TRVE Brewing’s sudden closure this month came as a “gut punch” to Steven Skinner, who has managed the Music City Hot Chicken kitchen in the back of the brewery for four years.

Not only did TRVE’s heavy metal soundtrack pair perfectly with Music City’s spicy Nashville-style menu, but Skinner said he worked well with brewery owner Nick Nunns and the staff.

Instead of folding along with the TRVE, though, Skinner, who is also the chef, will keep Music City open (with limited hours) for the rest of July and is hoping to take over the entire space in the near future. If negotiations work out with the building’s landlord — and pending approval of a liquor license from the city of Denver — Skinner and Music City owners Sam and Jordan Graf, who are brothers, hope to turn the spot into a fully functioning bar and restaurant of their own.

“Right now, everything is looking good, and I am 85% certain we will be able to do this,” Skinner said. “We have the confidence that we will be able to make this work.”

Music City, which the Grafs founded in Fort Collins in 2016, opened inside of TRVE, at 227 Broadway, in 2021, taking over a small space that had previously been used for brewing beer. Customers could order at the window or at the bar and eat at a table.

TRVE was part of a wave of taproom-only breweries that added food options around the same time.

But TRVE, which was itself founded in 2012 and became an immensely popular spot, announced on July 3 that it would close both of its locations in Denver and in Asheville, N.C. Nunns didn’t give a specific reason, saying on social media that “this brewery has run its course, and for a huge number of reasons, it’s the right time to send this thing off.”

To fill the space, Music City will need to add more staff and a bar program to serve craft beer, wine and cocktails.

But Skinner said the furniture, including a 30-foot-long communal table, will remain — as will a pair of banners, drawn by artist Sam Turner, that feature satanic-style beer art. “We’re not trying to keep everything 100% the same,” he continued, because that wouldn’t feel right, but there will be some “nods to the taproom … TRVE had its own thing and its own community.”

The playlist will retain a lot of heavy metal, he added, but not exclusively.

Skinner, who lives in an apartment above the brewery, said this is a chance for Music City, which opened a second Fort Collins restaurant late last year, to expand its presence in Denver, where it faces competition from nearby Nashville chicken restaurants like Dave’s Hot Chicken, a Los Angeles-based chain with a location at 99 S. Broadway, and Blazing Bird, a Colorado company with seven locations, including a new one at 550 Broadway.

“This is everything I had been working toward,” said Skinner. “But I didn’t expect it to happen — didn’t want it to happen — at the cost of losing TRVE.”