Some nights at 379 Main Street, the music starts with dinner and ends with a standing ovation. The Towne Crier Cafe is a restaurant, a bar and two stages under one roof, and it has been putting world-class musicians a few feet from their audience for more than fifty years.
From Wall Street to a Stagecoach Stop
In the late 1960s, Phil Ciganer was a young trader on the American Stock Exchange who spent his nights in Greenwich Village clubs, and decided he'd rather be in that world than the one he worked in. He was planning to open a club in Austin when, delivering art to a friend in the Dutchess County town of Beekman, he found an old stagecoach stop. He gave it three months. The Towne Crier Cafe opened there on November 21, 1972.
Within weeks, a friend of a visiting English folksinger brought in Pete Seeger, and the little coffeehouse was on the map. Richie Havens and Odetta followed. Over the years, Suzanne Vega, Shawn Colvin and Leon Redbone played there as opening acts before they were household names, and a teenage Béla Fleck came up from the city to play banjo. The club later spent more than two decades in Pawling, where the coffeehouse menu grew into full dining.
Why Beacon
In 2013, Ciganer moved the Crier to Beacon's Main Street. The city's arts revival made it a good fit, and so did its ties to Pete Seeger, a longtime friend. The New York Times once summed up the experience as "down-home access to world-class performers," and that's still the idea: folk, Celtic, jazz, blues, Americana and rock acts in a room where every seat is close.
How a Night Works
- Main Stage shows are ticketed. Dinner seatings run in 30-minute steps before the show, and a dinner reservation needs one entrée per person; a show-only ticket gets you in about 20 minutes before showtime. The kitchen is open until 9 PM and the bar serves all night.
- The Salon Stage has free live music with dinner most nights, plus brunch sets on Sundays, from local Hudson Valley players and touring artists.
- Thursday Open Mic Night is one of the Crier's longest-running traditions; it won Hudson Valley Magazine's Editors' Pick in 2016.
- Weekend brunch runs Saturdays and Sundays from 10:30 AM to 2 PM: buttermilk pancakes, challah French toast, shakshouka and a Middle Eastern sampler of hummus, falafel and baba ghanouj.
- Memberships for regulars include a free show each year, ticket discounts and priority seating.
Coming Up
Mid-November brings John Gorka on Sunday the 15th, The James Hunter Six on the 20th, and the holiday season opens with An Irish Christmas and Sloan Wainwright & Friends in December. Check the Towne Crier Cafe listing for the full calendar, and book dinner if you want a seat near the stage.