Guilty Pleasures
By Associated Press
Rolling Stones to swing through new Thunder Ridge Nature Arena in the Ozarks
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.
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 18,000-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 co-exist with their environment, and 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.”
Artist who created Precious Moments figurines dies at the age of 85
CARTHAGE, Mo. | Sam Butcher, the artist who created the Precious Moments figurines depicting angelic teardrop-eyed children, has died. He was 85.
The company said in a Facebook post that he died early Monday surrounded by family. It said his life’s mission was “to share God’s gift of love with the world.” No details about his cause of death were provided.
Some of the Christian-themed figurines feature Bible verses or children praying. Fans have collections numbering in the hundreds, while critics deride them as kitsch.
Butcher’s childhood love of illustrating got a wider audience when he began telling Bible stories on a children’s ministry television show while he drew. That experience led to him cofounding a business in 1974 named Jonathan & David after the biblical figures, according to his online obituary.
Early offerings included greeting cards. And within a few years, those drawings were transformed into porcelain figurines.
Thousands of designs have been produced over the decades, and fans of his work flock each year to the Precious Moments Inspiration Park and Precious Moments Chapel in Carthage, Missouri.
The cornerstone of the pastel-painted, non-denominational oasis is the chapel, which Butcher was inspired to build by a 1983 trip to the Sistine Chapel in Rome. It includes 84 Biblical murals that cover more than 5,000 square feet.
Charlie Colin, founding member of the band Train, dies at 58
BRUSSELS | Charlie Colin, bassist and founding member of the band Train, best known for their early-aughts hits like “Drops of Jupiter” and “Meet Virginia,” has died. He was 58.
Colin’s sister Carolyn Stephens confirmed her brother’s death to The Associated Press on Wednesday. He died after slipping and falling in the shower while house-sitting for a friend in Brussels, celebrity website TMZ.com reported.
Colin grew up in Southern California, later attending Berklee College of Music in Boston. After college, he played in a group called Apostles guitarist Jimmy Stafford and singer Rob Hotchkiss. The band eventually dissolved, and Colin moved to Singapore for a year to write jingles.
Eventually, Colin, Hotchkiss and Stafford relocated to San Francisco, where Train formed in the early ‘90s with singer Pat Monahan. Colin brought in drummer Scott Underwood to round out the group, according to an interview with Colin and Hotchkiss in Berklee’s alumni magazine.
As a founding member of the pop-rock band, Colin played on the band’s first three records, 1998’s self-titled album, 2001’s “Drops of Jupiter” and 2003’s “My Private Nation.” The latter two releases peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 chart.
“Meet Virginia,” from Train’s debut album, broke the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100, but it was their sophomore album that confirmed the band’s success.
The eight-times platinum title track “Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)” featured the Rolling Stones ‘ session pianist Chuck Leavell and Leonard Cohen’s string orchestrator Paul Buckmaster and was written about the death of Monahan’s mother. It hit No. 5 on the Billboard chart and earned two Grammys, including best rock song.
Colin left Train in 2003 because of substance abuse.
“Charlie is one incredible bass player, but he was in a lot of pain, and the way he was dealing with it was very painful for everyone else around him,” Monahan told NBC San Diego.
In 2015, he reunited with Hotchkiss to start a new band called Painbirds, alongside Tom Luce. In 2017, he formed another band, the Side Deal, with Sugar Ray’s Stan Frazier and the PawnShop Kings’ Joel and Scott Owen.
On Wednesday, a tribute to Colin appeared on Train’s social media pages.
“When I met Charlie Colin, front left, I fell in love with him. He was the sweetest guy and what a handsome chap. Let’s make a band that’s the only reasonable thing to do,” it reads.
“His unique bass playing a beautiful guitar work helped get folks to notice us in SF and beyond. I’ll always have a warm place for him in my heart. I always tried to pull him closer but he had a vision of his own. You’re a legend, Charlie. Go charm the pants off those angels,” the unsigned post continued.
Prior to his death, Colin documented his time in Brussels, deeming it “officially my favorite city” in a March Instagram post.
Colin also worked as the musical director of the Newport Beach Film Festival.
“Charlie was a special part of the Newport Beach Film Festival family,” said Todd Quartararo, co-founder of the Newport Beach Film Festival. “His heart, compassion and creativity will surely be missed.”
He is survived by his parents, sister and niece.
National Folk Festival to be held in Mississippi’s capital from 2025 through 2027
JACKSON, Miss. | Mississippi’s capital city has been tapped to host the National Folk Festival from 2025 through 2027.
The free, three-day festival is set to be held in downtown Jackson during the second week of November in each of those years and will feature music, art, dance and food from cultures throughout the nation and around the world, The Clarion Ledger reported.
“As we were aiming to be the selected city for the National Folk Festival, part of our charge and part of our effort to entice the selection of the City of Jackson was to make it clear where we have roots in the creation of blues and jazz and genres like gospel music, that this is the opportunity for America’s music to come home to Mississippi,” Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said at a news conference Tuesday. “We want to make it clear that this National Folk Festival is Mississippi’s National Folk Festival, not just the City of Jackson.”
Jackson beat 42 other cities vying to host the event. It is estimated the festival will bring 60,000 attendees in its first year and 100,000 each year after that, Lumumba said. It is also estimated to have a $60 million impact during the festival’s three-year residency, officials said.
The National Council for the Traditional Arts, which created the festival, said t he event first started in 1934 and “is the oldest multicultural festival of traditional arts in the nation, and has been produced from its inception by the NCTA.”
The city did not provide specifics on where in downtown Jackson the outdoor event will be held.
After the three years the National Folk Festival is in Jackson, the plan is to start hosting a locally produced Jackson festival to take its place in subsequent years.
“We’ve seen how the festival can be a drive for long-term economic impacts, downtown revitalization and really a sense of community building,” said Blaine Waide, the executive director of the National Council for the Traditional Arts.
The traveling festival is produced in partnership with communities around the country, according to the NCTA website. To date, it has been presented in nearly 30 cities, with some cities, such as St. Louis, hosting it several times, the site said. The last festival was the 81st and held in Salisbury, Maryland, in 2022, according to the website.
—From AP reports
