On occasional Friday nights, Adrian Campbell’s front yard transforms into an indie rock oasis buzzing with an aura of endless possibility. Hundreds of college students drive to his house 15 minutes south of NC State’s campus, park up and down the neighborhood streets and pack into the sloping grassy amphitheater to watch local indie groups perform on the front porch.
The Trailer Park concerts walk the line between house shows and venue events, maintaining the intimacy and familiarity of smaller gigs while drawing in numbers rivaling Pour House.
The space was born in September 2021 when Adrian Campbell, a fourth-year studying mechanical engineering, hosted a housewarming show which inadvertently led to one booking after another. According to Campbell, The Trailer Park was born from the virtue of a perfect location and a need for a relaxed and accessible environment for bands and students alike. It eventually attracted over 800 people for a single show.
“I just was pushing the boundary of what I could get away with, and it seems it just grew in size exponentially,” Campbell said. “Then eventually, I don’t know, I kind of woke up one day and it happened to be the size that it was. I didn’t try and stop anything and I was arguably kind of foolish to be like, ‘Yeah, let’s keep going’.”
Adrian’s brother Austin Campbell, a second-year studying communication, serves as the PR representative, in-house photographer and his brother’s right-hand man. He attributes much of the atmosphere maintained at the Trailer Park to Adrian Campbell’s hosting.
“He finds it embarrassing, but for a while he used to walk around at the concerts and be like ‘I’m Jay Gatsby,’” Austin Campbell said. “These are his soirees.”
Adrian Campbell does have a Gatsby-of-the-trailer-park presence at the shows, floating around the crowd putting out fires as things arise.
“My biggest contribution I think is just general bravery,” Adrian Campbell said. “Just the belief that it will be okay and telling everyone ‘No guys, it’s fine, don’t worry.’”
One of Adrian’s main goals in hosting the shows is to create a community for musicians and students, particularly those students who have had trouble finding their niche amongst such a large student body.
“After transferring from UNC-W during [the pandemic], I was very alone and I didn’t have a community, so I made one instead,” Adrian Campbell said. “I think it’s the only reason I have friends really. The general crowd that I draw is just like mostly all kids that have nothing else to do or don’t feel like they fit in. I’m just trying to build a community.”
Both brothers note that an interesting facet of the Trailer Park’s success has been seeing who the shows attract. Through what Adrian Campbell describes as a laissez-faire marketing approach, relying mostly on word of mouth, the shows display an interesting social microcosm of who knows who across campus.
“Interestingly, with the people who have been attracted to The Trailer Park as is — we were kind of going for the indie-alt crowd for the most part, because that’s how we as brothers identify as people,” Austin Campbell said. “But it seems like there’s a wider variety than we ever took. Lots of Greek life people have shown up. I guess it feels like an open environment for NC State students. Seeing who’s actually friends with who, it’s fascinating.”
No matter the crowd, Adrian Campbell holds the bands he hosts as central to The Trailer Park’s success. He describes a strip that stretches across the state from Boone to Wilmington which holds a rich community of musicians. Raleigh’s central location in the state makes it a reasonable distance for most NC bands to travel to for a single show.
“As far as the venue goes, Adrian has really kind of incentivized the whole band-first mentality,” Austin Campbell said. “He wants the performers to have a good time, and then anything that comes afterwards is secondary.”
In naming the space, Adrian Campbell emphasized the accessibility that he wanted to create.
“I do live in a double-wide trailer,” Adrian Campbell said. “It’s just two trailers glued together with a porch. It’s almost ironic, in a way. I feel like people historically would not be attracted to going to a trailer park, and I just want to flip it on its head and be like this is actually something inviting and fun. Maybe it will remodel [people’s] perception of what the lower class can produce.”
As the space continues to grow in popularity, requiring the installation of a port-a-potty and creating traffic slow downs on Google Maps and Waze, Adrian Campbell is doing everything he can to put off having to transition to a more structured venue operation. He wants to maintain the casual and welcoming atmosphere for as long as possible.
“[Adrian is] this entrepreneur with this engineer’s sense of problem solving,” Austin Campbell said. “He doesn’t really ever identify something as a problem because he’s already trying to come up with the solutions.”
Moving forward, Adrian Campbell plans to continue booking shows as he has been.
“[The shows are] rather inconsistent, which I think makes it exciting,” Adrian Campbell said. “I want it to feel like, ‘Well, I haven’t been to The Trailer Park in a few months. What’s what’s going on?’ And then it’s the biggest show you’ve ever seen. It’s like quality versus quantity.”
Follow @trailerparkbands on Instagram for upcoming events.
