Dinner and a musical: Country singer Brent Payne wants to dish up food and tunes in Buena Park

Brent Payne strums a favorite Vince Gill tune by the front doors of Buena Park City Hall, and within a minute or so, it’s already family entertainment.

The country singer isn’t quite in his performing element here: the guitar case at his feet in the shade by a pillar, a spacious cement patio in front of him rather than a packed club. When he begins the chugging rhythm of “Oklahoma Borderline,” it’s merely to demonstrate his craft, but he quickly has an audience of a woman with a toddler who stops to gawk and run in circles to the beat.

The song over, Payne — clad in a black hat and paisley shirt, blue jeans and leather shoes — bends over the boy and holds out the 12-string guitar he’s played since 2000. The toddler gives a tentative strum, and Payne whoops with approval.

“That’s nice, huh?” he says to the woman. “You know, there’s something about music. No matter what our age, it touches us all.”

Then, to the boy, he adds: “So keep practicing.”

Toddlers on up, Payne is glad to have an audience. The artist, who grew up in Oklahoma, hopes to open BP’s Old West Chuck Wagon Music Show, a dinner theater where his band, and possibly others, will regale patrons with country music six nights a week. That’s “BP” as in Brent Payne, although the singer notes, with a little relish, that it matches Buena Park as well.

Right now, Payne’s mission is to nail down a location for BP’s, and he has two possible ones in mind. Both are within Beach Boulevard’s entertainment corridor, where landmarks such as Knott’s Berry Farm, Medieval Times and the former Movieland Wax Museum exist alongside closed motels and once-rundown properties giving way to new development.

For Payne, opening his own venue will mark a life transition as much as a career change. On his official website, he notes that his “days of being on the road will come to an end” when BP’s opens. Having observed and played at dinner theaters in the Midwest over the years, he’s eager to make that change.

“I really learned that music can move people, and if it’s family-oriented, it’s a show,” Payne says. “I’m not saying we’re a show like ‘Hee Haw.’ The show we have designed, it doesn’t matter what age you are or what genre of music you like or what ethnicity you are. We have been able to acquire all kinds of fans.”

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‘I grew up on a farm’

In only a few minutes of conversation with Payne, his influences are clear. He grew up admiring John Wayne and Gene Autry, has met descendants of Wyatt Earp. One of his albums, he says, was recorded at Buck Owens’ studio. He lists Garth Brooks, Toby Keith and Gill among those he’s shared bills with over the years.

“I’m a country boy from Oklahoma,” he says. “I was raised on a ranch, and I grew up playing bluegrass and country.”

That passion eventually led him to California, where he moved in the 1990s to pursue a recording career. Still, Payne has remained proud of his roots. Phrases like “the real deal,” “a true country cowboy,” “Southern hospitality” and “from the heart of Oklahoma” pepper his website.

Payne, a Corona resident, has yet to ascend to major-label stardom — he notes with a chuckle that “there’s more politics in music than there is in politics.” He counts his discography as seven independently released albums, although AllMusic lists only two of them.

Still, Payne has racked up his share of laurels. His “Now & Forever” won the 2012 Hollywood Music in Media Award for best country song. Around the same time, another of his songs got unexpected exposure: The TV show “90210,” which included a scene in Season 4 of a character listening to country music on the couch, used Payne’s “Haunting Memory” as a replacement for the original track on the DVD release.

Dixie McCorkell of Triplestrand Productions, an artist-promotion company that compiles CDs to send to radio stations worldwide, has included among those tracks six of Payne’s, including “Now & Forever,” over the years.

“According to the deejays I work with, he’s very popular with their audiences,” McCorkell says.

Payne’s current six-piece band has performed for the past decade and a half, taking the stage at concert halls as well as rodeos, veterans events and more. Asked which song he would probably open the first BP’s show with, he offers “Oklahoma Borderline,” a staple of his tours for years.

When Payne began formulating the idea for BP’s, he sought an appropriate area and ultimately set his sights on Buena Park. The story of the Knott family, which grew an actual berry farm into a thriving entertainment destination, won him over.

“I grew up on a farm,” Payne says. “So it appealed to me.”

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‘P’ as in Presley

BP’s, as Payne envisions it, will evoke some of that down-home experience.

Every night, one guest will get the opportunity to ring the bell for dinner, after which chuck wagons will roll out to offer brisket, biscuits, apple pie and other farm staples. Several small boutiques on the property will offer Western wear and other merchandise, while a stagecoach-style covered structure will provide a shaded area outdoors.

After patrons are done with their meal — provided, hopefully, by a Texan chef that Payne plans to enlist — the band will take the stage for an hour to 90 minutes of music. Payne can rattle off any number of classic country acts that influenced him, but he’s a lover of rock ‘n’ roll as well, and he hopes to get the audience energized as dessert goes down.

“We all liked the way Elvis used to come out with the big drums and everything,” he says.

If BP’s moves into Beach Boulevard, it will have plenty of new neighbors. Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of the rock band KISS are in the process of opening a new location in Buena Park for their Rock & Brews restaurant franchise; Porto’s Bakery & Cafe is under construction as well. Butterfly Pavillion, an entertainment venue centered on the winged insects, is set to move onto the former wax museum site.

In the last decade, Buena Park has focused on the Beach Boulevard entertainment corridor as an area for improvement. An action plan commissioned by the city in 2008 identified several areas of blight, including closed motels, and advised bringing in new hotels, entertainment destinations and even streetscaping and a tram service.

Initially, the city’s redevelopment agency took the lead on the Beach improvements. When Gov. Jerry Brown shut down redevelopment agencies across the state to help balance the budget in 2011, however, Buena Park officials pressed on. According to Economic Development Administrator Ruben Lopez, several projects, including entertainment venues and two hotels, have gotten city and state approval.

If Payne ultimately takes the stage for opening night at BP’s, he won’t be — to quote a song Elvis recorded — a stranger in his own hometown.

Last September, Payne and his band played at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new performing arts complex at Ehlers Event Center. To promote his venue, Payne set up an illustration of BP’s onstage.

“His band is outstanding, outstanding musicians,” Lopez says. “And he’s a very good performer. I’m not a country and Western person, but I really enjoyed myself.”