The 19th annual Boys and Girls Club of Brown County Barn Dance, featuring Clay Walker, will take place at 3 Springs Ranch and Resort in Zephyr on Saturday, May 8. The event returns after a one-year absence due to COVID-19, with last year’s scheduled musical act set to take the stage.

Festivities will begin at 5:30 p.m. as the concert is preceded by dinner, drinks and the live and silent auctions. All proceeds support the mission of the Boys & Girls Club of Brown County.

Boys & Girls Club of Brown County Director Katherine Palmer and board member Tim Espinoza stopped by KOXE radio Tuesday morning to talk about the event.

“Clay Walker is our entertainer, a big name,” Espinoza said. The entertainment is always a big deal for us and we’ve been blessed to have great support to get that kind of entertainment. We’ve had Mark Chestnut, Tracy Byrd, Tracy Lawrence, Sammy Kershaw and the Bellamy Brothers. I think we’ve brought some pretty good entertainment for our fundraiser and it’s a good time, but it’s all geared around what our purpose is.”

Individual tickets will not be available this year, but tables of eight can be purchased online only at www.bgcbrownwood.org/barn-dance.

“We have made the transition this year to online sales,” Palmer said. “That is going to help with a lot of things and it makes it easier for people to make their purchase. We’re selling tables of eight so you do have to purchase the full table, the table cost is $1,200 and the purchase can be made on our website. Click on barn dance and the button at the top says reserve your table and it takes you to an online form. There’s a space to fill in your name and seven guests. If you don’t know who all is coming you can fill that in later. There is limited seating this year, we’re keeping the number a little bit lower because of COVID precautions, so we encourage you to purchase tables pretty quickly because when they’re gone, they’re gone.”

Some of the members of the Boys and Girls Club will be contributing to the live and silent auctions, Palmer said.

“I’ve been talking to some of our more creative artists about some of the things they are going to create for the auction with the barn dance,” Palmer said. “I’m actually on the hunt for some jewelry supplies like clasps and ear ring hooks. We have a kid that makes amazing jewelry and I’d love to be able to give her some quality supplies because she’d like to make a jewelry set we can auction off at the barn dance.”

Sponsorships for the event are still available, according to Espinoza.

“We’re so blessed with our retained sponsors from year to year, they’ve just been great with long term support,” Espinoza said. “Around February the phone starts ringing asking the date for the Barn Dance. We’ve been really fortunate that they understand what our purpose is and how important this fundraiser is for the club. A lot of work goes into it. The board and Katherine have been working hard to get this lined up.”

As for returning to the 3 Springs Ranch and Resort, Espinoza said, “The 3 Springs setting is just perfect and they’ve done an awesome job out there with the whole facility. It’s a great venue, a great place and it feels like it was built just for us.”

Palmer also gave an update on the Boys and Girls Club and how it has handled COVID.

“The last 12 months have been a whirlwind for us trying to cope with running our organization like ours through COVID,” she said. “In the spring we did virtual programming for our kids and we were able to open up for in-person in the summer. That’s where we got our feet wet trying to figure out how to do this. We had assigned groups with assigned staff members … because all of the precautions and everything in place were a lot more stringent at that point. We made it through our nine-week summer program.

“We came into the school year with a better understanding of how to run our program in a COVID-safe way and with the backing of the schools with masking precautions and all of these other things we have run a successful program through the fall and so far through the spring. We have been pretty much at capacity for the number of kids we’re available to have with our COVID sizing restrictions. We’ve had a wait list for a good portion of the school year so far, but we’re still running all of our activities.”