Like many things in the life of Johnny Morris, the founder of Bass Pro Shops, the story begins as a fishing tale. In 2021, Morris took a trip to Canada on a fishing excursion with several of his top store managers. Also joining the group was his pal Chuck Leavell, one of music’s most legendary keyboard players and, for the past thirty years, the keyboardist and musical director for the Rolling Stones. Leavell doesn’t spend a lot of time fishing (he says he’s more of an upland bird hunter), so when Morris helped him net a nearly thirty-pound king salmon, the musician was ecstatic.
“He said it was one of the best days of his life,” the soft-spoken Morris recalls with a smile, sitting in his office at Big Cedar Lodge, the enormous resort he owns twenty minutes south of Branson, Missouri. “And if I ever needed a favor, give him a call.”
Two years later, Morris called in his chit. He was putting the finishing touches on his newest passion project, Thunder Ridge Nature Arena, an 18,000-capacity natural amphitheater located on the shores of Table Rock Lake in the Ozark Mountains of southwest Missouri. And who better to put the venue on the global map than the Rolling Stones? That’s just who came calling this July when Mick, Keith, and co. played a two-hour, high-energy, career-spanning set that served as the finale of their Hackney Diamonds U.S. tour. “I didn’t have to go through a booking agent,” Morris says with a laugh. “I got it because of a fish.”
With a smaller capacity than the football stadiums that typically host a Stones’ show, the Thunder Ridge gig felt more intimate. “I can actually see Keith and Ronnie’s interactions without looking at the screen,” said Jim Schmidt, a fan from Atlanta, standing at the top of the venue’s lawn. He was at his eighth show of the tour. But with a stage the same size as at the larger gigs, it could still handle the massive production of a Stones’ show, with high-resolution video screens running the entire width of the structure. And as a full moon shone overhead amid views of the lush, green Ozarks all the way into Arkansas, the scenery lived up to the music.
“Johnny has built the premier amphitheater in America, as far as I’m concerned,” Leavell says. “It’s a beautiful setting and an extremely well-thought-out design.”
Morris did his research, visiting sites such as Red Rocks in Colorado and the Gorge Amphitheater in central Washington, the venues to which Thunder Ridge will most likely be compared. Carved out of a limestone ridge overlooking Table Rock Lake, the amphitheater offers uninterrupted views of the surrounding mountains and water. To ensure those views will remain, Morris bought 1,200 acres of land behind the stage that he plans to keep free of development. He stayed involved in nearly every facet of construction; a few days before the show, he was helping hang photos and other memorabilia, telling staff to move this an inch up or that a little to the right.
The details carry through to another element that sets Thunder Ridge apart: the seating options. More than 1,100 seats are available in various suites and loges and a lawn area with two-top tables that runs along the venue’s upper rim. Looming over it all is the 120-foot-tall Veterans Tower, which houses suites for concert viewing and even overnight stays. Morris has long supported veterans causes—his father, whom he calls “my hero,” fought in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II—and for the Stones show, he gave away a thousand tickets to area veterans.
The other cause closest to Morris’s heart is conservation. His foundation has donated millions to outdoors initiatives, and the net profits from every show at Thunder Ridge will go toward the foundation’s efforts. While only a few more shows are scheduled for this year (including Imagine Dragons and Pitbull in September), the arena plans to ramp up, with more than seventy in the works for 2025.
But for Morris, building his dream venue wasn’t just about bringing big-name talent to this corner of Missouri, even if it is the Rolling Stones. “Music isn’t why we built Thunder Ridge,” he says. “It was about building a place to gather and share in the beauty of the Ozarks.”
