Business of the Arts: Lake Rocks

Located 50 miles south of Springfield in the Stone County town of Lampe, Black Oak Amphitheater offers an intimate wooded setting to see a wide range of musical acts.

Variety is the goal at Black Oak, with country artists like Brantley Gilbert and Trace Adkins, classic rock groups like Kansas and Jefferson Starship, and rap acts like Ice-T and Tech N9ne, all on tap this season at the venue that maxes out at 5,700 seats.

The venue has been an entertainment staple for more than four decades, starting out as Swiss Villa Amphitheater in 1983.

General Manager Tom Abbett said he began his role last November under owner Johnny Stauffer II, who also owns Branson-based construction firm SMJ Builders LLC.

Stauffer hired Abbett away from another outdoor concert venue, Ozarks Amphitheater in Camdenton, where Abbett had worked for 10 seasons.

Abbett said at two hours apart, the Ozarks and Black Oak amphitheaters are separate and distinct for locals and tourists, but among acts and agents in Nashville, the venues would get jumbled.

“It was an identity crisis,” he said. “They’re in the same general vicinity, and Nashville didn’t know the difference. There was a lot of stuff to overcome.”

He recalled visiting Black Oak Amphitheater in 2017, in a period when the Lampe venue sat vacant. The thinking then was that the Ozarks Amphitheater team might be able to reboot Black Oak, but Abbett said it was a bigger project than they wanted to take on at the time.

“It had been vandalized – that’s a kind word for it,” he said. “Every bit of copper was stolen – thousands of dollars’ worth of piping and wiring. The stage had been set on fire by some unhoused people who had used it as shelter, and it was pretty well gutted.”

Stauffer purchased the gutted property in 2019, and as a builder, he had the skills and the wherewithal to do something with it, Abbett said. Stauffer also had the desire, having grown up in the area, watching shows at Black Oak in the 1990s.

“It was something that he could tackle – electrical, plumbing, windows, trim,” Abbett said.

An anticipated 2020 opening was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but Stauffer used the opportunity to continue making improvements before finally opening in 2021. Abbett said it has been in continuous operation since.

Renovations to the facility represent a $500,000 investment, Abbett said, not counting $900,000 spent to upgrade sound and lights. He reckons it will take 45-50 shows – roughly four years – to recoup those costs, with constant smaller investments ongoing.

Abbett said in his former role at Ozarks Amphitheater, he partnered with his predecessor at Black Oak, Phil Potter, to help both of their independently owned venues skirt the identity crisis issue. After all, they were both in lake-centric vacation destinations, and both were competing with larger venues managed or booked by Live Nation Entertainment Inc.

“We stayed away from each other’s show dates and acts and tried not to bid against each other,” Abbett said. “We figured it would be better to be partners than competitors.”

A friendship was struck up, and Abbett said when Potter decided to retire, Stauffer gave him a call to see if he might like to move two hours south.

“I always wanted to be involved in this venue,” Abbett said. “There’s the storied history of Swiss Villa, with acts like Ozzy Osbourne, George Strait, Journey, Boston – anybody and everybody played here in its 43 years of existence.”

Additional expertise
With Abbett on board, Black Oak made a strategic hire of Dwight Glenn as director of marketing. Glenn, manager of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils and a former independent music promoter, brought a well-stocked toolbox to the endeavor, with experience in promoting concerts as well as plenty of knowledge of what touring acts require.

Abbett said with the Daredevils ceasing much of their touring, Glenn had worked himself out of a job.

“We certainly hadn’t planned on adding somebody of his caliber to the payroll, but how often does somebody with this kind of talent become available?” Abbett said. “Very seldom, and certainly not in Lampe, Missouri.”

Abbett said the decision to hire Glenn is paying dividends.

“A lot of doors have opened for us,” he said.

In his role, Glenn talks to tour managers to suss out performers’ needs. He said artists love the setup at Black Oak, with dressing rooms right underneath the stage and handy parking for buses just outside.

Accessibility matters, according to Abbett, who noted some of the acts that are popular with audiences are older performers. Ted Nugent is 77.

Some also have demands or preferences, and they don’t want to park far away on a 90-degree day on a dusty backstage parking lot.

“Dwight Yoakam refuses to walk across a dusty parking lot in his python boots,” Abbett said of the country artist. “He might be from Kentucky, but he’s spent a lot of time in L.A.”

Abbett noted the venue gets a report card from performers and managers who tell agencies how their experience was, factoring in ticket sales, food, hospitality and more.

Word of mouth is helpful in booking shows. While there were eight shows last season, this year the goal is to roughly double that with 15 or 16, and Abbett said that eventually, he’d like to get into the range of 24-25 shows per year.

“We’re drilling holes to see what genres work best down here,” he said.

Glenn said being in the center of the country is both a blessing and a curse.

“We may not be the first market to come to, but we’re happy to pick up the show that helps the artist get from Nashville to Oklahoma or Colorado,” Glenn said. “We look at people’s calendars, and we reach out to agents to say, ‘Hey, we think this would work.’”

Glenn said sometimes a show in Lampe doesn’t make financial sense for an artist – for instance, if they played in the area recently and don’t want to come back too quickly.

“We don’t get every show we go after,” he said.

Glenn said the population of the Table Rock Lake area rises significantly from Memorial Day to Labor Day, when people spend vacations at their boats or summer homes. That’s a challenge in promoting ticket sales, he said, as the audience may not have arrived in the area yet.

But tickets are also purchased by locals from the Springfield metropolitan area and from as far away as Lebanon or central Arkansas.

If Glenn is trying to sell tickets to see Little River Band, he has to determine whether a 65-year-old potential audience member would likely be on Facebook or Instagram.

“That’s what you’ve got to figure out, because you have to be strategic with marketing dollars,” Glenn said.

For an outdoor venue, weather is also a difference-maker, Glenn said.

“A lot of people wait until the week of to buy tickets to see what the weather will be like, and we respect that,” he said. “Still, it’s our job to get shows out there and get an audience for them.”

Constant improvement
Abbett said Stauffer’s ownership is marked by stability and improvement, and that has helped in Abbett’s goal of making it profitable.

The improvements have continued in Abbett’s short tenure as well. He said everyone involved in the venue got in the act of power washing, painting and paving before the season began.

“It looks totally different than it did six months ago,” he said. “We added some color; we powder-coated railings. We painted the main entryway as a red-carpet walkway.”

They painted the seats an aqua tone that Abbett described as splashy and lake appropriate.

“It makes you feel like you want to jump in a pool,” he said.

Concessions have been upgraded, with additions to the menu like footlong chili cheese dogs with a secret chili recipe and chopped pork nachos and sandwiches from Kimberling City restaurant Ma’s Place. Ma’s Place also caters backstage food and the VIP program, which offers a buffet before every show to 286 guests who pay for the package.

“There’s first class, and then there’s economy,” Abbett said.

Beer offerings have switched from Miller and Coors products to Anheuser-Busch, he said, with a house beer, a Nashville brew called American Rebel Light.

The economics of a music theater set among the forests and hills of the Ozarks can be complicated. Abbett said he needs an audience of 2,000-2,500 to break even for an average act. If he pays more than $100,000 for an act, that figure needs to bump up into the 3,000 range.

He cuts expenses by using volunteers from the Springfield Abou Ben Adhem Shriners and the Reed Springs school district’s Wolf Pack Foundation. The groups each run a concession stand, with workers getting $15 per hour plus tips for their organizations.

According to Abbett, there is a refocused energy at Black Oak Amphitheater.

“We invite everyone to come out and see the changes and hear the changes,” he said. “We’re looking forward to great things, but mainly we’re focused on making sure everyone has a great time.”