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Photography courtesy of the Branson/Lakes Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, Sight & Sound Theatres, and Dixie Stampede
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If you’re planning a trip to Branson, don’t go with a caustic Jewish intellectual and a claustrophobic 70-pound poodle.
My husband’s memories of Branson consist of a hot, crowded day at Silver Dollar City, tour buses of people his grandparents’ age, and a CD by a Japanese fiddler named Shoji Tabuchi that his parents bought us, swept to the cash register on a wave of uncharacteristic emotion.
“Branson’s different now,” I assure Andrew. “The Hispanic population has doubled. The median age has dropped. There’s a private airport, Southwest just started flying in, there’s a $420 million restaurant and shopping area called Branson Landing, there’s a convention center and a spa at the Chateau on the Lake resort…”
“Is that where we’re staying?”
“Um…no. I found us a really cheap room that’s dog-friendly. Can’t miss it—there’s a knight on a horse at the entrance.”
“Right.”
I shuffle my notes, looking for a way to dislodge his bias. “There’s a fountain at the Landing that’s like the one at the Bellagio.”
This only reminds him of Bart Simpson’s description of Branson: “Las Vegas, if it was run by Ned Flanders.”
It’s hard to find a comeback; we’ve just driven past the Good Shepherd Inn, the Paradise Grill, and the Promised Land Zoo. The only signs of vice so far are a motel named Caprice and an RV park named Shenanigans. The god of Mammon is well represented, though. At one of the visitors’ centers that line the highway for miles as you approach Branson, I pick up a brochure for Tanger Outlets. “Shopping can actually make you happy!” it insists. I scan the list for proof. “Hey, there’s a Coach outlet store!”
“There’s also a Beef Jerky Outlet,” Andrew says dryly, pointing to a little store across the road.
We pass a giant Ronald Reagan head; a giant red, white, and blue concrete butterfly; two giant stone tablets outside a coin store, looking like Moses just set them down for a second so he could shop. At Grand Country Music Hall, an Amazing Pets show features housecats in ruffled collars and a poodle riding a bike.
Ours paces in the hatch.
“There’s got to be a traditional Jewish prayer for something like this,” Andrew mutters. “Something to give one succor and strength…”
I rattle off attractions to distract him from the clogged traffic on the strip. Talking Rocks Cavern! A tiger sanctuary! Waltzing Waters, with colored lights and music! Everybody lined up for a show is white and older middle-aged and looks happy.
“How big was the Hispanic population before it doubled?” he asks.
I keep my eyes on the brochure. “Four percent.”
Branson turned 100 last year, but it’s only been a phenomenon since the ’80s. Jonas Arjes, executive director of the Taney County Business Development Partnership, grew up here, and he remembers hearing the grown-ups squawk that Branson couldn’t sustain a fifth theater.
Today, there are more than 50, with 100-plus shows to choose from on any given day. This I find mind-boggling. Arjes describes the formula: a coincidence of culture, country music, Christianity, and critical mass.
“Ozark mountain hospitality didn’t start as a marketing campaign,” he points out. “It was a way of life.” People came to Branson to find some peace—or to get away from a little chaos of their own making. They scratched a living from a place that was all hills and limestone and cedar, logging, making railroad ties, canning tomatoes. They made strangers welcome, leaned hard on each other, and sharpened their entrepreneurial instincts.
In time, their music—Ozark fiddle tunes about endurance and heartbreak and hope—grew into a scene of its own. Roy Clark opened a theater in 1983 and brought celebs in to perform. The stampede that followed—Mel Tillis, Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn—drew a film crew from 60 Minutes. On December 8, 1991 (I met natives who knew the date by heart), Morley Safer pronounced Branson the “Live Country Music Capital of the Universe.”
All along, there was God. And in the ’80s, Branson started “putting Christ back into Christmas” for tourists as well, surrounding its traditional Adoration Parade with family-faithful performances by the Lennon family (many of whom now live in Branson) and The Osmonds. In 2006, Pauline Frommer pronounced the Ozark Mountain Christmas one of her top 10 holiday destinations worldwide. Last year, Herschend Family Entertainment (which runs Silver Dollar City and a lot more) even bought the license for Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
So Branson’s not just a summer road trip anymore. And it’s not just the “Live Country Music Capital,” either, not since Andy Williams opened his Moon River Theatre in 1992. Today, TripAdvisor’s top Branson destination is the Sight & Sound Theatre, built atop a hill and drawing thousands every night with its Bible-
based blockbusters.
The New Branson bills itself “The Live Entertainment Capital of the World.” The nostalgia has been freshened by at least a decade, with a Beatles band called Liverpool Legends and shows like #1 Hits of the 60’s and Stuck on the ’70s. There’s an Elvis, a John Denver, and tribute shows recreating Abba, Neil Diamond, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Journey, Patsy Cline, Red Skelton, Justin Bieber, the Eagles, and Frankie Valli. Kenny Rogers is here in the flesh, along with Greg Brady (sorry—Barry Williams) and a wrinkly Three Dog Night.
Tonight, though, I want to start at Branson’s beginning.
Andrew so loathes anything that twangs, he offers to stay in our cramped, damp hotel room with a nervous dog to watch two teams he doesn’t follow play baseball. I go in search of comfort food for them. I find The Great American Steak & Chicken House with no trouble: It’s shaped like a giant red, white, and blue rooster. Inside, the gift shop’s stocked with Pray for Freedom signs, sparkly Patriot Pride pens, and a John Wayne clock. I order chicken-fried steak and cobbler for Andrew and chicken tenders for the dog, deliver their Styrofoam cartons, and sneak off to a lavender Moderne diner—Jackie B. Goode’s Uptown Cafe—for a glass of cheap white wine and some fried pickles. Donna and Jeff are celebrating their 39th wedding anniversary, and the guitar player’s making up a romantic song for them, all about Donna and Jim.
“His name’s Jeff,” Donna finally says weakly.
The guitarist can’t find a rhyme. “What’s your pet name for him?”
“Our pet’s name is Patches,” Jeff says.
“He means our dog,” Donna adds.
So the guitarist sings a song about a guy named Jim who wants a smoke but doesn’t have any matches, and then along comes a little dog named…
I glance sympathetically at Donna and Jeff/Jim, but they’re holding hands and smiling. A stranger’s made their occasion special, and they’ve got a story for the kids. This is the kind of thing Branson does best: bring people onstage and sanctify the everyday heroism of raising kids, staying faithful, or serving in the military. Vegas can’t begin to compete.
After dinner, I drive to Presleys’ Theater. It was the first theater on the strip, built in 1967 and co-owned by the town’s current mayor, Raeanne Presley. The air’s thick with the warm caramel smell of Ozark glazed almonds. I draw it deep into my lungs and feel almost woozy as I climb the lobby stairs for the preshow singalong, weaving past people perched on the steps because the mezzanine’s packed tight. “I’d like to play the song I sang at my dad’s funeral,” Scott Presley announces. He moves into “How Great Thou Art,” and voices come in strong, singing along with him. I see people’s eyes go misty, ready to be sad in that sweet, shared way that never weighs you down. Presley does a final piano flourish, crashes through the applause with “When the Saints Go Marching In,” and segues to “Give me that old-time religion; it’s good enough for me!” He gets a few amens. Folks drop money in a basket as they leave.
The theater is filling up fast—on a Monday night, even. The Presleys started out performing in caves; now their production is slick, but in a deliberately unslick way. Outfitted in fringed, bedazzled turquoise jackets, they open with bouncy lyrics: “Let your worries go; you won’t have time to think about them tonight… When we sing the gospel, you know you’ve seen the light.” Karen Henderson, who’s sitting next to me, likes “the funny guy,” Herkimer (Gary Presley), the best, and she nudges me when he comes out and hikes up his overalls. He tells the crowd his son’s “been datin’ that girl with one leg. She works up at IHOP. Then she went to a hokeypokey contest, put her left foot in, and it was over.” Hearty laughter. “We’re starting our own show,” he continues, nodding to his son Cecil (Eric Presley). “Gonna be a tribute show. I’m tributin’ him and he’s tributin’ me.”
A Presley daughter-in-law changes the mood, singing, “What a Wonderful World” with full vibrato. I sneak out and walk over to The Baldknobbers Theater, run by Branson’s other first family, the Mabes. They did the first show in Branson, back in 1959, a jamboree in an old ice-skating rink. They’d drive around town, a loudspeaker rigged to their car, announcing the show, then rush back to see if anybody had shown up.
Now their washtub, guitar, gold-fringed red cowboy shirt, overalls, and goofy hat have joined Dorothy’s ruby slippers and Muhammad Ali’s boxing gloves at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.
It’s intermission, and the Mabes are sitting on the edge of the stage, feet dangling, chatting with audience members who’ve come forward. I hear a man in the row behind me say, “We’re livin’ too fast.” His friend agrees: “We’ve had it too good for too long, and it’s gonna change.” “Yeah,” he says, “in a bad way.” A couple in the next row talk, with oozy familiarity, about Jerry Lee. (In Branson, nobody bothers to add “Lewis.”) James and Barbara Beaty, sitting next to me, have come for their 57th wedding anniversary. James says when they first came here, “just about everything was country music. I could understand it better then. Now it’s too loud.”
The next morning, before Andrew drops me off at the Titanic Museum Attraction—billed as the largest such attraction in the world—we stop at the World’s Largest Toy Museum. Superlatives no longer startle me: Branson boasts the “world’s largest Golden Corral restaurant”; Kirby VanBurch was once voted Best Illusionist at the World Magic Awards; The Shepherd of the Hills is reportedly “America’s longest-running outdoor drama”; Silver Dollar City’s new Outlaw Run is billed as the “world’s most daring wood coaster”…
The Titanic Museum is pretty superlative. After John Joslyn made the blockbuster TV special Return to the Titanic…LIVE, he decided to create a museum and stunned his wife—Disney producer Mary Kellogg—by choosing Branson as his site. They traded their homes in L.A. and New York for homes in Branson and Pigeon Forge, Tenn., where they’ve opened a second Titanic Museum. I touch 28-degree water, imagining how it felt to drown in it; walk across the “ship’s bridge” in piped-in fog; and get tears in my eyes hearing about the orphaned children.
Andrew’s circling the parking lot. I climb into the Honda, bubbling with what Kellogg calls “Titanic magic,” and we drive to the 95-acre Branson Landing because so many people have told us that we just have to see the Landing. It used to be a ball field and a place to watch the boats. Now it’s a plaza with restaurants and suburban retail—J. Jill, Victoria’s Secret, Brookstone. And the fountain’s not on.
We walk uphill to the old downtown, where instead of the Landing’s vending-machine ice creams, we can buy a cone at Mr. B’s ice-cream parlor. Jewelry-store owner Connie Meyer stands outside, chatting with the owner of the Lil’ Shoppe of Leather. “We’ve owned stores here for 27 years,” Meyer tells me. “It’s a good, family-oriented, Christian-based town. You can go to any show and not hear foul language.” (It dawns on me that in our entire trip, I haven’t heard a single profane word that didn’t come from me. One woman said, “Well, shuckies” when she dropped a basket.)
“It’s the old hometown feel that you can’t get a lot of places anymore,” Meyer continues. “I’ve left my store open and come in and there’s people inside already, shopping.” She shrugs. “If they steal something, that’s on them.”
She looks toward the center of downtown, squinting against the sun. “They had that bus, Girls Go Wild, come here once,” she says, chuckling. “They run ’em out of town. They were laughin’ and scratchin’—you can’t do that in Branson. We had the Hells Angels here, too, and they behaved very well—better than the car-show people.”
Andrew’s already wandered into the one place I knew he’d adore: Dick’s 5 & 10. In the window: bendable Gumby, a piggy-handled whisk, a Coca-Cola cookbook, toy guns made of real metal, a Spirograph, the fishnet-stockinged leg lamp from A Christmas Story. Even I feel a pang; it’s like hearing your first boyfriend’s name. Nostalgia flings us back to an earlier place, all the sweeter because we know it so well—and we don’t have to stay.
When Andrew finally emerges, we walk back to the car, passing window displays with cherubic-toddler figurines and Thomas Kinkade paintings. We see Precious Moments everywhere and furry miniatures of kittens. I can’t help remembering writer Milan Kundera’s description of kitsch: “The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass.”
We drive to the Branson Craft Mall and buy black-walnut fudge; decide against boiled peanuts and fresh pork rinds at Whiskers Country Corner; eyeball the Cedar Creek dulcimers and the wares of the Hillbilly Fruit & Nut Co. and Granny Good’s Nostalgic General Store. Little is subtle here; everything is gilded, glazed, greasy, or gigantic. Andrew walks through miles of yard art and asks the price of a plaster lion painted glossy brown, with a hot pink lolling tongue, just to torment me. He’s just learned that had I timed our trip better, he could have watched Jerry Springer host The Price Is Right at the Welk Resort. “Would that be Old Branson or New Branson?” he inquires.
“New,” I say without hesitation. “Most of the audience for The Lawrence Welk Show died off. Now they bring in The Beach Boys and, well, Springer.”
Branson wastes no energy pretending to be edgy or avant-garde; it knows itself too well. It was Branson that the Clampetts came home to in the 1969 season of The Beverly Hillbillies. The Blue Man Grill was named, not for the experimental music and comedy group, but for an Ozark version of the Yeti, sighted in the 1800s. Branson’s full of up-by-the-bootstraps stories—proud, decent families like the Herschends, who leased Marvel Cave in 1950 and held square dances in it. After Hugo Herschend died, his widow opened a tiny themed village on the grounds. That village is now Silver Dollar City, and Herschend Family Entertainment owns 26 themed entertainment properties across 10 states and is Branson’s largest employer.
In this economy, Adam Smith’s invisible hand plays an accordion: Branson has just over 10,500 residents—but more than 7 million tourists a year. That number peaked at 8.3 million in 2007, then dipped a little. But I read with relief that Branson’s back to attracting first-time visitors (32 percent of total visitors last season, after years holding steady at 20 percent). The Community Plan 2030 starts with prettying up downtown and further unclogging 76 Country Boulevard.
Branson wants you to keep moving. There are traditional go-karts, jazzed-up go-karts, a scenic railway that chugs through the hills, cruises on the Showboat Branson Belle, amphibious Duck vehicles that muck about on land and lake, a cat’s cradle of zip lines, motorized surfboards you can ride through the air like a flying carpet… Oh, and ostriches.
I try to tempt Andrew into Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede, where 6-foot, 600-pound ostriches race across the arena, coaxed by their jockeys to a leggy 30 mph gallop. He leans close to my ear. “You do realize those ostriches are thinking, ‘One day…one day…when the time is right…the revolution! We’ll kill them all!”
I squint. “They don’t look like revolutionary ostriches to me.”
“Wait and see.”
It’s our second night in Branson. Before Shoji Tabuchi Theatre opens, I chat with a group of folks who are mourning the recent death of George Jones. “Anybody after him is new country—more hip-hop–type,” a man tells me, his lip curling. “I’m used to a steel guitar.” All the “old country” people are dying, he says. He brightens: “But Shoji really puts on a show” (the height of a Branson compliment).
Shoji’s office gleams with black lacquer. Roy Acuff and His Smoky Mountain Boys came to Japan when he was 18, and he fell in love with their music and started fiddling in a bluegrass band in Osaka. He wound up in Nashville, traveling with name acts, then fell in love with Branson. “Not too many places have so much beauty,” he says. “And where else in the world has so many talented musicians and shows in one place?”
Shoji met his wife, Dorothy, in Branson 39 years ago; their daughter Christina married Cortlandt Ingram, a big cowboy who plays the fiddle with the Presleys. Now, Christina and Shoji perform together, and Dorothy produces the show and handles aesthetics, all the way down to the bathrooms. There’s a fireplace and red billiards table in the men’s room. Outside the ladies’, husbands stand with their wives, peering in. “We have a fireplace, too,” a woman says. “And angels.” One brave man takes a few steps, trying to peer in, but an usherette snaps at him. He will never get to smooth on Dorothy’s trademark Vanilla Waltz lotion; he will never see the plastic ivy and flowers and the crystal teardrops.
Ah well. It’s time for the show. It opens with a “Thriller” number, a tightly choreographed tribute to Michael Jackson. Shoji returns in a red sequined blazer that almost matches the orangey-red lights that spell out his name behind him, taller than he is.
“Hi there, folks, how ya doin’? How many of you folks are first time, never been to the show before?” Hands go up. “Whole bunch! Where you been?” He sings “What a Wonderful World” (the third time I’ve heard it in two days), then Christina sings an Adele hit. Energy pumps through the theater; lights flash; fog swirls. I miss Spalding Gray, with his folding table and water glass and flat-voiced monologue full of irony.
Branson doesn’t do irony—it’s not even PC yet. The Acrobats of China are said to “bring the exotic Orient to Branson.” Black-faced jockey statues stand innocently on lawns, unaware of their compromised status. The sign at The Butterfly Palace & Rainforest Adventure reads, without a hint of double-entendre, “White Flight!”
America’s not so white anymore, though, and it’s less Christian by the day, more permissive.
Is Branson caught in a time warp?
“When I came here 20 years ago, the only black guy in town was Charley Pride,” says Rick Huffman, CEO of HCW Development. “Now there are maybe 100 families. Two of our 35 employees in Branson are gay.” He even thinks “the Christian thing is more overplayed by the chamber and the city than what it really is.” He points out that the town has a brand-new Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a Jewish synagogue. (The synagogue turns out to be Messianic Jewish, focused on “the Hebrew roots of Christianity.”)
I ask Mayor Presley if she thinks “the Christian thing” is overplayed. “Branson has hung its hat for years on being a family-friendly destination, a community of faith, and a community that has high respect for patriotism,” she says firmly. “It reflects values of the Christian faith, although we welcome folks from a lot of faiths.”
So…do gay and lesbian residents pose a problem? “We are absolutely respectful,” she says. “Our values mean we value all human beings. There certainly is a percentage of that, as there is across the nation, but I don’t know that it’s something we talk about quite as openly.”
She’s thrilled about the Hispanic population doubling: “That is a trend we see continuing. We see Hispanic-speaking churches and markets as well.
“Regardless of race or religion,” she adds, “folks usually come because of those common values. No, we’ve not been very diverse, when you put it into percentages, but we have folks who bring new ideas—‘Here’s how we dealt with recycling in Nebraska’—and I love that.”
I ask whether she sees Branson as nostalgic for a simpler time.
“I hope those values aren’t nostalgic!” she exclaims. “I think they’re the foundation to who we are as a nation.”
Branson landed on 60 Minutes because of all the big names. But Andy Williams died last year, and Tony Orlando just announced his last season in Branson. “There’s not been a replenishment of that quality of talent in many years,” says Arjes, the economic-development expert. “Coming from an economic-development standpoint, how do you artificially stimulate that? You can’t.”
The current solution is tribute shows—a lot of them. But in Arjes’ opinion, “The day of 100-plus music shows is not sustainable.”
The 3,000-seat Mansion Theater, built in 1991 for Wayne Newton, went dark this year. The 4,000-seat Grand Palace, built by Herschend Family Entertainment in 1992, has been closed for five years. Nashville-based Kingdom Wealth Builders made an offer, but didn’t close the deal. Now, local Web developer Ernie Risinger is trying to raise the money to buy the Colonial-Greek Revival white elephant.
“I feel like Branson needs some big stars,” he says. “I wouldn’t push the edge as far as what [concert promoter] Paul Dunn did with Nelly.” Risinger tried to help Dunn bring Nelly to the Grand Palace in 2010, but the town’s Board of Aldermen blocked plans for an outdoor concert. After a long and heated political battle, Nelly performed indoors at the Mansion Theatre. The concert came just 200 tickets short of selling out. The Rev. Jay Scribner stopped preaching at the Mansion on principle, telling Branson Tri-Lakes News that Nelly’s concerts and lyrics were “not conducive to the overall culture and historical climate of Branson.” Risinger’s playing it safer: a show about the making of I Love Lucy, some pop and rock concerts, big stars, and tall fountains that will bring “a little bit of Vegas style to the strip.”
Others would rather shift the focus to Branson’s lakes and hills and streams.
Todd Parnell, who just retired as president of Drury College, was raised here; his grandfather was mayor three times. “I grew up next to a creek—it was idyllic,” he says. “Today it’s noisy, crowded, flamboyant, very focused on entertaining folks. It’s got a national reach that the Branson I grew up in didn’t. It has built an image it tries to live up to.” Parnell sighs. In his opinion, Branson’s real treasure is “its natural resources, the unique beauty of the place.”
“Where is all this famous nature?” Andrew asks on the third day.
I give a vague wave toward Table Rock Lake and Big Cedar Lodge, as well as the Ozark hills and woods. “They don’t market it as much, because 79 percent of visitors come for the shows.”
I double-check that stat with Huffman, whose company owns Branson Landing. “Well, that’s our lovely Chamber of Commerce,” he says. “I think those numbers are skewed. We do a lot of data-gathering, and we find that more and more people are coming every year for shopping and dining.”
I triple-check with the mayor. “Those are surveys at a point in time,” Presley says. “Lots of folks love to shop. And we have more and more people kayaking, hiking, and mountain-biking. But that’s more niche marketing.” She sees Branson’s future as “bringing many generations of families together to reconnect, as well as protecting the natural beauty God’s given us.”
Huffman’s company has sold some of its Branson properties, but it continues to build retirement communities, which he sees as the future of Branson.
Arjes, on the other hand, thinks marketing kids’ sports tournaments and camps might be the key. It’s wholesome, it’s family-oriented, and it won’t compete with any business already here. One thing he’s sure of: There won’t be gambling, risqué shows, or comics who use profanity. “Being the buckle on the Bible Belt, I don’t think we are ever going to transition toward sin attractiveness,” he says.
Branson tightly clings to its morals, even as it tries to widen its reach. “If it lets go—if it slides even a foot down that slippery slope—will it lose its loyal audience?” I ask, thinking aloud as we drive away from the hotel. “But if it holds fast to the flag and cross, can it draw enough fans to survive?”
I brace for a caustic retort, but Andrew’s tone is gentle. “The more the country changes and becomes less traditionally ‘American,’ the greater the appeal Branson will have,” he says. “It’s about everything a certain segment of our country holds dear. They can let down their guard here; they can speak freely about what they believe. They can relax.”
He doesn’t look particularly relaxed himself as he floors the accelerator to get home. Branson’s not for everybody: It’s a worldview as well as a town. It’s the Biggest and Best Living Museum of the American Heartland in the Universe.
