The Music Ranch USA country music theater will become Kevin Grissom’s Music Ranch USA July 15, the new home of the Country Cookin’ Band. Kevin is the third in the string of operators of the country music theater.

The theater was built by the Ivan and Raymond Jennings families. Ivan had operated a country music show in Missouri, recorded a hit song, gave Nashville a twirl but didn’t dig the club scene, became a truck driver out of Louisville.

He and his wife Edna chose West Point to build a new theater with the help of his brother Raymond and his wide Rita. It was a mammoth project – Raymond hauled over 500 loads of dirt to the theater and parking lot!

While they were waiting on red tape and licenses, the Jennings renovated a stone house and a two-story building, bought a barn in Indiana and used it for the timbers to strengthen the two-story building (a former funeral home casket showplace in the days when the deceased were waked in their homes). Trees cut from the parking lot became rough-sawed lumber at an Amish saw mill and were used, along with barn lumber, to link the buildings. These housed a craft shop mall on two floors and a “sweet shop” of cakes and candies. Edna was unsurpassed at baking decorating cakes for weddings and special occasions for a constituency that extended to Nashville, Tennessee.

The brothers poured concrete pillars reaching through the fill to firm earth below, then poured the floors. A contractor raised the walls and roof, and the brothers did the rest, using a truck load of landscape timbers and working primarily with chain saws. In February 1993 they opened the doors to an eagerly awaiting audience.

However, the renaissance of West Point cooled and the audience dwindled. In May 30, 1996 Ivan and Edna locked the doors and returned to Missouri and built a theater there.

Rube Yelvington was mayor of West Point, KY during the flood of March 1997, and the West Point Country Opry had been closed for over a year. As he thought of the task of reviving West Point when the waters receded, he thought also of the resource that was lost when the Opry closed, and of the excitement it had caused when it had opened back in 1993. He wondered if he could revive it again.

Rube called on his friend Jim Roberts of Elizabethtown and told him of his hope, and then Jim's brother Bill, who had returned to West Point from Chicago to be with his mother Hazel Roberts -- also Jim's mother. (Hazel and Bill are now deceased) Rube, Jim, Bill and Rube's wife Nancy became the original incorporators of Music Ranch, Inc. More than 60 persons and couples purchased stock. The theater opened to packed house Sept. 7, 1997.

The Country Classics band was the house band, but disbanded after eight years. Only two – Glen Phillips and Glen Thompson, were part of the original band. A number of bands were auditioned before Saturday night audiences and either were excused or didn’t want to play ever week. Four bands were selected to play in rotation, providing maximum variety. The theory worked for awhile, but gradually the audiences developed for individual bands rather than for the theater, and along came the prospective operator No. 3, Kevin Grissom, formerly of the Junction Jamboree.

It is with high expectations that Music Ranch Inc. welcomes Kevin Grissom’s Music Ranch USA and the Country Cookin’ Band to the theater in a partnership we hope will be as rewarding as we both expect.

Chow Hall main dining roomMusic Ranch, Inc., will continue to operate the Chow Hall restaurant, originally the craft mall and sweet shop, and the refreshment stand as adjuncts to Kevin Grissom’s Music Ranch, USA. Check out our Chow Hall menus – they change weekly, but always include two plated dinners and one is a fork-tender open-face roast beef sandwich of unmatched flavor – guaranteed. Great sandwiches, soups, desserts. And taxes are included in competitive prices. And we try to serve within 10 minutes maximum. Our novel menu serves also as an order blank and a bill.

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