Good Neighbor Podcast: Tri-Cities
Bringing together local businesses and neighbor of the Tri-Cities region. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Skip Mauney helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around The Tri-Cities.
Is your business serving the residents of Tri-Cities? Then, we need to talk! Visit gnpTri-Cities.com to schedule your free interview.
Good Neighbor Podcast: Tri-Cities
EP# 154: Reviving Appalachian Harmony: Phyllis Shelton's Mission with the Historic Appalachian Auditorium
What makes Phyllis Shelton with The Appalachian Auditorium a good neighbor?
Phyllis Shelton's story is a testament to the power of passion and community. After returning to the Tri-Cities area after 50 years, Phyllis has embarked on a mission to transform the Appalachian Auditorium, a hidden gem nestled within a historic 1936 schoolhouse, into a vibrant music venue. Her love for music and audiobooks fuels her dedication as she faces challenges head-on, from changing public perceptions to ensuring that ticket prices remain affordable for all. With distinguished acts like Grammy winner Trey Hensley gracing its stage, this small venue is making a big impact, proving that the community can thrive when nurtured by shared experiences and artistic endeavors.
Join us for an inspiring conversation with Phyllis as she opens up about her personal journey of resilience, overcoming illness and depression with faith and support from her community. Discover how the Appalachian Auditorium, supported entirely by volunteers, serves as a sanctuary of healing, friendship, and celebration for Appalachia. Learn about initiatives like "Nonprofits Helping Nonprofits," which amplify the auditorium's role in supporting worthy causes, and don't miss the upcoming Gospel Night concert with Lonesome Pine and Madison Metcalf. Phyllis extends a heartfelt invitation for sponsorships and volunteer support, embodying the spirit of collective effort in making a lasting difference.
What makes Phyllis Shelton with The Appalachian Auditorium a good neighbor?
To learn more about The Appalachian Auditorium go to:
https://www.appalachian-auditorium.org/
The Appalachian Auditorium
(423) 312-4392
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Skip Monty.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast of the Tri-Cities. We've got a very special guest with us here today, whom I'm super excited to learn all about her and her business. I'm a big fan of the arts and I think if you are as well, you'll be just as excited, because today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, ms Phyllis Shelton, who is the marketing director for the Appalachian Auditorium. Phyllis, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Skip. I'm delighted to be here.
Speaker 2:Well, we are thrilled to have you and, like I said, I'm a big fan of the arts, particularly local.
Speaker 3:you know local arts in the Tri-City area and particularly Green County, so I'm super excited and if you don't mind, why don't you go ahead and kick us off by telling us about what you do? All right? Well, the Appalachian Auditorium at St James is a very unique place. It's in an old school house that was built in 1936. So we're talking wooden seats and a stage and all that, and the story here is.
Speaker 3:I was away from this area for 50 years and I wanted to come back and be near my family, so I did that in 2018. And this schoolhouse is part of what was called the St James Community Center, owned by the St James Lutheran Church, which is just across the road.
Speaker 3:And about the time I moved to Greenville, the church was wanting to bring it back up as a music venue, which it had been many, many years ago. So that's kind of a hobby of mine. So I jumped in with both feet and we are now in our fourth full season of hosting entertainment. It's hard to believe, yeah.
Speaker 2:Wow, well congratulations. Four full years, that's incredible.
Speaker 3:It's the whole mission is it's family entertainment, you know, at an affordable price, reasonable price. So $15 tickets in advance and we did go to 20 at the door. That helped a little bit.
Speaker 2:I would imagine. Well, Phyllis, what are some myths or misconceptions in the performance hall industry?
Speaker 3:For us we're the little engine that could skip, because here we are in Greenville and, by the way, we're kind of hmm, we're between Greenville and Newport, so as people go toward Newport on 321, they cross the Nolichucky River and turn left on St James Road right, right, that'd be the way to get there, and it's about three and a half miles. But here in Greenville there's of course the Nice Warmer Performing Arts Center, which seats 1,150. There's the Capitol Theater, which seats, I think, about 350, something like that. And our fire code says we can have 299 bodies in our auditorium. So there's a lot going on that way, but in our opinion, not always totally reasonably priced and so forth.
Speaker 3:And we just thought we would get not just the music. What I really want to convey is the music is a platform, right, it's a platform for building community. Like many years ago, what did people do on Saturday nights? They got together and they had music. So here we are in this vintage place with, I think, reasonable acoustics, and we just want families to come bring kids. We love to get the kids up and dance. There's popcorn and moon pies for sale over in the corner, and now we have food from a local organization. We don't get any of that money. That starts at five o'clock, $12, cash at the door. Right Doors open at six, general admission shows at seven, and the talent we've been getting is really amazing.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Yeah, I've been keeping an eye on you guys and folks that are coming. You've had some great concerts, some really nice ones coming up as well.
Speaker 3:Well, I'll tell you what the one we had in December, Trey Hensley and Rob Ikes. Trey just won a Grammy, so that's the quality of entertainment, you know.
Speaker 3:So when you ask about misconceptions, I guess of course the biggest misconception is we go in the community and we ask for sponsorships because that's how we keep the tickets at $15. Sponsorships, because that's how we keep the tickets at $15. And when people don't come and see what we're doing, it's easy to dismiss us and say, oh, they're just a little country place and you know nothing, no big deal there. Yeah, we'll give them, you know, maybe $250. Gee, $500 would be a stretch. Yeah, we'll do that just to, you know. Support without realizing when they do come. We're becoming a very state of the art music venue in this area and we are attracting people from a good 50 mile radius Asheville and Knoxville and Bristol and Kingsport and Johnson City and all around.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's fantastic, it really is. What do you like to do for fun?
Speaker 3:Music is my number one and, believe me, I am a regular customer at Impact at Capitol. I was just at the Bristol Paramount to see Dan Kaminsky a week or so ago. I've been all around, you know I will go to wherever, at all lengths to see the artists that I love. So that is my number one passion, which is probably why I'm so attracted to helping brand the auditorium. And then my other passion is audiobooks. I have a Nicholas Sparks audiobook going right now, or it might be a.
Speaker 1:Jack.
Speaker 3:Reacher or you know something, or it might be a legal book, but I can be transported from all the stuff going on when I'm either listening to music or an audio book.
Speaker 2:An audio book. You know it's funny. Back in the day those used to be called books on tape. Yeah, oh, I think so.
Speaker 3:Yeah. The first one I ever did Skip was a James Patterson and I think it was called the Island House or something like that but cassette tapes okay, and so I would listen to those. And now I'm not the slowest driver you're ever going to meet. Just let me say that I've been told that story for me a couple of times.
Speaker 3:But I would drive so slow and I would get home and I would stay in the garage because I couldn't leave whatever part I was on, and my husband at the time would open the garage door and look out and say are you okay, are you going to come in? I'm like, oh yeah, just one more minute.
Speaker 2:Just got to finish it up. Got to finish it up, just got to finish up this chapter? Yeah, but it's really as a kid, I read under the covers with a flashlight.
Speaker 3:You know, I was one of those kids and read all the time I kind of got in trouble for reading so much, but I read all the time, so now it's audio books, which kind of saves the eyes.
Speaker 2:Very good, very good. Well, phyllis, can you describe a hardship or life challenge that you've ever came in, whether professionally or personally, and how you ever came that and came out stronger on the other side? Does anything come to mind?
Speaker 3:There is one that comes to mind, and in fact I actually told it to somebody just recently. I went to Oral Roberts University for college and I started getting sick the first semester of my senior year and I just kept getting sicker. The first semester of my senior year and I just kept getting sicker, and finally I was diagnosed with hypoglycemia, which is really low blood sugar, and it was so bad. I mean, blood sugar is supposed to be around 90, and mine was in the 30s, so I was very symptomatic depressed, crying all the time, fatigue, disoriented.
Speaker 3:I had to go home. You know, I all the time fatigue, disoriented. I had to go home. You know I'd take incompletes and go home and I really, really I was the first girl in my family to graduate from college and I only had I had twin cousins, boys older than me, and they were the first, and they went to West Point both of them and graduated. But I really really really wanted to graduate from college but I had to go home.
Speaker 3:I mean, I was just sick, you know, and went home, took incompletes and then kind of got a little job or something in Crossville, tennessee, where I was at the time, and it was awful it was. I was depressed, just looking into a black hole. I couldn't imagine going on with life or anything and I'm usually a high-energy person. And then one day in the first week of December, just immediately I snapped out of it and I was well and I was fine and I found out not long after that that one of my closest friends at ORU had been on her knees praying for me at that moment and God healed me. I went back to school the second semester. So I did two semesters in one worked three part-time jobs, wrote a senior paper which was 67 pages and graduated in May.
Speaker 2:Wow by the grace of God.
Speaker 3:By the grace of God so obviously I believe in healing and I've seen a lot of it in my time, but that was a personal experience and that was the. I mean that has everything to do with the kind of life I had, knowing that that could happen.
Speaker 2:Wow, wow, that's incredible, that's very, I mean, amazing. But God is good, no question.
Speaker 3:All the time.
Speaker 2:All the time. Well, phyllis, if you could I know you're busy and I don't want to take up too much of your time but if you could think of one thing you would like our listeners to remember about the Appalachian Auditorium, what would that be?
Speaker 3:I would want listeners to remember about the Appalachian Auditorium at St James that it's a place of peace, and friendship and for many people I don't think everybody has that skip on a day-to-day basis where they know it's a safe place to go. With all the craziness going on today, are you kidding me? And here's a place to go, and if they eat, they can get away for four hours, meet new people, see old friends, you know, and just do something simple like listening to fabulous music, spending time with people they care about and helping us grow something that is so special, and we will even let people come free, like the ministry next door is the Appalachian Helping Hands. We have a sign up on the Bulls Award that says if you want to come to any of our shows, just call this number. It happens to be my cell, we'll get you in.
Speaker 3:But you know what we haven't talked about, which is so important? We started doing this thing called Nonprofits, helping Nonprofits, a few months ago and we started with Isaiah House and we've done the firefighters, we did Aid Net for the flood victims and in February, february 15th, we are having a show called Gospel Night and we're having traditional with Lonesome Pine. Madison Metcalf is going to do contemporary and we are honoring, celebrate Recovery, and that means that someone will speak at the, ralph Shipley will speak at intermission for a minute and we will have someone at the table and our audience is very generous and what we found is that when we give people an opportunity to give whatever it is, they just show up and show out and we help. Whatever nonprofit, it is that we are honoring, non-profit it is that we are honoring Wow, now that says a lot about your program and I'm familiar with.
Speaker 2:Celebrate. Recovery is a Christian Christ-centered recovery program here in Greenville. Well, it's actually a national program. I've actually interviewed a couple of the national leaders on this program before, so I'm a big supporter and thank you so much for supporting. I love your nonprofits. Supporting nonprofits that's incredible.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, I like to know what we're talking about. So I actually went to a Celebrate Recovery meeting last week and I'm telling you my sights were adjusted because I assumed, and I'd say many people do that. It's strictly recovery from, say, drugs and alcohol and what I learned is that it's recovering from.
Speaker 3:Some people might be overcoming fear or anxiety or some type of mental depression or whatever. It's not just an addiction program with substance abuse. It could be recovering from anything and those people love Jesus. I can see that, so I'm really excited to be able to help them.
Speaker 2:Awesome, awesome. Well, like I said, I'm a big supporter of that program and you're right, it's not just addiction that it addresses, it's codependency depression anything really. I've heard somebody say clutter, they suffer. You know suffering from clutter and dealing with clutter, but anyway. So thank you for that. And if our folks, any of our listeners, are interested in learning more or attending that concert on the 15th, how can they do that?
Speaker 3:Two ways. They can go online and buy tickets Appalachian-Auditoriumorg, appalachian-auditoriumorg and they can call. If they call, it's 423-312-4392. So 423-312-4392. And again, it's 15 advance and 20 at the door. Now the food this month is going to be a chili and a baked potato bar, and it helps. It's optional, but if they could call and reserve a seat there, it helps them know what to fix. So that number is 423-329-4453. Optional but it helps, and that's $12 at the door $12 at the door.
Speaker 2:So if you call an event, full meal.
Speaker 3:Dessert, drink everything.
Speaker 2:Wow, nice, very nice, as far as can you buy tickets on your website.
Speaker 3:Oh yes, oh yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can buy them online or call either one. Very good, all right. Well, phyllis, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you being here today and sharing your story and, uh, what you've got going on at the Appalachian auditorium with our listeners, and uh, I wish you and your family and the Appalachian Auditorium team all the best moving forward.
Speaker 3:And I appreciate that so much. Let me say one more thing. If anyone would really like to jump in and help us, and whatever it's sponsorship or time or whatever put my number out 615-406-3908, and I'd be happy to talk to them.
Speaker 2:Very good. Volunteers are awesome.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:And we are volunteers, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Thank you for the opportunity.
Speaker 2:Yep, thank you, and maybe we can have you back on the show one day soon when you've got something else exciting going on.
Speaker 3:Every month, alright.
Speaker 2:Sounds great. Thanks so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnptry-citiescom. That's gnptry-citiescom, or call 423-719-5873.