Historic Cornstalk Fest Barn Moves as Event Plans 2028 Comeback

(KNSI) – A barn that once hosted Willie Nelson at the music festival Johnny Cash named is getting a new home, and the Regal couple moving it plans to bring that festival back.

Scott and Becky Mueller plan to start pulling the 93-year-old barn across Highway 55 on Thursday morning as long as the ground dries out enough. The barn will be the centerpiece of the new home for Cornstalk Fest, which first drew crowds to the small Kandiyohi County town in 1989.

For Becky Mueller, the project is about more than one old barn. “So many people look at small towns and just drive right through. But every small town has a story and every story deserves to be seen and every person deserves to be seen.”

The festival grew out of one family’s dream. Mueller’s uncle, Mike Kampsen, wanted to help his father meet Johnny Cash. Without the internet or cell phones, Kampsen tracked down Cash’s manager and asked if the singer would come perform for his dad. Cash agreed.

Cornstalk Fest Facebook

About 5,000 people showed up to see the Man in Black in Regal that year. The event was called Regal Fest at the time, but Cash told the crowd he had never seen so many corn stalks in his life, and the name Cornstalk Fest stuck.

In 1991, Kampsen bought land that came with the barn, which was built in 1933. Rather than rent a stage every year, a group of local men got it ready to move, and Scott Mueller’s uncle, Johnny Mueller, pulled it across the road with a bulldozer. Willie Nelson was the first to play in it, and country legends like Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn and Merle Haggard followed.

The Kampsen family sold the festival in the mid-1990s. It carried on under new owners for a while before slowly fading out, and the barn ended up sitting empty on property now owned by Brandon Keller, turned it into a tire shop.

The Muellers bought the barn from Keller, and its new site will be on roughly 140 acres the couple bought at 15209 County Line Road Northeast. It is just across Highway 55 from where it has stood since 1991.

“If we moved this barn anywhere else, it wouldn’t be the same,” Mueller told KNSI News.

In November 2025, the Muellers and their kids put on hazmat suits and gas masks to haul out hundreds of old tires and shovel out years of pigeon droppings. Mueller says the 36-by-84-foot barn is structurally sound but needs plenty of work, including replacing rotted wood near its base, new shingles and new barn siding.

The trip covers about a quarter mile on Highway 55, then another quarter mile on a gravel road that Craig Hanson of Coral River Construction built last week because the field was too bumpy for the barn to cross. Footings were poured Wednesday. The barn will sit on them through the winter, and the restoration could start this winter or wait until spring.

The Muellers put their house on the market and quit their jobs to go all in on the project. Scott spent 25 years as a welder at Belgrade Steel Tank, his family’s business, and Becky owned Boosters, a tea and shake shop in Belgrade. Since neither has put on a music festival before, they plan to host two smaller events next summer, each for about 5,000 people with local bands, to work out details like food trucks, restrooms and garbage pickup. Tickets and lineups will be announced in early spring.

The full three-day revival is set for 2028. “We’re capping it off at 10,000 people because I want to make sure I can thank and hug every person that walks through those doors,” Mueller explained.

Interest is already building. The couple launched a social media page last week, and it has pulled in more than 200,000 views, with people sharing stories of falling in love and getting engaged at Cornstalk. Mueller says not a single person wrote in or showed up to oppose the plans at county and township meetings.

The whole effort is being filmed for a documentary led by the Muellers’ cousin, Katie Mohs, a Los Angeles-based producer. It will also feature footage Kathy Kampsen shot of the original barn move and the performers who played there. The couple hopes to air the 2028 revival live on TV.

The Muellers are also looking for sponsors. Updates on the barn move and festival plans are available by clicking here.

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