Courtesy of the Ruoff Music Center

TODAY, Noblesville’s 35-year-old outdoor concert pavilion is officially called Ruoff Music Center. But now let’s go back to the 1980s, when “naming rights” didn’t exist and some Hoosiers thought a state-of-the-art outdoor concert venue might just be the work of the devil.

The context
The original Deer Creek was the brainchild of Sunshine Promotions founders David Lucas and Steve Sybesma, who booked shows for years in Indiana and surrounding states. In the 1970s and 1980s, their biggest concerts in Indy were usually at Market Square Arena and the Indiana State Fairgrounds. However, purpose-built outdoor pavilions were beginning to catch on nationally, and Lucas and Sybesma decided they wanted one for the Indianapolis area.

Unfortunately for them, not everyone was as enthusiastic about their plans. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Sunshine attempted to position the project in Westfield, Pike Township and even White River State Park, to no avail. The reasons for these refusals ranged from logistical concerns (only one semi-trailer of equipment at a time could have been unloaded at White River State Park) to all the classic NIMBY concerns, which could be summarized in a statement ‘a representative of Union Bible College. which, as Lucas said The Star of Indianapolis in 1998, solemnly informed the Westfield Plan Commission: “If you allow this amphitheater to be built in your community, your daughters will be dancing in the street with the devil. »

The $12 million project ultimately found a home on 220 acres of Hamilton County farmland. But even though this location outside of Noblesville was in the precise geographic center of nowhere, the idea that it might pose some kind of cultural, moral (or, at the very least, acoustic) threat to the locals persisted. .

The first season
On May 20, 1989, Indiana-born gospel singer Sandi Patty took the stage as Deer Creek’s first headliner, kicking off an inaugural concert season that redefined the word “eclectic”. Patty was followed the next night by the heavy metal band Cinderella. Over the summer, Bob Hope, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Willie Nelson, Metallica, Frank Sinatra, Kenny G, Bob Dylan, Gallagher and MC Hammer, among many others, took the stage.

The noise
The Cinderella metal show provided an opportunity to determine just how loud Deer Creek concerts could be. This represented more than an academic concern, as local ordinances stipulated that concerts could be no louder than 75 decibels within a half-mile of the venue’s property line. Cinderella was notoriously loud, so Sunshine Promotions talent buyer and production manager Steve Gerardi asked the group’s sound manager to turn up his sound system to 130 decibels (the equivalent of an airplane taking off) during that he stood on the Deer Creek property line and measured the noise. chaos with a sound level meter. Even at this relatively close distance, the needle did not reach 75 decibels. “I knew at that point we would never get a noise penalty,” Gerardi said.

Unfortunately, noise penalties were just one of the restrictions placed on Deer Creek by local authorities. Monday through Thursday shows were scheduled to end at 10:30 a.m. and weekend shows at 11 p.m. And who better than Guns N’ Roses to break that curfew. On the first night of a two-night stay, the band took the stage nearly 90 minutes late and played nearly an hour past curfew. The next night, they overplayed for another 25 minutes, earning them a $5,000 fine.

Alcohol
It’s no surprise that people attending Deer Creek shows liked to relax, often with the help of alcoholic beverages or other mood-altering compounds. Given this fact, it’s also not surprising that early on the venue suffered from a persistent problem: fans would party in their cars, then enter the show blissfully unaware that they had left their engines running. Another problem was that the beer signs in the concession area were visible from the stage, causing problems for bands like Aerosmith and the Grateful Dead, whose members had gone through rehab and didn’t want to watch the alcohol logos while they played. As a result, just before the start of their concerts, any alcohol-related signage within sight of the stage was obscured.

Celebrity moments
In 1993, Julia Roberts and musician Lyle Lovett, who played at Deer Creek, held their wedding reception on the grounds before Lovett’s show that evening. The staff had approximately 36 hours to organize the evening. Also that year, Foreigner performed to an almost sold-out audience. They released a DVD of the footage, Foreigner: Living in Deer Creekin 2003. In 2005, the power went out while Tom Petty was performing his song “Refugee.” Unfazed, the crowd continued to sing the lyrics until power was restored, at which point Petty simply picked up where his fans were. And in 2012, CBS anchor Katie Couric sang backing vocals as one of Deer Creek’s regulars, Jimmy Buffett’s “Reeferettes.”

The weather
To ensure that their acts and audiences were not caught in dangerous storms, Deer Creek maintained a closely guarded, top secret hotline with the National Weather Service office at the Indianapolis International Airport. Not surprisingly, the weather team could get free tickets to virtually any show they wanted to see. When it was learned that several meteorologists were Chicago fans (of the band, not the city), they were invited to dinner with the band at their next concert.

The dead
The Grateful Dead loved playing Deer Creek and its management loved hosting them. And why not? The musicians were super calm and they always had a full house. However, their fans were an entirely different matter. When the Dead played their first show at this venue in 1989, a handful of Deadheads crossed paths and ended up in the small town of Deer Creek in Carroll County, about 45 minutes north. Sunshine Promotions, recognizing the town’s patience with the sudden appearance of wayward fans, handed out tickets to an upcoming Anne Murray concert to its perplexed residents.

Things ended less amicably on July 2, 1995, when rioters invaded a Grateful Dead show and forced the cancellation of the following night’s concert. The group was so angry that it issued an official letter berating its followers in language that sounded much more like that of a father than that of a dead man. “If you don’t have a ticket, don’t come,” we can read. “It’s real. It is above all a music concert, not a general party. »

The end
The Deer Creek name was retired in 2001. SFX Broadcasting purchased Sunshine in 1997 and was consumed by Clear Channel Communications in 2000. Clear Channel (which eventually morphed into Live Nation) expanded the facility’s lawn, then sold the naming rights to Verizon Wireless. In 2001, Verizon Wireless Music Center debuted, followed in 2011 by Klipsch Music Center, Ruoff Home Mortgage Music Center in 2017 and today’s Ruoff Music Center in 2019. When Fort Wayne-based Ruoff announced in line that it would shorten the name. , the amphitheater’s social media spaces were flooded with comments from people saying that, for them, it would always be Deer Creek. May it always be so.