A lot of concert venues claim there isn’t a bad seat in the house. At OWA Theater in Foley, it’s true. The room is small enough that a fan in the front section can call out to a performer between songs without shouting, and the back rows are still closer to the stage than the cheap seats at most regional venues. That closeness is the main selling point for the theater’s current lineup, which includes tribute acts, touring country and soul artists, and a new role as the blues venue for the Frank Brown International Songwriters’ Festival.
The theater sits on the grounds of OWA Parks & Resort. It has two levels and seats up to 437 people. The main floor has 409 cushioned theater chairs facing the stage. The upstairs balcony holds 28 more, with a mix of theater seats and pub-style tables with stools. The venue has professional lighting and sound, so shows feel polished, but the room stays small.
“It’s very intimate,” says OWA Theater Manager Bran Kilpatrick. “It sits like a theater and sounds like a club.”
From Legends in Concert to a Broader Lineup
When OWA Theater opened in 2019, it was built around Legends in Concert, the long-running Las Vegas-style tribute revue. Kilpatrick describes that period this way: “It started out as a Legends in Concert venue, and they ran a Vegas-style show five days a week. It would be like 20 minutes of Michael Jackson and then 20 minutes of Madonna and other legendary artists. When the contract with Legends ended, they pretty much stayed on the same path with the bookings, so for the past seven years this place has been synonymous with tribute acts.”
Tribute shows still draw a loyal audience, and they remain on the calendar. Upcoming shows include acts performing the music of Garth Brooks, Guns N’ Roses and the Beach Boys, among others. Since Kilpatrick arrived in the summer of 2025, though, he has also been booking a wider range of artists who play their own songs, including country, rock and R&B performers and nationally touring comedians. The goal is to reach as wide an audience as possible.
One recent example was country singer Pam Tillis, who played the theater on Friday, Sept. 4. She brought her trio instead of her full arena production, and Sylacauga native Patrick Barnett opened with a solo acoustic set. Tillis, the daughter of country legend Mel Tillis, is a longtime member of the Grand Ole Opry. Her hits include “Maybe It Was Memphis” and “Don’t Tell Me What to Do.”
“We’re set up perfectly for stuff like that, so we’re reaching out to other artists that normally put on bigger shows to see if they’re interested in doing a stripped-back version,” Kilpatrick said ahead of that show. “It gives them a chance to reconnect with their fan base and to tell the stories behind their songs and that kind of thing.”
The Official Blues Venue of the Frank Brown Festival
The same idea of letting artists tell the stories behind their songs is at the heart of the Frank Brown International Songwriters’ Festival. The festival began in 1985 and is named for Frank Brown, the longtime night watchman at the Flora-Bama Lounge on the Alabama-Florida line. It is still based at the Flora-Bama, but each November it takes over stages across Orange Beach, Gulf Shores, Perdido Key and nearby towns. Hundreds of songwriters play their songs and talk about how they wrote them.
OWA Theater became an official Frank Brown venue last year. It hosted Taylor Hicks, the Birmingham native who won the fifth season of American Idol, and country singer Larry Gatlin on back-to-back nights. This year the theater debuts as the festival’s official blues venue, and Kilpatrick has booked two well-known singer-guitarists:
- Coco Montoya, Tuesday, Nov. 10. A left-handed guitarist who came up playing with blues great Albert Collins and in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers before starting a long solo career.
- Tab Benoit, Thursday, Nov. 12. A Louisiana guitarist and singer known for his swampy, soulful blues and for years of advocacy for Louisiana’s disappearing coastal wetlands.
Looking further ahead, Kilpatrick has booked Atlanta blues guitarist Tinsley Ellis for March, and he plans to bring in more top blues artists over time.
“I’m excited about it because there’s not a blues venue in Baldwin County or right here on the Coast,” he says. “Even though we’re not entirely dedicated to it, we want to showcase some of the very best musicians that people might not know about from a genre that was pretty much the mother of all music.”
Making Room for Breakout Acts
Kilpatrick also books what he calls breakout acts: artists who have outgrown bars and lounges but aren’t yet playing rooms with 1,500 or more seats. A small theater with good sound is a natural fit for performers at that stage. This fall’s breakout bookings include:
- British soul singer MT Jones, who played on Sept. 16 with local group 12Eleven opening.
- Soul singer-songwriter Devon Gilfillian on Monday, Oct. 19.
- Canadian blues guitarist Jesse Roper on Thursday, Nov. 5, with Sugarcane Jane as the support act.
Show times and ticket availability can change, so check with OWA Theater for current details before making plans.
A Comedian and Engineer Turned Venue Manager
Kilpatrick’s path to the job was unusual. He grew up in Anniston and spent 18 years working in electromechanical engineering. Along the way he performed stand-up comedy, which gave him his first experience booking and promoting shows. He enjoyed that side of the business enough to switch careers to entertainment management. He spent a year as entertainment director at the Hangout in Gulf Shores, the beachfront restaurant and music venue, before moving to OWA.
His favorite music is the blues, which helps explain the theater’s growing blues lineup. His booking strategy, though, is about variety. On any month’s calendar, a tribute night may sit alongside a touring comic, a country veteran playing acoustic and a young soul singer.
What the Room Does Well
Kilpatrick admits the theater’s size limits what he can book. High-energy rock shows aren’t a great fit, because a room full of fixed seats leaves little space to stand or dance. The theater is about a quarter the size of other performance halls in the area, which means acoustic sets, storytelling shows, soul singers and blues players are where it shines.
“We’re uniquely positioned as a sit-down listening room-style venue,” he says. That drives which acts he books and when. As he points out, even the back row at OWA Theater would count as a premium seat almost anywhere else.
His long-term goal is for the theater to have its own following. “The goal for me is that people will want to come here all the time, not necessarily because of a specific artist that’s playing here but because they know that the shows here are amazing.”
About OWA Parks & Resort
The theater is one piece of OWA Parks & Resort, the Foley destination developed by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. The complex opened in 2017. Its name comes from the Muscogee Creek word for “big water,” a nod to the lake at its center. The resort includes Tropic Falls, which has an amusement park and indoor and outdoor water parks, along with a downtown district of restaurants, shops and entertainment. Foley has also become a sports and tourism hub, with the city’s Sports Tourism Complex and Tanger Outlets nearby, and it sits a short drive from the beaches of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach.
Because of that location, the theater’s audience is a mix of Baldwin County residents looking for a night out and visitors who plan beach trips around a show. For both groups, the pitch is the same: a comfortable seat, clear sound and a stage close enough to see the performers’ faces.