Oregon Art Beat | OK Theatre | Season 25 | Episode 4

(upbeat piano music) - [Narrator] It's a snowy day in February and a world-class musician is landing in Walla Walla, Washington.

- Jon.

- Hey, Darrell.

Hello, lovely to be here.

- [Darrell] Great to see you again, yeah.

- How's it going?

- Everybody's getting excited about the show.

We've got some weather up our way.

(slow piano music) - My name's Jon Cleary, I'm a piano player from New Orleans.

I won a Grammy once, which was a huge surprise, and I've played on a few records that won Grammys.

It's thrilling to be bringing this home to New Orleans.

- [Narrator] Jon Cleary also played in Bonnie Raitt's band for about 10 years, appearing with her on shows like "Late Night with Conan O'Brien."

♪ You're so very ♪ ♪ Unnecessarily mercenary ♪ I'm touring with some other New Orleans musicians, but tonight I've left them and darted off here into the country, so to speak.

- My name's Darrell Brann, and I'm the owner with my wife of the OK Theater.

- Thank you.

(audience applauding) (audience cheering) I do a lot of the hospitality here at the OK Theater, making sure the band members are fed.

- And I also do the promotion, booking, and cleaning at times, and whatever needs to be done.

(jazzy piano music) - [Narrator] Driving five hours round trip to the airport is just one example of the lengths the Branns go for the OK Theater.

- Bringing somebody like Jon Cleary here I think is amazing, and then it keeps those dollars here and hopefully people come into town for that, even better.

- It's a bit hair raising driving through the little windy lanes that are completely covered in inches of ice, but it was part of the experience.

(jazzy piano music) - All right, great.

I can use any of those too.

- Oh, okay.

- Generally, if I walk into an old theater then, and see that there's some funk in the room, then that's a good start.

I tend to like intimate rooms and I like a place that's got some spirit and some soul in it.

And this place certainly does.

(upbeat piano music) - Enterprise is this beautiful place in the middle of nowhere.

- We're not rural, we're not remote, we're isolated.

It definitely lends a slant to your view of things, because it's 65 miles to a stoplight.

- [Narrator] Plotted in 1886, Enterprise is still today surrounded by farms, ranches, and wide open spaces.

- The origins of the theater was in the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918 and 1919, and it was a 500-seat house at that time, but everybody was, by doctor's orders, had to be one seat apart, so they could only fill half the seats.

So they were doing social distancing then as well.

And then from there the theater opened as a movie house.

- I remember watching "The Man from Snowy River" here, that was just like such a big deal.

- [Narrator] In 1999, Darrell and Christi Brann met after he drove out West from Maine to work on her parents' ranch near Enterprise.

- [Darrell] I worked two weeks here.

- And then I came home from college and he played Taj Mahal "Lovin' in My Baby's Eyes" and- - I was playing a lot more than that.

- You know.

- But I did play that song.

- That was, yeah, that was the song though.

- Yeah.

(upbeat folk music) - [Narrator] About a decade later, the Branns came up with an idea for how to share their love of music with the whole community.

(upbeat music) - [Darrell] We had rented the theater while it was still a movie house and had the Stringdusters play.

- It was a great time.

He loved it 'cause he's obviously a wonderful musician and knows good music and it's been another way for him to just use that knowledge to share with other people.

(audience applauding) (audience cheering) - [Narrator] In August, 2013, their fifth child was only a few months old and the OK Theater was up for sale.

- I'm get this hair-brained idea.

I was like, "Christi, what do you think "about putting an offer on the OK Theater?"

At first we were like, "Okay, now what do we do?"

And we have the keys to the building and we're thinking, walk around, look at it, dream.

But we were like, "How are we gonna get this vision going?"

I had started reaching out to musicians that I loved and I learned that particularly booking agents and managers like phone calls, like they still operate in the world of like, "Hey, let's get on the phone and talk this out."

(upbeat music) So in July of 2014, I feel like this was the beginning for us.

We had Eric Bibb, Nicki Bluhm and The Gramblers, and we had Joseph, the band Joseph, for the first time.

- [Narrator] The OK Theater was changing the Branns' life, and the Branns, with a little help from some friends, were changing the Old OK. (wind whistling) - Okay.

My name is Steve Arment.

I mostly work with wood.

I work with bronze.

I've done unlikely things to a potato salad.

- [Narrator] Steve Arment is a wood alchemist.

He can turn anything wooden into an exquisite masterpiece.

Like his entire house.

So this being a small town, Darrell Brann knew just who to call to transform the Old OK into a work of art.

- Look at that.

- Yeah, yeah.

- It started out with Darrell and I talking about the proscenium, and I had to look up what a proscenium was.

(playful guitar music) The overall design we did for the theater is in a almost Renaissance style.

It's been called Wallowa County Baroque.

- I'm gonna frame this.

- Are you?

- I am.

I wanna- (Steve laughing) - [Narrator] Steve also introduced Darrell to a college graduate with a degree in painting named Anna Vogel.

- Anna Vogel, who I'd met and seen a small painting she'd done and thought, "She's good, let's bring her in on this."

- All the paintings inside of the theater and around the proscenium are mine.

After I moved here I became so inspired by the landscape.

One side is a lake view and it shows the mountains over Wallowa Lake and the other side is kind of a glorified prairie sunset, like you might see on the Zumwalt.

The OK Theater is definitely, I'd say a collaborative art piece.

- I like the idea of thinking about it as a place for artists to perform and to be a work of art.

I think it's important 'cause theaters originally, and especially of that period and a little earlier, were works of art.

(soft music) (truck engine rumbling) (slow music) ♪ Tell me, darlin', will you ask ♪ ♪ Tomorrow night ♪ I wish there were more places like this.

It's a very difficult business to be in.

And do you know, nowadays the reality is that musicians, we're competing with large television screens and Netflix.

♪ You said tonight ♪ - [Narrator] But inside the OK Theater, time goes back to a place where the screen is a baroque proscenium and people gather for the thrill of live music.

- We've had a lot of shows where folks from Tri-Cities and Moscow and even Portland, they see something coming through the OK and think, "I wanna see a show there."

So they come, and some of them spend a week here.

Now imagine you're walking down the street in New Orleans somewhere and you get to see this wonderful musician playing.

And it turns out it's Jon Cleary.

(audience cheering) (audience applauding) (upbeat music) ♪ Oh, and I'll tell mine ♪ ♪ And everything will be just fine ♪ ♪ Of their business ♪ ♪ Yeah, I tell mine ♪ ♪ Everything will be just fine ♪ (dramatic piano music) (audience cheering) My brain is like a jukebox on random select.

It's almost like there's a little man in my head going through a list of songs saying, "What would be a good one to follow this?"

Sometimes it's the perfect occasion to go down and then bring everybody with you and it can get very quiet.

♪ Flew in on a red eye, I put a quarter in the phone and ♪ ♪ Voice said leave a message 'cause there ain't nobody home ♪ ♪ I live in a hotel wonderin' where she's at ♪ ♪ You know the girl givin' me the third degree ♪ ♪ And that ain't where it's at ♪ ♪ Sayin' when you get back ♪ ♪ We're gon' cha cha all night long ♪ ♪ But she lied ♪ Or you might be right in the moment just to completely go for it and get wild.

♪ Well, I love you ♪ ♪ But you sure don't love me ♪ ♪ Tell me, what's a poor boy supposed to do ♪ ♪ Gave you my heart ♪ ♪ And you just tore that sucker in two ♪ - The show was really cool.

It was rad.

- Best music I've ever heard.

- It definitely inspired me to go and start practicing an instrument of my own.

- I think what Darrell and his family have done with the OK Theater and turning it into a music venue and bringing artists that we could never get here into our community has been such a benefit to literally everyone.

(upbeat piano music) (audience clapping) - We just feel so privileged to have people taking a bet on us and our judgment.

There's sort of a curation that goes on with this where I'm like, "You are gonna like it, I guarantee you."

(audience cheering) (audience applauding) - [Audience Member] Yeah!

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