Egremont — Jenny Rubin didn’t feel like it was time to let the Egremont Barn go. Sometimes, a venue runs its course, she and her husband and co-owner Nick Keene agreed. But they still saw a need within the community for the much-loved music venue, which they opened in 2016. “We didn’t feel like it was time to put it to rest. We still felt there’s more life here,” Rubin told The Berkshire Edge. “So I kept fighting for it. But financially, it was looking rough there for a while, and we didn’t know if we were going to be able to do it.” The couple had been trying to sell The Barn since March 2024. A couple of almost-buyers didn’t work out. “We were getting pretty worried,” said Rubin. This past January, when The Barn closed for a winter break, it wouldn’t reopen unless a buyer surfaced.
Then Rubin ran into a friend, Heather Thomson, at the Old Mill one night. Two days later, Thomson called saying she had a friend who owned a bunch of restaurants in Connecticut. “You guys should talk to him.” Rubin was initially skeptical, as many false leads had begun similarly.
But Rubin and Keene met with the friend, Doug Grabe. “He seemed to understand the vibe that we’d created here,” Rubin recounted. That was in early April. Within a month, he and Thomson were buying the entire property which included The Barn, the Egremont Village Inn, and the carriage house.
Heather Thomson, a health coach and entrepreneur who spent her career in New York City but grew up in Copake, N.Y., had been looking for an opportunity up here that she “could lean into.” After the pandemic, she was spending more time upstate. “I was looking for what I felt as though the community needed that I wanted, as someone who grew up here, that I couldn’t find here.” Longtime friend Grabe would be a partner. “Nothing seemed to be coming to fruition, then this kind of fell into my lap.” She called up Grabe and said, “I think we really need to take a look at this. This is an iconic place.” It wasn’t what she had initially envisioned, “but it all started to make sense,” she said. “Music is the vibration of wellness, of life. It’s the focal core of so much goodness, and it’s such an important piece to this community.”
“I think this is it,” she told Grabe. “And it already existed. We didn’t have to create something new here, but the community needed it.”
“The community really needed it,” said someone who overheard as he walked into Saturday’s show. “Thank you.”
“So we’ve been digging in really hard,” Thomson said. She’s been putting in 12-hour days painting, replacing boards, taking out a few dying trees, improving the parking lot. The Barn reopened May 14 with an open-mic night.
Jordan Weller and the Feathers were playing the night of May 17, and they sold out the house, as did Wanda Houston on May 15. “He’s a rock star, he’s mad cool,” remarked Thomson of Weller, adding that she used to hang out at The Gypsy Joynt, his family’s restaurant and music venue where he used to play. “He gets it. He knows the business, he understands service, he understands community, art, and that’s what we’re about here.”
“That was a long winter,” Weller said of the period when The Barn was shut down. “This is kind of like home base. This is the one where you get the full experience—nice room, nice stage, where the people and patrons are nice. It’s definitely a home away from home.” Weller resumed his band when he moved back to the Berkshires from Texas. “I didn’t play a lot of music in Texas, and that wasn’t good for me,” he said. Before he and his wife moved back, he played a show at The Barn on a visit here, which was instrumental in pulling him back. “It wasn’t really a conscious decision,” he recounted, but there was something about playing with his band in this venue, “just knowing that there’s stuff like that going on,” that officially clinched the decision in his mind.
Weller praised Jenny Rubin’s approach of mixing local bands with well-known acts. “I think it’s imperative,” he said.
Rubin will continue in the role of booking artists, a passion of hers. “I love finding artists that are coming up,” she said. She often gives shows to musicians that start at open mic. “It’s just a good mix, and I try to do as many different styles of music [as I can].”
Thomson agrees: “We want music in here as much as possible. We want to be open as much as possible. We have a lot of big dreams.” These include using the Inn and Barn in the winter for community events, which might include a group vocal lesson with Wanda Houston (per a recent conversation), poetry readings, sound bell meditations, book discussions. “Anything that someone wants, I want them to come and talk to us about it.”
The energy in The Barn Saturday night was palpable. Alanna Sinclair, who was working the door, said, “Everybody’s really psyched. We have a big group of core people who come to The Barn every weekend, and they’re all here; at least 75 percent of what I would call the regulars.” There is a decent age mix, depending on the shows, and even families that come in with young children, she added.
One patron attested, “They have incredible community here. It’s a property and a location that draws everyone together. You’re free to be who you want to be; it’s the vestiges of the ’70s,” he said, a safe space which is perhaps more important now than ever. He was “bummed,” he admitted, when he drove by The Barn last winter and saw the board that said “Thanks for everything.”
Thomson is confident she and Grabe can keep the venue out of the trouble it fell into previously. Of Grabe, she said, “He’s very accomplished. He owns eight restaurants in Connecticut and one hotel. He definitely knows what he’s doing … This is a community place, and that’s why we bought it, because we believe in community and we believe in providing that. We’re really, really excited.”
They plan to open the Inn soon for dinner (“lots of plans happening there, I can’t wait to share,” says Thomson). People will be able to get takeout at a service window outside The Barn and bring it into the bar or sit outside. Food trucks are also in the future. They will add table service to The Barn and change the table setup for the night to open things up and allow more room for dancing.
Outside, the loss of those trees “opened up the beautiful landscape here, and the opportunity to use it,” said Thomson. She walks to the edge of the property, looks out on the wetlands. “You stand back there, you literally are in paradise. You can hear all of the nature that’s back here.”
Some might miss petting the horses and other animals that Rubin and Keene kept out back, but for the record, they are all healthy and happy, said Rubin. “I had to rehome steers, two mini horses, and we have two horses at another farm right now. I brought the goats to my house up the street … and it’s actually kind of nice having them there.”
For a schedule of events, visit the Barn’s website.
