used the Tasco system at that time. I asked Cinderella’s sound engineer and longtime friend Laurie Quigley if he would run the PA at full blast in the middle of the afternoon. He complied and said he would run it up to roughly 127 – 128 DB in the pavilion. I went to the property line with the decibel meter and when he ran the PA up to full blast it barely measured 70 DB. I knew that we would never violate the sound ordinance. That said we were cited one time in 1991. I will address both citing’s when I write about GNR / 1991.

As we entered 1989 we began the process of booking the venue. Our goal was to have a big Hoosier name entertainer open the venue and we accomplished that. At first we reached to John Mellencamp, but he was not touring at that time, and he played the previous summer at the fairgrounds in Indianapolis and sold 45,000 tickets. We knew we would waste our time reaching to Michael Jackson and decided not to ask. Interestingly, many bands and artists did not want to play amphitheaters at that time. That included John Mellencamp, INXS, ZZ Top, Gloria Estefan, and Billy Joel to name a few. Tom Petty didn’t like the commercialism of amphitheaters and requested that the tables in the boxes be removed as well as no wait service to the boxes on one of his first appearances at Deer Creek. That said, I reached to my friend Sandi Patty and she agreed to open the venue. We were thrilled!

During the construction and leading up to the first show, the television media liked to send reporters out to check out the progress. At that time, we didn’t have a publicist or spokesperson so yours truly did a lot of TV interviews. I loved doing this and it had its benefits. My favorite thing was to bring the reporter and the cameraman up into the catwalk as it made for an exciting shot. The reporters liked it but the cameramen didn’t. But, it did have benefits. It turns out that many female reporters were single. These were strong, intelligent, well spoken, attractive ladies and I believe they intimidated most men….except for me. Yes, I took several of these awesome reporters out to dinner. Deer Creek created many relationships. Several of the people on the production crews dated and got married. Many people met their significant other during shows at Deer Creek.?

We had an amazing team then and they still have one today. Back then Dave and Steve had a great feel on what to book.??We booked many shows initially that didn’t make profit to simply give the market a variety. The management team from Market Square Arena was incredible. Personally, I learned quite a bit from them, and I regard Rick Fuson as the best arena manager ever. We established a great working relationship with the late Dick Russell, Tom Gehlhausen and The Hamilton County Sheriffs. We also involved the Wayne Township Volunteer Fire Department, and they were great. At that time, we didn’t have computers and accurate weather info at our fingertips. Several years earlier we established a great working relationship with the folks at The National Weather Service located at the Indianapolis International Airport. They gave us their hotline number and only me and Marc Elfenbaum would call. We protected that number. Whenever the folks at The National Weather Service wanted tickets we took care of them. Many times, we would invite them to enjoy dinner backstage with the bands and their road crews. On many occasions I started and ended shows based on their valuable input. Our stagehands and venue staff all did a great job. Everybody loved being part of this awesome team and they took pride in their jobs. I LOVED working with all of these fine folks.

As we led up to the opening at Deer Creek I was main production manager and we had just hired a former show runner named Dave Howard to be a second PM. Right after we hired Dave Howard he said he needed to talk to me. He told me that he was offered a chance to go on tour with Bob Dylan as the assistant tour manager. He thought that I was going to be upset but it was just the opposite. I told him to do it and be the best that he can be, and he did just that. So, we needed another production manager and Dave Lucas and Steve Sybesma asked me who I thought would fit our need. I immediately said Marc Elfenbaum our show runner in Cincinnati. We brought Marc in for an interview and Dave and Steve liked him and hired him. I was elated. This would end up being my best decisions in my career.?

In my opinion we had four shows in 1989 that set the future of Deer Creek Music Center and I feel they are four of the most important shows ever at the venue.

·??????May 20, 1989???Sandi Patty??

o???You have to start somewhere, and this was a perfect first show.

·??????July 1, 1989???????Frank Sinatra

o???This show added credibility to the venue.

·??????July 15, 1989?????Grateful Dead

o???The first sellout and we pulled this off perfectly.

·??????August 30, 1989?Elton John

o???A very high-profile show, and his booking agent represents Jimmy Buffett.

I will write about these shows soon….many great stories.

Deer Creek Music Center became popular immediately. Patrons love going there and enjoying shows and many bands look forward to performing there. The venue has won many awards in the industry and that is a direct reflection of the vision of the ownership??along with the management and programming. And this is the same today with current vision, management, and programing.

The venue name Deer Creek Music Center started at the beginning season, 1989 and lasted through the 2,000 season. In 2001 the venue took on a sponsored name and it became The Verizon Wireless Music Center. Once the Verizon naming rights agreement expired the venue became Klipsch Music Center. Once that ended the new and current venue name is Ruoff Music Center. Even though it has not been named Deer Creek over the last 22 years the name still stands. When a venue takes on a sponsored name the ownership stays the same. Currently the venue is owned and operated by Live Nation. Some people may look down on naming rights or various areas of sponsorship, but that income is very important for the bottom line. The entertainment business is about money, and everyone involved wants to make as much money as possible. Beginning in the 90’s we definitely saw the influx of many venues worldwide including sports arenas and stadiums aligning with various companies for naming rights. This is here to stay and will only get bigger.

Please share your thoughts and experiences about Deer Creek Music Center.

Are you looking to book entertainment? If so, please contact me.