Sam Knutson
Sam Knutson is on a treasure hunt across Iowa.
He’s not looking for buried loot or lost trinkets. He’s looking above ground, at ways to bring more music to the state’s treasure trove of opera houses.
He’s mining his finds into The Iowa Opera House Project, bringing acoustic folk music to historic venues still in operation.
Knutson, a singer/songwriter from Iowa City, will perform Feb. 9 in one such space — the Englert Theatre in downtown Iowa City. Guitarist John Waite from Anamosa will open the concert. Audience members will be seated onstage for an intimate performance experience.
Gems like the ornate Englert still exist, but are fewer and farther afield.
“Between 1870 and 1930, there were about 1,500 (such) buildings. Every time a town’s population got to be 1,000, a theater was built,” Knutson, 42, says. “With the gentility of the time, they didn’t want to call them ‘theaters.’ That was low-class entertainment. So they called them ‘opera houses.’
“The vast majority of them burned or got turned into movie theaters. By the time there were movies, they fell out of fashion. Some kind of stayed, like the What Cheer Opera House.”
That’s where the project seeds were planted.
“Last summer, a friend of mine took me to see a country band at What Cheer, and (the band members) were all like 80 years old,” he says. “I’ve played in bands forever and am a songwriter, and I thought, ‘Shows need to be put on in here.’ The people running the theater were between 60 and, well, I met someone 95 walking around the theater that day.”
So he started contacting opera houses, and when he called the one in Pella, he found out about the book, “The Opera Houses of Iowa.” Before he even finished the book, he started scouting the sites.
“I still haven’t found all of them, but I got the idea in my head to put together family-friendly, mostly acoustic shows to go into all of these places. A lot are in very small towns.”
The first concerts were staged last fall in Clermont and Coggon, drawing audiences from an hour away.
Knutson is in the “rough planning stages” for between 25 and 40 more such events, with “tons of them” in western Iowa sites like Denison, where the restored 1914 opera house is now home to the Donna Reed Performing Arts Center.
He’s recruiting other Iowa singer/songwriters to showcase their talents in these halls, including Dave Moore, Dustin Busch, Jordan Sellergren of Milk and Eggs and blues guitarist Matt Skinner.
“I want these theaters to be seen as a viable place,” Knutson says. “I want these places to be recognized as the treasures they are.”
Iowa City audiences will hear music from his other latest endeavor, his recently completed CD of original songs. He and Waite will perform separately and together.
“John will open the show,” Knutson says. “He’s a really great bluegrass picker, so I wasn’t going to let that opportunity go by.”
Knutson, who works by day for a pharmaceutical company and performs on weekends, hopes the series will grow, even beyond his involvement.
“It’s going to take a year to put all this stuff on,” he says. “There’s theaters I haven’t looked at yet. If I’m out in rural Iowa, I’ll swing through small towns.”
Through all of this, he hopes audiences “have a good time.”
“People who enjoy well-performed acoustic music are going to have an enjoyable show,” he says. “It’s not a rock show. It will appeal to people 8 to 80 and be about two hours long. No one wants to sit in a chair more than two hours.”
— Diana Nollen