Jackson Foltyn mixes a drink Friday, July 5, 2024, at Jackson's Cozy Lounge in Gladewater. (Les Hassell/Longview News-Journal Photo)

The Gladewater of the 1950s is scarcely imaginable today. The city known for antiquing once was famous for its raucous music scene. Some of the biggest names in American music history — Ray Price, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley — performed and wrote in the small oil town that sits in Gregg and Upshur counties.

And it was a wet town. Honky tonk-lined roads lead up to the Smith County line in an area residents called “Sudz City” or “Hell’s half mile,” depending on their predilection for amplified vocals and booze.

Most of the haunts from that era are demolished or repurposed, the history fading save for a museum exhibit and the iconic KSIJ recording studio, now home to Mauldin Productions. Like a daguerreotype gathering dust in one of Gladewater’s antique shops, the city’s glory days as an outpost of entertainment were a curious artifact of the past.

Then something of that bygone magic shook and shimmied into town two years ago.

Few Gladewater denizens could have predicted that Jackson Foltyn, a popular Elvis tribute artist from Dallas, would set up shop in an old, downtown theater in 2022. None, certainly, expected he would spearhead a downtown revitalization campaign financed by his earnings playing the stock market.

Foltyn found a business partner in Longview who shared his passion for place-making soon after he arrived. Together, they’ve amassed a portfolio of 10 properties with plans for a bed and breakfast, a whiskey and cigar bar, a members only lounge and a general store, to name a few.

More unlikely transformations have happened in the Piney Woods, but not many. The closest analogue might be across the border in Shreveport where New York rap mogul 50 Cent purchased several properties this year in a bid to revive the Louisiana city’s ailing downtown district.

“You hustle for things you believe in,” Foltyn said on a Friday evening in June as he prepared for a show. “We believe in Gladewater.”

‘Pure serendipity’

Foltyn, who is in his mid-40s, toyed with the idea of purchasing a performance space early in the pandemic. He teaches ballroom dance classes and lives in Dallas when he isn’t on the road taking stage as an Elvis tribute artist. He grew up in New York and majored in acting at New York University.

One of his dance students in Dallas was a Realtor and told him about a historical theater for sale in a town called Gladewater.

“I hadn’t even heard of the city before,” Foltyn said.

It was small, quiet, festooned with decorative oil derricks and branded as the “antique capital of East Texas,” an official title granted by the state Legislature in 1995.

Maybe not the ideal terrain for an artist channeling rock ‘n’ roll’s original bad boy, Foltyn recalled thinking, but the theater was striking and positioned just off Main Street.

Neither he nor the Realtor were aware that the mythic rocker Foltyn spent years learning to imitate stumbled into Gladewater as a young and, at the time, obscure talent.

Elvis spent the mid-1950s playing shows in Gladewater honky tonks and in the Cozy Theater, the East Commerce Street property Foltyn closed on in 2021, sight unseen: “It was pure serendipity. Elvis performed here, B.B. King performed here. Johnny Cash wrote ‘I Walk the Line’ in Gladewater, and I’ve heard rumors that it happened in my dressing room!”

“But man, I will say that theater needed some real TLC,” Foltyn said.

After what he estimated was a half-million dollars in renovations, Jackson’s Theater opened in 2022 with the interior cocktail bar — Jackson’s Cozy Lounge — following in tow.

You can find Foltyn manning the bar Friday and Saturday most weeks, shirt half unbuttoned, ever amiable. Though the lounge has only existed for a little over a year, its jovial atmosphere is already attracting patrons from outside of Gladewater.

The drink menu even features a fiercely spicy margarita devised by Longview Councilwoman Michelle Gamboa.

Foltyn’s Elvis shows, weekly events and the introduction of live jazz musicians endeared him to locals who typically have to drive out of town for evening entertainment or an upscale drink.

Others were moved by his advocacy for autistic children. Foltyn has a 9-year-old autistic daughter, Roxy, and a nonprofit called the Roxy Room Project, which provides comforting sensory spaces to children on the spectrum.

There was some initial pushback to Jackson’s Theater at first, Foltyn said, but he paid it little mind: “Some people wanted the norm, and I’m like, ‘Nah, without no nightlife, you got no city.’ ”

“He is absolutely electrifying on the stage and a real mixologist, you just want to be around him,” said Stephanie Chance, owner of Decorate Ornate, an import antique store in Gladewater.

Many of her clients hail from other cities and other states, and she recalled taking a group of visitors to see Foltyn’s performance one night.

“They were telling me afterwards, ‘We have to go to Las Vegas or New York to see this kind of talent and y’all got it here in Gladewater?’ ” Chance said. “They couldn’t believe it.”

Lana Nieman, who lives in Longview, was drawn to a less obvious facet of his personality — an entrepreneurial streak — and the sense that Foltyn, more than anybody else she’d met, took Gladewater’s potential as seriously as she did.

Dreamers

Nieman spent a decade living in Gladewater through the mid-2010s. She was on the City Council, led the chamber of commerce, ran a restaurant — The Fork — and continues to find and flip properties.

While the city’s population has declined in parallel with the oil and logging industry since the 1960s, she couldn’t see an obvious reason why Gladewater couldn’t bloom again given its walkable downtown and enviable position at the crossroads of U.S 271 and U.S. 80.

“It just seems like it should be the most thriving city around between Longview and Tyler,” Nieman said. “Gladewater’s such a neat small town; it’s centrally located. I’ve just always felt it needed a little boost.”

She approached Foltyn at Jackson’s Theater after attending one of his first shows in 2022.

“I asked him if there was anything I could do to help the theater grow,” Nieman said. “I was buying properties and starting some other ventures in Gladewater. We made time to meet for lunch the next week and just ended up talking for hours.”

She felt like she had found a kindred spirit in Foltyn. Nieman now helps manage Jackson’s Cozy Lounge bar, and as their partnership has flourished, so have their ambitions.

After service wound down at the lounge one Saturday in June, the duo strolled the deserted main street at midnight pointing to different projects.

The general store, about 100 feet from the theater, will be the first of the businesses to open sometime around Christmas.

“It’s going to be like an upscale soda fountain with ice cream and fun retro candy,” Foltyn said. “There will be some wine and packaged food, too, in case you want some nosh (snacks) to take home.”

If the two dreamers manage to realize their entertainment empire, the anchor will be the two-story Clair Building on West Pacific Avenue.

Nieman and Foltyn hope to transform the 8,000-square-foot second floor into a 18-room bed and breakfast that can accommodate touring acts at the theater as well as tourists.

“We’re working to get the capital for that right now, but it will be a game changer,” Foltyn said.

The building’s bottom floor, which already hosts an antique store and a coffee shop, could see three more businesses in the coming years.

“We want a cheese monger in there, the kind of thing that you can’t find anywhere else in Northeast Texas,” Nieman said.

Another section of the downstairs will be split into two drink joints: Jackrabbit’s Irish Pub, with an opening planned for early next year, and a whisky and cigar bar.

Construction is already underway on a 23-seat members only club nestled on the second floor of Jackson’s Theater.

“If you want a corporate lunch, we’ll take care of that there; if you want season tickets to shows, to meet the performers, get champagne on opening night or a VIP section with a designated server, that’s where it will happen,” Foltyn said. “I want people to come from Michigan, Oklahoma, California and say, ‘Wow, this is something I never expected.’ ”

‘Excited about the future’

It’s not hard to see why Nieman gave Fulton the nickname “Taz,” short for Tasmanian devil. His exuberance is infectious.

Scott Owens, the economic director for the Gladewater Chamber of Commerce, seemed to catch the bug.

“I’d describe Jackson as energetic, hyper, optimistic,” Owens said during an interview in July. “I’ve been to his lounge several times. That theater helps complement our established restaurants and gets people from out of town to eat, shop, stay and be entertained.”

“We’re always happy for people to come in and invest in our town, become part of it.”

Nieman and Foltyn’s midnight day dreaming turned to other properties, then to downtown events. She mused about a gelato shop and a family-oriented space for children; both agreed Gladewater needed a jazz festival after shows at the theater proved surprisingly popular.

“We have such a musical history, and we really don’t channel that enough,” she said.

“It’s the first time in a while I’ve been excited about the future. I’m so glad I found a partner that’s just as excited about it as me.”