Foley’s OWA Theater is trading its usual lineup for a country-flavored holiday production this winter, with a new show bringing tribute performances of some of Nashville’s biggest names to the stage through early January. “Legends in Concert: A Merry Country Christmas” opened Nov. 20 and continues at the theater, located at 205 N. OWA Blvd. in Foley, through Jan. 3. Tickets range from $17.95 to $44.95 and are available through the OWA website, visitowa.com. The run gives residents of Baldwin County and the wider Gulf Coast a seasonal entertainment option close to home during the busiest travel and gathering stretch of the year.
The production is a seasonal spinoff of “Legends in Concert,” the tribute show that has been one of the anchor attractions at OWA since the entertainment complex opened. The regular production is built around a rotating cast of performers who recreate the look, sound and stage presence of famous musicians, letting audiences experience something close to a live show from the artist being honored. For the holiday run, that formula gets pointed squarely at country music, with a cast built around recognizable stars of the genre.
Long-running tribute shows occupy a particular niche in the American entertainment landscape. Rather than betting a season’s schedule on one touring act, a venue presents performers who have spent years studying a single artist’s voice, phrasing, costumes and stage manner. Done well, the result is less an impersonation act than a living retrospective: an audience hears the hits they know, delivered in a style that hews closely to the original recordings, while the show’s producers gain flexibility in how they structure an evening. OWA’s theater, a purpose-built showroom in the heart of the complex, was designed with exactly this kind of resident production in mind, and the holiday edition leans into that format with a country theme.
An Opening Built for the Season
The evening opens with a rendition of “Jingle Bells” styled after the Brian Setzer Orchestra’s swinging holiday arrangement, setting an upbeat tone before the tribute performances begin in earnest. Setzer, a Massapequa, New York-born guitarist who first found fame fronting the rockabilly trio the Stray Cats, reinvented himself in the 1990s as a big-band leader, and his brassy, jump-blues recordings became fixtures of the modern holiday playlist. Staging the opener in that style signals from the first downbeat that this is a Christmas show first and a country show second, with the two sensibilities braided together rather than kept in separate compartments.
From there, the show moves through a lineup of country icons, with each performer delivering songs associated with the artist being portrayed. The sequencing is deliberate, moving the audience through distinct eras and voices of the genre rather than asking one performer to carry the entire night. That structure also keeps the pacing brisk, since each segment brings a new costume, a new repertoire and a new persona to the stage.
A Lineup Drawn from Country’s Biggest Names
Performer Corrie Sachs steps into the role of Reba McEntire, whose career has stretched from small-town Oklahoma rodeo arenas to the Grand Ole Opry stage and, eventually, network television. McEntire’s catalog is among the most recognizable in modern country music, built on story-driven ballads and brassy uptempo numbers that reward a vocalist with range and theatrical command. A tribute segment built around her gives the show an early anchor in the genre’s mainstream, and the character’s well-known stage persona — the red hair, the showmanship, the mix of warmth and toughness — translates naturally to a holiday setting where audience familiarity runs high.
Stacey Whitton takes on a double assignment, portraying both Shania Twain and Martina McBride over the course of the evening. The pairing is a study in two different branches of 1990s country. Twain’s recordings fused country songwriting with pop and rock production to become some of the best-selling albums of the decade, and her persona — confident, glamorous, arena-ready — remains one of the genre’s most imitated. McBride, by contrast, built her reputation on soaring vocal performances, often in songs of resilience and, during the holiday season, on Christmas repertoire that has become a staple of seasonal radio. Asking one performer to shift between the two voices showcases the technical versatility that tribute work demands.
Shawn Gerhard rounds out the country segment with a portrayal of Garth Brooks, the Oklahoma-born performer whose arena-scale live shows redefined what a country concert could be in the 1990s and beyond. Brooks’ catalog mixes driving honky-tonk numbers with stadium ballads, and his stage style — the hat, the headset microphone, the willingness to run from one end of an arena to the other — is among the most distinctive in the business. A tribute segment in his image brings the show’s country portion to a high-energy peak before the evening turns toward its closing act.
Leo Days closes the night with a tribute to Elvis Presley that includes a seasonal take on “Blue Christmas,” the King’s best-known holiday recording. The inclusion is a natural bridge between the country theme and the broader holiday bill: Presley’s roots run through Memphis country, gospel and rockabilly, and his Christmas catalog sits alongside his greatest hits in the popular imagination. A Presley segment also carries obvious appeal across generations, which matters for a holiday show marketed to families visiting the Gulf Coast for the season.
A Finale Built for the Whole Cast
The night builds to a finale pairing the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s instrumental “Christmas Eve in Sarajevo” with a full-cast performance of “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” bringing all of the evening’s performers together on stage for a closing number. The pairing is shrewd programming. “Christmas Eve in Sarajevo,” the instrumental centerpiece of Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s 1996 debut album, is one of the most recognizable rock interpretations of a holiday carol ever recorded, built on a driving guitar-and-strings arrangement of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” woven through with “Carol of the Bells.” Set against the warm, mid-century pop standard “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” it lets the production shift from spectacle to sentiment in a single sequence, with every performer on stage for the final bow.
Full-cast finales serve a practical purpose in a tribute show as well. They remind the audience that the evening’s impersonators are a working company rather than isolated lookalikes, and they give the production its most photographable moment — a stage full of era-spanning performers, holiday staging and familiar music. For a venue like OWA’s theater, which courts repeat visits from local season-pass holders and out-of-town shoppers alike, that closing image is part of the product.
The Theater and Its Place in OWA
The OWA Theater sits at 205 N. OWA Blvd., inside the larger OWA entertainment district in Foley. The complex, developed around a downtown-style pedestrian core and an adjacent outlet shopping center, opened to the public in 2017 and has since grown into one of south Baldwin County’s principal draws for families, tour groups and seasonal visitors. Its mix of rides, restaurants, shops and resident live entertainment was conceived to keep visitors on site for a full day rather than a single stop, and the theater’s programming — tribute residencies, touring acts and seasonal specials — forms the entertainment backbone of that model.
Foley itself anchors the central corridor of Baldwin County, the fastest-growing county in Alabama, along the Highway 59 route that connects Interstate 10 to the beaches of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach. That geography matters for a show like this one. Winter visitors funnel down the corridor toward the coast throughout the Thanksgiving-to-New Year’s stretch, and an indoor, ticketed evening attraction positioned in Foley captures traffic that might otherwise pass straight through to the beach towns. For year-round residents of communities such as Robertsdale, Summerdale, Elberta, Loxley and Silverhill, the theater offers professional live entertainment without a drive into Mobile or Pensacola.
The show’s ticket pricing also reflects its broad target audience. With admission ranging from $17.95 to $44.95 through visitowa.com, the production sits well below the cost of a major touring concert, positioning it as an accessible family outing rather than a special-occasion splurge. The range also allows for tiered seating, with premium sections closest to the stage commanding the top of the scale during the run.
Holiday Programming Along the Gulf Coast
“A Merry Country Christmas” is part of the broader slate of holiday programming at OWA, which draws visitors from across Baldwin County and the wider Gulf Coast region during the Thanksgiving-to-New Year’s stretch. The season is a competitive one for Gulf Coast attractions. Coastal communities from Mobile to Panama City stage lights displays, Christmas parades, tree lightings and theatrical productions, each vying for the same pool of residents and winter tourists. An established venue with indoor seating holds an obvious advantage in that market: the show goes on regardless of weather, a real consideration in a region where December can swing from mild afternoons to cold, wet fronts.
The tribute format adds its own drawing power during the holidays. Audiences gravitate toward familiar music at Christmas, and a show constructed entirely from songs and artists the audience already knows lowers the barrier for casual ticket buyers — grandparents taking grandchildren, visitors looking for something to do between shopping trips, longtime country fans curious to see how faithfully the performers capture their favorites. The holiday theme also gives the regular “Legends in Concert” audience a reason to return, since the production is a distinct show rather than a re-run of the standard bill.
For the local economy, the run lands during a period when Baldwin County’s hospitality sector counts on winter business. Hotels, restaurants and retail shops in Foley and the surrounding communities depend on the steady flow of visitors that holiday events generate, and a ticketed attraction with a multi-week run encourages overnight stays and repeat visits rather than single afternoon trips. The theater’s placement within a shopping-and-entertainment district amplifies that effect, since dinner before a show and shopping after it keep spending inside the complex and the city.
For country music fans looking for a festive night out along the Gulf Coast this winter, the tribute show offers a mix of nostalgia and holiday cheer without requiring a trip outside Baldwin County. The production opened Nov. 20 and runs through Jan. 3 at the OWA Theater in Foley, with tickets from $17.95 to $44.95 available at visitowa.com. Between the country tribute lineup, the seasonal staging and the full-cast finale, the show packs a full evening of familiar music into a venue that Gulf Coast audiences can reach in a short drive — a combination that has defined OWA’s approach to live entertainment since the day the gates opened.