Photography by Matt Marcinkowski
Trey Kerr
Twenty years ago, Trey Kerr was sitting, handcuffed, in the parking lot outside a Phish show in Noblesville, Indiana. He was 18 years old and selling bootleg T-shirts—in order to donate the proceeds to the WaterWheel Foundation, which organizes the band’s charitable giving. If that makes you raise an eyebrow, then know that security didn’t believe him, either.
As Kerr tells it, after the security official confirmed with the head of the nonprofit that, yes, this young upstart really was going to be donating the money, the guard uncuffed him. “He said, ‘It’s your lucky day. You’re gonna give me the rest of your T-shirts, and I’m never gonna see you again,’” Kerr says. “I looked at him, and I go, ‘Well, what do I get?’ It was the longest pause of my entire life.”
The security guard responded with something that is definitely unprintable in this magazine but was basically “You’ve got guts, kid. What do you want?” Kerr’s demands: dead-center front-row seats at the band’s next concert, backstage passes, and an invitation to watch the soundcheck. The security official kicked in tickets to the rest of the tour but made Kerr volunteer at the WaterWheel table first. That’s how Kerr broke into the music industry. He learned everything by watching others, eventually working in tour, production, and stage management and making the switch to video. He founded his own company, which grew into Gateway Studios & Production Services, an audio, video, and lighting vendor for major touring acts.
Now, Kerr is taking the next step: breaking ground on a 32-acre, $111 million production facility in Chesterfield, where acts can rehearse their concerts before hitting the road. The facility will be able to accommodate tours playing anything from a theater to an NFL stadium. He anticipates a 2023 opening.
“A lot of people think that the artist just flies around in their big fancy jet and shows up to play a show,” Kerr says. “That’s not the case. They spend a lot of money and time perfecting these tours.”
That’s partly because of the way artists make money today. Streaming is less profitable than album or CD sales used to be, and the demand for creative, experiential tours is high. The quality needs to be consistent—which isn’t easy across a multicity tour—and rehearsals take time. That time depends on the size of the act, which can be huge. Kenny Chesney, Kerr says, travels with 80 semi-trucks full of gear. The most recognized facility where a show can be perfected is the Rock Lititz campus in Lititz, Pennsylvania. Pre-pandemic, it was booked two years out. Kerr saw a gap in the market.
A St. Louis native, Kerr scoped out spots in Tennessee and Georgia, but St. Louis’ central location appealed to him. “The number of markets you can immediately hit is huge,” he says. Our city’s musical heritage was also alluring. “Even the Blues’ mascot is a musical note,” Kerr says. “As other regions have grown, St. Louis kind of gets overlooked as a major stop for tours.
“This is our way of bringing a little bit of the music industry back to St. Louis,” he adds, “and making it a more significant space.”
