It's almost a cliché to say there's not a bad seat in the house, but it's literally true at OWA Theater in Foley. You can easily get so close to the stage that if you want to voice a little encouragement to a performer, you can wait for a quiet moment between songs and won't even have to shout.

Located on the grounds of OWA Parks & Resort, the two-story venue seats up to 437 people. There are 409 cushioned chairs facing the stage on the first level, and the upstairs balcony accommodates another 28 with a mix of theater seats and pub-style tables with stools. With professional lighting and sound, it creates a big-time vibe that also feels cozy and comfortable.

"It's very intimate," says OWA Theater Manager Bran Kilpatrick. "It sits like a theater and sounds like a club."

That makes it a suitable setting for his own favorite type of music, the blues, but that's just part of what he's been putting together since he came on board in the summer of 2025. Working to reach as broad an audience as possible, Bran and his staff regularly line up a variety of entertainment, including country, rock, and R&B artists as well as nationally touring comedians. While many of the artists perform their own material, performers paying tribute to musical icons have played a starring role in the venue's success since it opened in 2019.

"It started out as a Legends in Concert venue, and they ran a Vegas-style show five days a week," says Bran. "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."

Those kinds of shows continue to attract a loyal following, so the theater's upcoming schedule includes acts playing the music of Garth Brooks, Guns N' Roses and the Beach Boys, among others. Music fans will also have many opportunities to enjoy artists performing their own songs. One example is country star Pam Tillis, who comes to town this Friday night (Sept. 4) for a pared-down performance that starts at 7:30.

"It's going to be her trio rather than her arena-style show, and there's going to be a solo acoustic opening act, which is Patrick Barnett, who is from Sylacauga," says Bran. "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. It gives them a chance to reconnect with their fan base and to tell the stories behind their songs and that kind of thing."

That's also the idea behind OWA Theater's association with the Frank Brown International Songwriters Festival, which is based at the Flora-Bama but spreads to numerous other locations each November. OWA Theater became an official Frank Brown venue last year, hosting Taylor Hicks and Larry Gatlin on consecutive nights during the songwriter festival's week-long run. This time around, the theater makes its debut as the festival's official blues venue. For the occasion, Kilpatrick has booked two heavy-hitting singer/guitarists: Coco Montoya on Tuesday, Nov. 10 and Tab Benoit on Thursday, Nov. 12.

Looking down the road, he has blues artist Tinsley Ellis booked in March, and he plans to open the theater's stage to many other standout artists.

"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."

Bran also loves welcoming what he calls breakout acts, which he defines as artists who have outgrown the bar and lounge circuit but haven't yet reached the next level, which is rooms with 1,500 seats or more. These will include British soul singer MT Jones (with local group 12Eleven opening) on Sept. 16, soulful singer/songwriter Devon Gilfillian on Oct. 19 and Canadian blues guitarist Jesse Roper on Nov. 5 (with Sugarcane Jane as the support act).

A native of Anniston, Bran says his own history as a stand-up comic gave him his first experience at booking and promoting shows. It was something he really enjoyed, so after 18 years in electromechanical engineering, he switched to entertainment management. He worked for a year as Entertainment Director at the Hangout in Gulf Shores before moving to OWA.

While he loves the intimate nature of the theater, he admits that it somewhat limits the types of performances he can present there. High-energy rock shows, for instance, aren't the best fit for the space because there is little room to stand or dance. He hopes that more people will come to love the venue for what it is and what it offers. It's about a fourth the size of other performance theaters in the area, he notes, and even the back row at OWA Theater would be considered a premium spot anyplace else.

"We're uniquely positioned as a sit-down listening room-style venue," he says, so that heavily influences what acts he books and when. "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."