She comes with a walker, bundled under a blanket if the weather is cool, and settles into one of the comfortable chairs near the stage. She doesn’t drink. Her daughter might have one, but the older woman just sits and listens.

“Her daughter told me, ‘I bring her here because when she hears the music, I can have a calm conversation with her,’” 797 Distillery owner Darren Chaney said.

The woman is in her 70s or 80s and living with Alzheimer’s disease. Music therapy has shown that rhythm and melody can reach patients when words no longer do, and Chaney has watched it happen firsthand on the lot behind his distillery, week after week, for as long as the weather holds.

“It’s stories like that that are just amazing,” Chaney said.

It is not the story Chaney and his wife, Rashelle, set out to tell when they opened 797 Distillery. They set out to make whiskey and moonshine, grain to bottle, on their own patch of Tipton County. That mission hasn’t changed, but somewhere along the way 797 also became something else, too.

From still to stage

797 Distillery still runs on a full-circle, all-local supply chain. Grain grown by Brandon Cromwell in Burlison comes in, gets ground and mashed and cooked on-site, and what’s left over goes to feed cattle owned by Luke McKee — nothing wasted, nothing shipped outside the county.

Chaney now cooks a batch of moonshine or whiskey about once a week on a still bigger than the one they started with, and the lineup has grown from a handful of offerings to 13 flavors of moonshine, several vodkas, coconut and regular rum, and a barrel-aged rum now a year into aging in-house.

But ask people in Covington what 797 is, and the answer is as likely to be “that place with the bands” as it is “the distillery.”

“I think people only think of us as a music venue and don’t think of us as a distillery that manufactures alcohol,” Chaney said. “That’s not a problem, but I want people to realize that we’re more than just music.”

The music started almost by accident, grew into a weekly fixture, and has since pulled in car shows, a medieval fighting exhibition, a Books and Bourbon night, karaoke, and, this August, they’ll host micro wrestling with the Big Little Brawlers, a team that’s been featured on the Discovery Channel. What ties it together, Chaney said, is a simple bet: that if you build a free, low-barrier place for people to gather, they’ll come, and they’ll bring their friends.

No cover charge, and a reason why

797 charges admission for exactly two events a year — the medieval knight-fighting exhibition and the wrestling show — and even then, Chaney is quick to point out, it’s the touring promoters collecting the gate, not the distillery. Every other Saturday, the music is free.

“I don’t like paying a cover charge, because I might not know what the band is like,” Chaney said. “So we pay for the band, but we make money from bar sales. We hope that if the band brings enough people, it works out.”

It has worked out well enough that Chaney fields the same questions on a loop most weeks: Can I bring my kids? Yes. Can I bring my dog? Yes, as long as it doesn’t bite anyone. Do I need to bring a chair? Only if you want your own.

“Every week, someone comes up to me and says, ‘I’m so glad you did this, because there is nothing like this around, especially for Tipton County,’” Chaney said.

The crowds aren’t only local anymore. Chaney said a group in their late 20s and early 30s drove up from South Haven, Miss., for a recent show and stayed the whole night. Others make the trip from Brownsville and Lauderdale County, drawn by an alternative to driving to Memphis.

This year, 797 made a deliberate choice to stop repeating the same acts and instead book something new most weekends — Your Mom’s New Boyfriend, Kelso Mojo, 45 South, the Noel Brewski Band, the Mac Boone Band, and bands traveling in from as far as Tupelo, Miss. The Risky Whiskey Boys are one of the rare repeat bookings and The Peter Blunt System, a local group fronted by attorney Bryan Huffman, has become something of a house favorite. They’re the only band, Chaney said, that will still take the stage in a downpour.

“Only Bryan’s band would stand out in the rain. Nobody else is going to do that,” Chaney said, recalling a recent Saturday when the skies opened and the crowd stayed anyway. Staff put up tents over the band so the show could go on. “They did it for fun. I love that.”

Why bother

Asked directly why he keeps building free community events into an alcohol business that doesn’t need to offer any of it, Chaney didn’t hesitate.

“We really like Covington,” he said. “I’m not from here. [My wife] is, she grew up in Burlison. Once I got to know the city, the officials, public works, the power company — the things I like about Covington is that if we’ve got a problem, I can call public works and they’re over here in minutes. Not five minutes. Minutes.”

That responsiveness, he said, is part of why he wants to give something back.

“Some people start a business and it’s just a business, just a place to make money,” Chaney said. “We’re here all the time. I enjoy being a part of it and seeing it. It’s really rewarding when people come up and I can tell they’re being genuine — ‘Man, I’m so glad y’all do this,’” Chaney said. “We see the same people coming in wearing 797 shirts, 797 hats, bringing their friends. I think it’s about making the community better.”

That sentiment has been tested. 797 sits near a residential pocket of Covington, and Chaney said the business tries to be a good neighbor about it — music shuts down by 10:30 p.m. One neighbor posted a string of profanity-laced complaints on Facebook, which Chaney reported. But he said it’s been the exception, not the rule; several of the same neighbors who might be bothered by the noise show up to eat off the food truck parked on-site most weekends.

The growth has been visible in more than just the music calendar. The distillery’s venue hosts book fairs and the Depot Day car show. Last year’s car show drew 14 vehicles. This year’s drew 55.

“I was overwhelmed, actually,” Chaney said.

An old sound, a new stage

Chaney believes live music will help to revive Covington.

“I think music is what’s going to make Covington popular right now,” Chaney said, only half-joking that the town is on its way to becoming “Little Nashville.”

Just up the street, at the Ruffin Theatre, there’s also live music on Saturday nights.

For now, the plan is more of the same: new bands most weekends, seasonal events like next month’s Discovery Channel wrestling show, and the occasional experiment — a murder mystery night is already in the works.

What won’t change, Chaney said, is the free admission and the open door.

“We want to see it grow. We want to see it be better,” Chaney said of Covington. “We just want to be a part of it.”

For more information about 797 Distillery, visit their website, https://797distillery.com.