Into its 5th Month, The Chester Street Tavern Focuses on Memorial Day Weekend Veterans ‘Salute to Service’ Event

Having kept an eye on the restoration of the historic Mullen-Trout House at 12 Chester Street and its opening with the New Year as The Chester Street Tavern, we spoke with Tavern owner and retired US Army veteran Jim Justice about an upcoming event he alerted us to this coming Memorial Day weekend. That event is a Veterans Awareness “Salute to Service” slated for noon to 7 p.m. Saturday, May 25th, across Chester Street in the Gazebo-anchored Village Commons town park.

Dating to 1806 when it was built by Thomas Mullen, 12 Chester St., Front Royal, Va. has seen a lot of history unfold. This Memorial Day weekend it will participate in the inaugural Veterans Awareness ‘Salute to Service’ activities, including distribution of materials that assist veterans in Agricultural business pursuits, all to a wide-ranging musical backdrop.

“On May 25th, we’ve put together a memorial remembrance that is sponsored by the Tavern. It’s going to include a real nice live music lineup (beginning in the gazebo area), and we’ll have a number of exhibitors focused on veteran and agricultural-related support issues. They’ll be there with educational materials which will give them a platform to get exposure,” Justice began, adding a nod to the involved sponsorship team.

“We’re blessed to be doing this in partnership with Able Forces Foundation, led by ‘Skip’ and Kathy Rogers, who have become dear friends, and The Farmer-Veteran Coalition of Virginia (FarmVetCo), a national organization that does support for veterans in the farming and agricultural business. FarmVetCo is bringing their multi-band road trip show ‘Breaking Ground’ to support the entertainment at the Gazebo,” Justice said, adding that additional details are available on the Tavern website — www.ChesterStreetTavern.com — There’s a special event page for “Salute to Service” that has all the details.

It won’t be Able Forces Foundation’s Skip and Kathy Rogers first go-round at the Town Gazebo-anchored park remembrance of veterans and service, pictured from a 9/11 remembrance last year. – Oops, sorry to get your back to camera, Kathy. Below, a better shot of Kathy and Skip.

“One of the things that Kathy and ‘Skip’ have coordinated is for the participation of a special guest Sam Tate, a Grammy award winning singer-songwriter who has won the Country music Song of the Year. Sam is coming up from Nashville to be our VIP entertainer guest. He is a Vietnam veteran and Purple Heart recipient, and we are honored to have him as our guest helping to support our community and this memorial,” Justice said of his musically inclined fellow veteran.

Speaking of musically inclined guests, we noted that local, even neighborhood-generated, live music has become an integral part of the Chester Street Tavern’s business model, with Justice himself sitting in on harmonica on occasion. Would that continue with this event in addition to the imported entertainment, we asked.

“Yes, I think we have five or six bands that are going to play that day. Sam Tate, Nashville CMA Songwriter of the Year, Sunny Lane & The Dirty Hippies, FarmVetCo Breaking Ground will be joined by a number of local musicians that have played and supported the Tavern, helping us launch and build the live music program we have today,” Justice assured us of what will be a mix of familiar and not so familiar faces.

John Landis, right, and From the Heart at the Chester Street Tavern’s New Year’s Eve opening. Below, two shots of another gathering of five familiar musical faces at the Tavern, from left James Vaughan, Hank Gorecki, Dewey Vaughan, then Ralph Fortune and Shae Parker, the latter two perhaps wondering if they are playing from the same song list as the trio to their right.

Among those familiar musical faces to Tavern patrons are John Landis, whose barbershop is about four doors down from the Tavern, the Vaughan brothers Dewey and James, whose family owns the adjacent building in which John’s Barbershop and the New Creations Hair Salon are housed. Others include Shae Parker, Hank Gorecki, Ralph Fortune, Lee Cameron, Bev Williams and The Sidemen, Passage Creek Rising, Shortness of Breath, among others including relative newcomers “Captain” Rich Coon and Michelle Beall, also known as The Hobo Mariners due to their time spent at sea in their sailboat sailing into coastal ports in search of local entertainment venues from Florida to Virginia.

Bruce Townshend often drops in to lend a Celtic, Irish feel to the evening’s musical mix. Below, the Hobo Mariners Rich Coon and Michelle Beall have become a Thurs. night fixture. Here, Michelle seems to be acknowledging a nice ending chord by ‘Captain’ Rich.

“Richie and Michelle are the duo that make up the Hobo Mariners, and they’re the ones who introduced us to the opportunity to do this fundraiser. Michelle and Richie have been a driving force in getting this event organized and introduced to folks we want to support, the Farmer-Veteran Coalition in particular. The Hobo Mariners have done veteran-supporting fundraising through their singing-songwriting for many years,” Justice pointed out of the duo that has become a regular part of the Tavern entertainment rotation on Thursdays in recent weeks.

With the Gazebo Park area entertainment, vendors, and informational booths slated to run from noon to 7 p.m. the Saturday before Memorial Day, we asked Justice how that would impact the Chester Street Tavern’s hours of operation and entertainment. “The Tavern will be home base for the bands, and we are blessed to be right across the street from the Gazebo. We will have an area to support their logistics because there’s a lot involved with folks setting up and rotating to play. The setup for the day of the event is 8 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Saturday the 25^th for our exhibitors and the bands – and we will have a couple of food vendors, a veteran-owned pizza company and a veteran-owned barbecue company.”

Justice noted the Chester Street Tavern’s regular open to public schedule is Thursday through Sunday, running from 3 p.m. to closing Thursday and Friday, and noon to closing Saturday and Sunday, with closing determined by when the crowd thins out.

“The Tavern will be open that day supporting everyone,” he said of the “Salute to Service” scenario. The plan is we will have an after-event party once we close down at the Gazebo,” as noted above at 7 p.m. “That week we will have our regular show on Thursday evening with the Hobo Mariners. Then on Friday we’ll open at 3 p.m. I expect with all the bands coming into town we will be doing some special stuff here at the Tavern,” Justice said of an improvised schedule of musical interactions.

Justice stressed the importance of live musical entertainment to his business model: “A lot of what I want to do here is support the live music scene” — which he has evolved to do with live music each day he is open on a weekly basis Thursday through Sunday. He traced the start of that commitment to live music to a private party hosted by the Tavern in its earliest days. “John (Landis) came down when we were having a little Friday night private party and said, ‘Hey, you mind if I set up and play for tips?’ The next thing I know the crowd is doing a sing-along. It reminded me of how important live music is to the spirit of the Tavern. I play a little harmonica, so I told John he can play as long as he includes a song I can blow harmonica to and “he better make me sound good,” Justice joked of the Tavern’s longest tenured musical relationship.

Jim Justice adds a little harmonica to the offering of Shae Parker, Hank Gorecki, and Ralph Fortune. I guess they got the ‘make me sound good’ directive too. Area musicians Dave Elliott, back to camera, and Rick Nowell, share a no-doubt musical memory and laugh during a break in that evening’s entertainment. And further below, “the King” has found his way back to the stage and yet another lineup from, as Jim Justice describes it, “this beautiful local community of musicians”.

Speaking of long-tenured musical relationships, Justice acknowledged Dewey and James Vaughan and family, as noted above owners of the adjacent building to the south. “The Vaughans have become great friends of the Tavern. Dewey, James, sister Beth, and the rest of the Vaughan family have just really supported me in a lot of different ways. We are neighbors and good friends,” he said of the second of what he estimated as six to eight groupings of local musicians that have become part of the live music rotation at the Chester Street Tavern — “Just this whole, beautiful local community of musicians.”

But refocusing on what is on the horizon in his fifth month in business, that May 25th Veterans Awareness “Salute to Service”, Justice observed, “We’ll see how things flow and let people do what we always do in the Tavern, which is let folks come and spend time together. Our motto is: ‘We welcome friends old and new’ and it’s really played out that way, with new visitors socializing with a great group of locals.”

‘Friends new and old’ – this cheerful crowd was from the Tavern’s opening day, in fact we believe they were the first table seated New Year’s Eve day. Jim at work at the taps of Virginia-brewed/distributed craft beers. And more friends new and old, Jim greets a couple from Charlottesville, Martha and Bob, to the Tavern on May 5. Justice, a retired Army Ranger, discovered that his new guest Bob is a retired Marine.

Justice also singled out Town of Front Royal Director of Community Development and Tourism Lizi Lewis for her role in bringing the Town on board with the May 25th “Salute to Service” event.

So, don’t forget to mark your calendar this month, not only for Monday, May 27, traditional Memorial Day events here, but Saturday, May 25, for the Salute to Service beginning with a noon “soft opening” in the Town of Front Royal Village Commons Park, and continuing across Chester Street at the Chester Street Tavern into the later evening hours. And if you’re mobile you can also swing by the Humane Society of Warren County Julia Wagner Animal Shelter for the also noon-convened, May 25th Salute to the Dogs of War, which ‘Skip’ Rogers will help kick off before returning to Chester Street for the 1 p.m. official Opening Ceremony of Salute to Service.