Branson

  • We went to Bran­son, Mis­souri for a quick trip last week, and when I came back a friend asked what it was like. It doesn’t turn out to be all that easy to describe, so if I’m going to do it, I fig­ured I might as well turn it into a blog entry in case any­one else is inter­ested.

    Bran­son is, of course, the poor man’s Vegas, the home (for no rea­son what­so­ever) to dozens and dozens of com­edy and vari­ety acts, many with their own ded­i­cated the­ater. I think when I first started hear­ing the name in the ’80s, it was as a kind of news-of-the-weird item that the Osmond fam­ily had set up its own the­ater out in the mid­dle of nowhere. “Ho ho,” I sneered. “That’s a bril­liant idea. Everybody’s bound to trek for hun­dreds of miles to see Donny do ‘One Bad Apple’ again.”

    Well, prov­ing again that appar­ently I’m a moron, that’s exactly what peo­ple did. The only rem­nant of Osmond activ­ity was a bill­board that Mer­rill Osmond was per­form­ing. (“Who?” I asked. “I think that’s the youngest one,” Greg said.) But even off-season and mid-week, the main street through town was clogged with traf­fic and the old down­town was a park­ing lot. Peo­ple are just dying to get to Bran­son. Why? Well, as near as I could fig­ure out, here are the draws in my order of impor­tance, which some­one else might have different:

    1. Cheap. We got a good ’nuff hotel room for $54 a night. Shows were $28–50, com­pared to $60–100 for a Vegas show and $35–150 for a play or com­edy act (depends on how hot a show it is, of course). We had absolutely sen­sa­tional bar­be­cue for $4 a sandwich.
    2. Corny. Is it a good thing that this is a place where Andy Williams packs his own the­ater five nights a week? Where Lawrence Welk has a resort named after him? Where the bill­boards com­pete for who can show the doofiest-looking hill­billy revue? Well, appar­ently so. Besides, with the high corn­ball quo­tient comes …
    3. G-rated. I mean, seri­ously G-rated. I’d be sur­prised if there’s any act in town that has the word ‘damn’ in it or any girly-action or any jokes you couldn’t tell your 11-year-old. It may not be hip, but nei­ther is it obscene. The humor may not be edgy, but nei­ther is it offen­sive, gross, nasty or irreligious.
    4. Pretty. Bran­son is a hilly city in the Ozarks. It’s bor­dered by a lake that wraps around three sides, which means you can do scenic dri­ves and pad­dle­boat rides. At this time of year, there were a lot of times when we’d crest a hill and be look­ing on a won­der­ful patch­work of trees chang­ing color.
    5. Cheap. I know I said it before, but c’mon. Fifty-dollar hotels? Four-dollar bar­be­cue? I’d go to week­ends at the large ani­mal dump if they could meet those prices.

    So who doesn’t want to go to Bran­son? I’ve been think­ing about this. You do NOT want to go to Bran­son if:

    • you see no dif­fer­ence between the word ‘coun­try’ (as in country-Western) and the words ‘hill­billy’ and ‘redneck.’
    • you’re the type that likes to dress all in black, unless that’s your trib­ute to Johnny Cash.
    • you found out you have a week to live and want to go wild. Unless by any chance you only want to go hog-wild, because I think they can do that.
    • you’re a strict vegan. I’m not sure whether they’d just laugh at you or cook you up and eat you, but I’m bet­ting you wouldn’t get a warm reception.
    • you’re hip or have ever been hip and want to retain any traces of your hipness.

    So that’s my pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment. I felt safe to go because I’m not a vegan (except dur­ing Lent) and because I have never ever been hip, to my knowl­edge. Plus I actu­ally like Andy Williams. I admit he’s got­ten a lit­tle strange-looking in the last ten years. His skin seems to be per­ma­nently dyed orange and his teeth are painted white with matte-finish house paint. But hey, as long as he can still croon out Moon River and the theme from God­fa­ther in that high-but-not-girly voice, I think I’d be up for it.

    So I thought I was a good can­di­date, and even with that I wasn’t ready for the jaw-dropping moment at the nice lit­tle Lowe fam­ily show at the Lawrence Welk Resort. They’re nice, y’know. Lit­tle fam­ily with seven kids that all play instru­ments. I mean, they’re not really kids any­more — the youngest is 17. They’ve been per­form­ing so long that Mom could only tell us sto­ries in her totally Avon-lady per­for­mance voice about how lit­tle Car­rie had done her first num­ber in dia­pers. Ha ha, ho ho. And I actu­ally was impressed with how many instru­ments they could play and how well they could play them. They really shouldn’t have tried singing, River­danc­ing, clog­ging and tap on top of it, but who am I to judge?

    And it wasn’t even the moment in the absolutely oblig­a­tory Hooray for Amer­ica mon­tage when five of the kids in their sparkley red, white and blue out­fits lined up with a flag and mim­ic­ked the famous pic­ture of the sol­diers plant­ing the flag at Iwo Jima. That made me wince and grab Greg’s sleeve like at a scary movie.

    But it didn’t make me make a lit­tle scream noise. What did that was ear­lier in the show when Mom started telling us in a bland lit­tle singsong about the time that she had had a pre­cious lit­tle baby and his name was Kendall. But then, there were com­pli­ca­tions with his heart and he was flown to a med­ical cen­ter. And then they prayed.

    And then Kendall died.

    And then they counted their blessings.

    And in the Avon-lady per­for­mance voice with­out any emo­tion in it, she said that they always ded­i­cated the next num­ber to Kendall. Then they did another mon­tage exactly like the other mon­tages they had done, with lots of enor­mous smil­ing and skip-jumping around and no gen­uine feel­ing in it at all.

    I’m not sure when I made the lit­tle scream noise. It was all in such breath­tak­ingly bad taste that it could have been any time. It prob­a­bly hap­pened at one of the many times through­out the rest of the show when they would bring a num­ber to some noisy, obvi­ous finale and Greg would yell out “Kendall!” just loud enough for me to hear.

    So there you are. You don’t want to go to Bran­son with­out a seat-belt, as it were. But it’s not to say there aren’t laughs to be had. Just not always the ones they’ve got in mind.


    Related posts:

    1. Do you want to cruise or not?
    2. [Baloney] on ghosts
    3. Empty nesters

    October 22nd, 2006 | Grace | 6 Comments |

6 Responses and Counting...

  • Bran­son Missouri 10.22.2006

    Comin’ straight outta Bran­son. I really loved your per­spec­tive. Curi­ous — do you think Bran­son — if it changes from this for­mat — will expe­ri­ence success?

  • Grace

    You mean more suc­cess than it has? I’m sur­prised — I’d think they’d be tick­led pink with the results. I sup­pose every­place is always look­ing to expand, but they’ve already got some traf­fic issues, right? So get­ting big­ger would be problematic.

    As far as try­ing to appeal to a wider audi­ence … naah. That’s my vote. Why try to be some­thing else when peo­ple like you the way you are. Don’t be thrown off by my lit­tle anec­dotes — my hubby and I liked it and we’ll be back.

    I would think that the trend would be toward lit­tle imi­ta­tion Bran­sons pop­ping up in other places that need a family-friendly enter­tain­ment venue.

    I’ll also ask Greg (who’s a bet­ter big-picture per­son than I) and see if he’s got any fab­u­lous ideas.

  • Greg

    Well, I’m biased because I’m A Mar­ket­ing Guy™, so I tend to see things through that lens. It seems the area could prob­a­bly sup­port at least one more very upscale prop­erty around the edges, but I don’t know if pre­mium land is avail­able to build on. Any­thing draw­ing that many vis­i­tors is going to draw enough peo­ple that are will­ing to pay for a pre­mium experience.

    That’s prob­a­bly the slow, inex­orable direc­tion Bran­son will go in, at any rate. The area doesn’t have the infra­struc­ture to sup­port, say, 2x or 3x the amount of peak-season traf­fic it has now, and so you can’t for­ever boost busi­ness rev­enue (and gov­ern­ment tax receipts) by boost­ing atten­dance. And if you can’t do that, one alter­na­tive is to boost aver­age expen­di­tures by vis­i­tors by pro­vid­ing higher-end experiences.

    Mind you, no one’s say­ing the place is going to become a mecca of five-star din­ing, but I think the local eco­nomic devel­op­ment hon­chos would be happy to see aver­age room rates at the hotels tick upwards and aver­age din­ing tabs do the same. Par­tic­u­larly if the region gets a casino, you’re going to see folks who aren’t afraid of spend­ing a lit­tle more money.

  • Mimi

    It sounds like pretty coun­try — and I agree, it’s fab­u­lously suc­cess­ful, I can’t imag­ine them chang­ing anything.

  • Word­mama

    Kendall!

  • Grace

    Yep, as you’d imag­ine that was kind of the inside joke for the rest of the stay. These guys just had to be Mor­mon. The rest of us can’t pull off that kind of stuff on our worst day.

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