The Purple Hulls play Dec. 7, 2023, at the OK Theatre in Enterprise.

ENTERPRISE — Fronted by twins Katy and Penny Clark, The Purple Hulls bring a bit of Texas to Enterprise’s OK Theatre, 208 W. Main St., on Dec. 7.

Doors open at 6 p.m. The opening act, the Tollefson Sisters, take the stage at 7 p.m. followed by The Purple Hulls at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20 general admission or $15 for students, seniors and veterans. Find tickets at www.eventbrite.com.

A return to the OK

Katy Clark said the OK Theatre stop is based on their experience playing there in 2016, and their subsequent relationship with its owners, Darrell and Christi Brann.

“We thought it was worth the trip,” Clark said. “We enjoyed staying in touch over the years with the Branns and loved getting to know the country.”

On this visit, bassist Sarah Birkeland joins the Hulls. Formerly of Duluth, Minnesota, Birkeland recently moved to Texas to join the band rooted in bluegrass with ventures into gospel and swing.

“Swing has always influenced our musical journey and style,” Clark said. “Growing up, we listened to country swing casually, but when we had an opportunity to play with the Quebe Sisters, and soak up music from bands like Asleep at the Wheel, it made its way even more into our music.”

As a three-piece, swing has certain challenges, Clark said.

“We have fun with swing in our writing and the songs we like to cover, but we are not a full, six-piece swing band, so we struggle with how to communicate swing and a Texas flair as a smaller configuration with bluegrass instrumentation. That has been a challenge that is honestly what we love trying to pull off — and singing while we do it,” Clark said.

The Clark sisters have been a touring act most of their lives. They and their brother, Ben, started a new outlet for their love of music — bluegrass music camps. In 2019, they hosted one on their home place in East Texas.

“We began hosting them in Tennessee and Texas, even on our farm — we had a good, ol’ Texas time with people in the barn and smoked brisket,” Katy Clark said.

Camps scheduled for 2020 were canceled, but in 2021, due to the outdoor and rural nature of the camps, they were able to host a few. In 2022, they had eight camps, and this past summer they taught at 10 camps, held all over the country.

To streamline travel, Clark said they perform as The Purple Hulls on the way to and from their camps. They have also had to learn how to streamline their time now that they live more than three hours apart.

After their OK Theatre show, Clark said The Purple Hulls will return home to Texas to play a string of pre-Christmas shows. Their Dec. 7 in Wallowa County show is just ahead of Enterprise’s Winterfest on Dec. 9.

The OK and OPB

After surviving pandemic restrictions and an extensive remodel, the OK Theatre is back in business with live performances on Main Street in Enterprise.

Less than a year after celebrating the theater’s 100th anniversary, music venues across the world shuttered in March 2020.

While the stage went dark, owners Darrell and Christi Brann, who also run a construction company, rolled up their sleeves and concentrated on some serious remodeling of the nearly 20,000 square feet of Main Street real estate.

“It’s still a huge project — we are not multi-millionaires and a theater isn’t the most lucrative business, but we are trying to make it all happen,” Darrell Brann said.

That includes a long list of renovations — sealing gaps in an old building, building bathrooms, rebuilding the stage, adding and remodeling existing apartments, upgrading the heating system and creating new performance spaces. This fall, the Branns installed new windows to update the exterior appearance. On the short list of more improvements is building a bar off the lobby.

The venue’s yearlong celebration of its 100th anniversary attracted the media, including Oregon Public Broadcasting. At the time April Baer, host of the radio show “State of Wonder,” brought her crew to the culminating event — a music festival on Enterprise’s Main Street on July 13, 2019.

That night the headliner, pianist Jon Cleary, had barely started his set when an evening thunderstorm shut everything down.

It wasn’t until February 2023 that Cleary was able to return to the OK and complete his show, this time at an indoor performance. Again, OPB was at the theater, taping the performance for its show “Oregon Art Beat.”

That episode will air on OPB Jan. 4, 2024, at 8 p.m., and will be available online the same day.

— Katy Nesbitt