Wanna-Be Nashville : Country music: Tourists are flocking to Branson, Mo., where Grand Ole Opry veterans have set up camp in the Ozarks and Vegas-style neon now lights the sky.

In this onetime sleepy hollow in the Ozarks, Herkimer, a show-biz hillbilly, now wears red-sequined overalls. Welcome to “America’s Country Music Show Capital,” where glitz and grits meet on a traffic-clogged boulevard called “The Strip.”

These days, the buzz is about the Grand Palace, a 4,000-seat, $13-million antebellum-style music mansion that promises a May opening with “major stars.”

That will bring to 23--and counting--the theaters offering live country music shows daily from April through October with such headliners-in-residence as Mel Tillis, Box Car Willie, Roy Clark, Jim Stafford and Cristy Lane.

Coming soon: Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and June Carter and, with his Moon River Theater, Andy Williams.

With a population of only 3,700, Branson is the recreational hub of the Lakes Area, situated on the shore of trout-stocked Lake Taneycomo and close by Table Rock Lake, where the bass bite and a fleet of amphibious “ducks” take tourists cruising before driving the strip.

It is also home to Silver Dollar City, a turn-of-the-century theme park with such folksy attractions as bubble-blowing and quilting.

Along the strip--a three-lane, five-mile thoroughfare also called 76 Country Boulevard--signs beckon, “Y’all Come.” Water slides, go-carts and restaurants offering big servings and small checks cater to families.

But the main draw is music and, with tickets under $15, visitors get their fill.

Indulging in a bit of hyperbole, Branson boosters call it “the new Nashville,” a notion that does not have Nashville on its knees.

“We certainly don’t sit here and fret over, ‘Gosh, I wonder what we’re going to do about Branson,’ ” says Terry Clements of the Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Nashville may not have all those theaters, he points out, but it is still “Music City USA,” home of Opryland USA and the Grand Ole Opry, heartland of country music.

But he acknowledges Branson “is definitely a scene.”

Tom Adkinson, Opryland’s spokesman, brushes aside the idea of Nashville vs. Branson, describing the latter as “a nice place in the Ozarks that has as one of its major offerings country music.” But Nashville has the recording studios and the songwriters.

Ed Anderson, publisher of Ozark Mountain Country Review Magazine in Branson, acknowledges, “Truthfully, we are the performing capital and Nashville is the recording capital.”

In her posh, pink dressing room at the Cristy Lane Theater, Cristy Lane kicks off her shoes, settles into a chair and talks about Branson.

On the strip, the post-theater traffic is headlight-to-taillight. Lane and husband-manager Lee Stoller aren’t concerned; they are home. They solved the commuting problem by moving into an apartment above the theater.

At 51, Lane is content to have a base here, where she performs from May through October. “The road wears you down,” she says.

Lane and Stoller aren’t yet year-round residents, but their Nashville house is on the market--they think Nashville is too crowded, too expensive.

In Branson, she says, stars are treated like just plain folks. “They don’t need to constantly be out there and ‘on,’ like in Hollywood.”

Lane is typical of entertainers who have opened theaters here. They are veterans, not the hot talent now topping the charts.

As Opryland’s Adkinson puts it, “Garth Brooks and Clint Black are not going to set up shop anywhere. They’re probably making $60,000 to $100,000 a night by being a touring act. Would you stop being a touring act?”

It is intermission at the Mel Tillis Ozark Theater and Tillis is relaxing backstage. It is his 59th birthday and the maintenance man has sent a cake with a frosting guitar.

Tillis believes in Branson enough to be building a $6-million, 2,100-seat theater, plus steakhouse and “the biggest little ballroom in the world . . . a good time for certain age people.”

He knows his audience. They are Middle America, tapping their toes as he sings “Smoke, Smoke, Smoke.” This day, a busload has come from First Baptist Church of Baker, La., and is in the lobby gift shop, buying red and orange Tillis T-shirts, suspenders and mugs.

Despite his enthusiasm for Branson, Tillis says, “This is not going to kill Nashville, by any means . . . but I think it’s going to be major here . . . TV studios, a cable network, recording facilities.”

He does wonder how the crystal-and-velvet Grand Palace will impact the older theaters: “I don’t see many survivors . . . they’ll make bingo parlors out of them, I guess.”

Is Branson killing the goose that laid the golden egg?

One big “if,” everyone agrees, is the traffic problem. Gaye Lisby, director of the downtown association, says that although downtown has benefited from the boom, two-thirds of visitors bypass center city: “People don’t dare get out of the line of traffic for fear they’ll never be able to get back in.”

Chuck Ladd, owner of the Ozark Family Restaurant and past president of the chamber of commerce, says there used to be six restaurants in town; today, there are 225--and 10,000 tourist rooms in the area. Each year, about 4 million visitors spend $625 million.

A new tax will fund $400 million in roads, to divert some of the 30,000 vehicles that clog 76 Country Boulevard daily during peak season.

Waylon Jennings is at the Lowes Theater, where George Jones, Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette are also appearing this season. Jennings, all in black, is strumming his white guitar: “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys. . . .” Heads nod in time as he moves on to “Help Me Make It Through the Night.”

Later, Jennings relaxes out back in his RV. Fans queue up, waiting for autographs. This is his second guest season here, but he has no plans to open his own theater. “It’s great for some of them, but I can still make a lot of money on the road.”

Performers are making decent, if not top, money here, he says, but “the developers are going to get really rich. You can just build so many of these places and you’re still splitting up the same dollars.”

Nashville is his home. Is Nashville worried?

“I don’t know what they’d worry about,” he says. “Country music is Nashville. Nashville is country music.” Branson is great, he says, but “they could ruin it by trying to make it something else.”

Jennings joins the waiting fans. “Love ya!” screams a woman in white jeans with cutaway lace hearts on the legs. In Branson, fans get up-close and personal.

Neon fiddles glow on marquees. At the Stars of the Ozarks Theater, Jim Stafford, 47, who hit the Top 10 in 1974 with “Spiders & Snakes,” is ready to go on, in white, his shirt embroidered with a spider web and a snake.

He is a year-rounder, a homeowner. He likes performing before an audience, he says, and “here, you can do that six or seven months of the year without having to go on the road.”

He hopes Branson and Nashville will coexist peacefully: “The artists here depend on (Nashville) to be seen by large numbers of people. They want to go work on the Nashville Network. I need the Nashville Network. I hope everybody’s going to get along.”

Box Car Willie and Roy Clark are Grand Ole Opry performers who also have their own theaters in Branson. Box Car, a 60-year-old hobo, is winding up the first half of his show with a gospel number, “Jesus, I Need to Talk to You.”

At intermission, fans with trainmen’s caps from the Box Car Willie Airplane and Train Museum and Gift Shop line up for autographs.

Box Car has moved here “lock, stock and barrel,” from his native Texas. It isn’t Nashville, he says, but it has its audience. “If you live in Mississippi and you want to see Mickey Mouse, where are you going to go? To Orlando, not Disneyland.” Branson, 200 miles south of Kansas City, draws from a block of mid-U.S. states.

As he visits backstage, he is told to get onstage, quick. He apologizes: His son, Larry, who does Elvis imitations, is running out of material. Box Car yells through the curtain, “I’ll be right there.” This is Branson.

Branson may, or may not, be competing with Nashville but there is a rivalry between name stars who’ve come in and regional performers like the Presley family--no relation to the King. Their Mountain Music Jubilee opened in 1967 in a metal building with 360 folding chairs.

Gary Presley, 44, who plays hillbilly Herkimer, recalls: “There was one night when we played to 13 people. They didn’t even fill the front row.”

Today, in a 2,000-seat theater on the site, they offer a “stomp your feet” mix of music and comedy, jazzed up with those red spangles.

Steve Presley, 35, heads an effort to bring name stars and local talent together to promote Branson. He says, “We’re hoping that we can maintain the Ozarks flavor.”

Gary adds: “It’s kind of like going to Hawaii. You may see Don Ho, but you also want to see the hula dancers.”