124 Church Street: The Long Goodbye of the Court Tavern

There's a certain kind of quiet week that's good for looking backward, and this is one of them — nothing dated in the region, the calendar holding its breath. So let's walk over to 124 Church Street and stand outside a dark building that used to be the loudest room in New Brunswick.

The Court Tavern was the city's rock-and-roll club from 1981 to 2019 — nearly four decades run by the Albert family before it sold to Mike Barrood in 2012. It was never the biggest room and it was never trying to be. It was a scuzzy, essential, launchpad-adjacent bar that plugged straight into New Brunswick's punk and indie bloodstream — the room where the basement bands went when they were ready to play a stage with a cover charge, the connective tissue between the DIY house shows and the wider world. If the basements were where New Brunswick bands were born, the Court Tavern was frequently where they grew up.

And then, like a lot of storied small rooms, it ran out of runway. It closed in 2019. For a while there was hope in the form of a reinvention: in February 2024, plans surfaced to reopen the space as Veganica, a roughly 120-seat all-vegan restaurant and bar that would "eventually offer sandwiches and upscale small plates, as well as live music." A vegan bistro in the old Court Tavern is a very 2020s ending to a very 1980s story, and I'll admit I rooted for it — any pulse in that room beats a padlock.

Here's the honest, unhappy update, and I'm going to be careful with it because the internet loves a false resurrection: Veganica is listed closed as of July 2026. The vegan concept opened and then closed, and the old Court Tavern space is effectively dark again for live music. So if you see anybody framing this as "the Court Tavern is back," treat it with real caution. It isn't. What came after it is also gone. The building at 124 Church Street is a rock-and-roll landmark and, right now, a quiet one.

It's not the only loss on the map. Out in Dunellen, Roxy & Dukes Roadhouse — the beloved rockabilly-and-roots roadhouse, hundreds of shows deep, burlesque and open jams and all — is confirmed closed too, its owner Jim Parks having said it best on the way out in 2021: "To all those that performed here and patronized us, thank you. You are forever a part of this shared experience." Two independent rooms, two padlocks, one region a little poorer for it.

I don't tell you this to be grim. I tell you because a scene that only remembers its winners is lying to itself. The Court Tavern's whole value was that it was unglamorous and available — a real room for real bands at the exact moment they needed one. You can't replace that with a legend or a plaque, and you definitely can't replace it with a vegan small-plates menu, bless it.

So here's the eulogy, for now: 124 Church Street gave New Brunswick 38 years of noise and then some. The lights are off. The basements it fed are still down there, still shaking when the students come home. That's the thing about this town — the club can close, but the pipeline doesn't. Somebody, in some basement, is already ready to grow up. They'll just have to do it somewhere else.

Sources: Court Tavern to become vegan restaurant (New Brunswick Today); Court Tavern (Wikipedia); Veganica listing (Yelp); Roxy & Dukes closing (NJArts)