Seattle
By the mid-1990s, the world was buzzing with the “Seattle sound.” The city was the birthplace of grunge thanks to Seattle’s Sub Pop record label, and hometown bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden were taking over the charts.
Groups can get their first taste of Seattle grunge at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where Sub Pop opened its retail store in 2014. Stalking Seattle offers tours of the city’s music history, showcasing the first place Pearl Jam ever played, the bar where Nirvana played to nobody and the house where Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain died.
Everything about the new $2.2 million Jimi Hendrix Park, which opened last summer, pays tribute to the Seattle-born rock legend, including walkways that form the outline of a guitar with 12 “frets” that give a timeline of Hendrix’s life. Visitors can also pay their respects at Hendrix’s gravesite at Greenwood Memorial Park in Renton, just outside the city.
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen founded the Experience Music Project, or EMP Museum, in 2000. While the museum has always been rooted in rock ’n’ roll, it rebranded in November 2016 as the Museum of Pop Culture, or MoPOP, to include sci-fi, fantasy, horror, fashion, sports and video games.
Interactive galleries give hands-on access to instruments and recording studios and allow visitors to perform before a virtual audience. A towering sculpture with more than 500 musical instruments and 30 computers greets guests.
Branson, Missouri
Though it’s a small town in the Missouri Ozarks, everybody knows Branson as a music mecca. But not everybody knows how Branson came to have more than 100 live shows in 45 theaters.
In 1959, the Mabe brothers launched their twice-weekly show in a skating rink on the Lake Taneycomo waterfront. Today that show is known as “Branson’s Famous Baldknobbers” and is still performed by third- and fourth-generation Mabes.
In 1967, the Presley family built the first live-music theater in Branson, and two years later, the Mabe brothers built a permanent theater on Highway 76, making it Branson’s oldest-running show.
Though the city is home to long-running shows such as the Baldknobbers and “Presleys’ Country Jubilee,” shows are constantly rotating, so there is always something new, said Lynn Berry director of communications for the Branson/Lakes Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“Samson” opened in March at Sight and Sound Theatre, where it will play for two years. The show tops even former big-effect productions when “they have the temple fall down around your ears on three sides,” Berry said.
“Samson” is Branson’s biggest production. Its smallest is brand-new: “Billy Yates’ Hit Songwriters in the Round” at Americana Theatre. Yates, a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, brings other hit Nashville songwriters to perform and tell stories with him onstage during an intimate performance. Jimmy Osmond’s “American Jukebox” opens this fall at the Andy Williams Performing Arts Center and Theatre.
