IF YOU want to be blasted off the streets of Nashville, just try wearing the T-shirt that says ‘Will the last person leaving Nashville for Branson, please turn out the lights’.

The problem is that over the past three years, country music-loving tourists seem to be doing just that, throwing Nashville into darkness in favour of Branson, Missouri at the average rate of 5 million people per year. Is Nashville worried? You bet your ass it is.

After more than half a century as the centre of the country music industry, its annual turnover from tourism is now just a mere three million above that of Branson, which has built up its tourist trade in less than a decade!

Without any forewarning this small town, located in Missouri’s Ozark mountains, and which has a population of just 3,700, has erupted, creating seismic repercussions throughout America’s country music scene, and now seems set to establish its reputation on this side of the world. Hey, the day I arrived there, who do you think was secretly in town, talking serious business with some local entrepreneurs? Daniel O’Donnell, that’s who . . .

While Nashville may be loathe to even admit to the existence of Branson, according to the American Automobile Association, it now ranks as the second most popular vacation destination in America, after Orlando, the Florida base of Disney World.

Branson has an astonishing 29 theatres, more than Broadway, and that’s the secret of its appeal – its live country music circuit. Nashville, on the other hand, has only a few bars that play country music at night because its heart was torn out in 1973 when the Grand Ol’ Opry moved 20 miles out of town to a theme park known as Opryland. This year it was announced that $20 million dollars is being invested in the renovation of the old Opry auditorium, and the surrounding area, but many commentators feel it may be too late to really compete with Branson, which is currently investing $100 million in its own redevelopment plan. As George Jones used to say “the race is on” – and it looks like heartache is on the cards for Nashville.

Branson’s success is truly extraordinary. Access to the town is virtually non-existent. It has no airport and is surrounded by a maze of chicken-shit roads. With mile-long traffic jams no matter where you’re coming from, the visitor sure is given time to take a very slow look around.

And around and around. My first impression was that the town looks like an incarnation of the American dream – on an LSD flashback, as recreated in a movie directed by Oliver Stone, in the style of ’50s kitsch king, Douglas Sirk, that is. Try imagining Blackpool meeting Bray on a rainy night in Tramore, where they fuck and sire a city that could equally be called Missouri-Disney and you’ll know what I mean. It’s obviously a place that has gotten way too ‘big’ too soon and is in danger of overdosing on its own potential – and its own greed . . .

SHOJI – THE BIGGEST STAR IN TOWN

The Mel Tillis Theatre was so packed in the auditorium that the gift shop outside didn’t have one customer until I arrived to buy a ‘what’s on’ guide. As I approached the counter a security guard, who’d been deep in conversation with the shop assistant, turned and said ‘this guy looks like he wants to spend his money’. The shop assistant instinctively replied ‘and boy, do we want his money!’ Ten out of ten for honesty!

That exchange turned out to be a snapshot that captured Branson in its essence, a town where all the inhabitants have somehow managed to master the art of maintaining a disinterested manner while keeping their hands in your pockets.

I was in town with Shay Healy who was elsewhere in the theatre at the time, along with director Bill Hughes, setting up an interview with Mel Tillis himself for RTE’s Country Music USA. The rest of the crew, including Hilary Fennell, Cathy O’Connor, Joe O’Byrne and Pearce Mac Conaigh stood outside Mel’s Theatre and took it all in – observing the brutal clash of that architectural monstrosity with the natural beauty of the Ozarks in the background. Not that Mel would give a damn – he’s raked in an estimated $7 million in that theatre over the past year and a half.

Flicking through the $2 Branson Travelhost you quickly realise why the place has been described as a kind of Jurassic Park for entertainers who are, let’s say, past their prime and who can no longer fill major arenas or who have grown too old, lazy, or are too smart to tour.

Country acts such as The Presleys (not related to Elvis, apart from the fact that they probably are as dead as he is), began performing in Branson, in 1960 when it was known mostly for its Silver Dollar Theme Park. However, the current boom began after Roy Clark set the precedent of opening his own theatre in 1983 – an innovation that had great appeal to other cash-conscious country stars who soon realised that profit margins can soar and tour managers, agents and their like can be shown the door when the mountain comes to this particular Mohammed, rather than the reverse.

Stars who have since built their own theatres in Branson include Boxcar Willie, Mickey Gilley, Ray Stevens, Moe Bandy, Jeannie Pruett and Jim Stafford. Performers who regularly appear at these, or at other corporate-owned venues, such as The Grand Palace, include Glen Campbell, Dwight Yoakam, Billy Ray Cyrus, Tanya Tucker, Vince Gill and Ann Margret.

The success of the latter, straight out of Las Vegas, has shown that Bransonites want more than country music, a development which has lead to artists such as The Osmonds, Andy Williams, and Bobby Vinton also opening their own theatres. Obviously, if you love middle of the road music you can happily OD in the middle of the Ozark mountains.

Branson is also home to the kind of entertainers that could only thrive in a place so far removed from major developments in Western Civilisation over the last few centuries. Where else would an orang-utan be billed as a “star attraction”, as happens in the Five Star Theatre where Bobby Berosini is accompanied by “Tiga” who, we’re told, “starred as ‘Clyde’, with Clint Eastwood in Every Which Way But Loose?

Where else would a comedian, Yakov Smirnoff, be billed as “born in Russia but made in the USA” and pictured posing beside the Stars and Stripes as if to finally annihilate all fears that he may be a closet commie?

The biggest star in town, meanwhile, is a Japanese violinist named Shoji Tabuchi, who clearly spent more money on the rest rooms in his theatre than the Abbey receives as its annual Government grant. But then why wouldn’t the sexily-titled Shoji be king of the crop, the top of the heap in a flag-waving town like Branson, when he once gushed “how many people come to America with $500 and have the chance to get to know the President of the United States? Apparently he once met George Bush. Briefly . . .

Rapping with Mr. Cash

Apart from its kitch appeal as a bizarre socio-geographical phenomenon and a grade A product of American pop culture, in general there’s nothing, really nothing to turn on to in Branson. Apart from country music venues, there’s only one cafe that plays jazz and two that present music that could very loosely be described as rock ’n’ roll. In one of these clubs when a white boy sings ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’, he feels culturally compelled to change the lyric from “a gypsy woman told my mamma” to “a Dixie woman told my mamma/the day I was born.” Needless to say, one sees blacks in Branson about as often as one sees CIE buses – there.

And if rock signifies sex to you, forget it. In Branson, like Ireland before the Late Late Show, there’s none. It’s the kind of town where a motel sign can say “New Owners – Come Sleep With Us’ and no one even thinks of group sex. Ask for condoms in the shop of your hotel and you’re liable to be chained and gagged and dragged to one of the 20 churches in the town, to atone for your sins.

However, we’re lucky enough that our trip coincides with a visit from Johnny Cash, one of country music’s enduring legends, who features, singing ‘The Wanderer’ on the current U2 album – a starting point for Shay Healy’s interview.

“You once recorded a song called ‘I Will Rock ’n’ Roll With You’ yet had in parenthesis ‘If I Have To’. So what made you rock and roll with the biggest band in the world, U2?” he asks.

“I love those guys, U2,” says Cash. “They’ve been to my house in Tennessee a couple of times and we just sit around and swap songs in my living room. Then they came to my show in the Olympia Theatre in Dublin in February and we got together on stage and had a big time. But they had put down the track of a song they wanted me to sing and Bono asked if I would do it and as I had the next day off I said sure. And I love the song.”

Picking up on a Hot Press interview, Shay asks Cash how he feels about the fact that after he recorded ‘The Wanderer’ U2 cut their own vocals off the track, arguing that they couldn’t compete with his voice.

“Oh, it’s not a question of competing. I loved what they were doing, vocal-wise, especially Bono, his little vocal part at the end,” Cash says. “As a matter of fact I sent him a fax saying ‘please put your voice back on’. But the point is we did that for fun. I went down there to sing with them and that was all. Whether or not I was going to be on the album didn’t matter to me.”

Shay’s delicate question about Branson being a form of Jurassic Park for old country artists, inspires a laugh. “No, it’s not,” he responds. “I certainly don’t feel like a dinosaur yet. Maybe a lizard but not a dinosaur!’

During his gig later that evening, Johnny Cash proves his point. He may not be dressed in leather like rock’s original lizard king, Jim Morrison, but he is dressed all in black and when he shifts into his Sun classic ‘Big River’ you finally feel Branson begin to rock.

Likewise, when he rolls into ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ and sings of shooting that man in Reno “just to watch him die” his music is of no less relevance to this blue collar audience than rap is to blacks.

It’s a moment of pure musical pleasure and empathy, in which the moribund soul of Branson seems briefly to flicker into life.

Talking money, dirty money

At a time when America is in the depths of a depression, there have been suggestions that there’s an element of “dirty money” behind this boom in Branson. It is, after all, known as The Las Vegas of Country Music, so wouldn’t that suggest Mafia involvement? One local person, who has no desire to be named here, speaks of a rumour that “the mob did try to buy a 51% share in a major theatre with one big name country star who then pulled out when he learned of their involvement.” According to the same guy “the mob is now trying to cream off as much as it can of the town’s tourist turnover by looking for what it describes as ‘legitimate business concerns’.”

This is not the case, according to Andy Williams, who recently deserted Vegas and opened his own $8 million theatre in the Ozarks. “They’d never be attracted to a place like this because there is no gambling,” he says.

Maybe he’s right, maybe he’s wrong. But wherever the money is coming from, that $100 million redevelopment plan sure seems set to ensure that Branson will remain the Las Vegas of Country Music and The Town That Country Music Built at least until the year 2,000.

As we leave, the last sight I see is B.T. Bones Steakhouse, with the sign ‘Great Steaks, No Bull’. Was it for this that Native Americans like Chief Sitting Bull were originally driven out of Missouri?

Sadly, the only Native Americans I noticed in this State, which was once a seedbed of Native American culture, were those that were chipped out of oak and sold in gift stores. Maybe only an Irishman would see the terrible irony in the fact that so many entertainers in Branson, from The Osmonds to Andy Williams, end each show with ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’.

But hey, baby, as the man said: this is America – in all its shame and glory. Would the last person leaving the United States for Ireland, please turn out the lights?

• NEXT ISSUE: A bizarre Christmas special. 60’s superstar Andy Williams talks about his music, his “therapeutic” use of LSD and his, er, sexual fantasies about Shirley Temple.