Last Wednesday, I went to Camp Springs Tavern to hear my buddy Keith Neltner and current Tavern owner Tyler Shelton talk about how they revitalized the bar… and its brand.
I worked alongside Keith for several years at an ad agency. (Ahem, design studio… that way they could bill at a higher rate.) I’ve blogged about his prodigious talents before.
Keith’s skill level, his talent, his “eye”… is off the charts. Yet it’s matched by his work ethic, which came from spending his entire childhood (and beyond) working on his family’s small farm in Northern Kentucky.
Keith and his wife Amy bought the Camp Springs Tavern in 2016. With two young kids and no background in slinging beers, they really had no business getting into the bar business. But Keith’s love of the community, and desire to pay homage to history, overruled his brain.
That’s Keith’s grandpa, Lawrence, at left in the photo above. He delivered locally-brewed Wiedemann Beer to Camp Springs Tavern by horse and buggy through the 1940s.
Keith and Amy took a run-down, dusty (and smoky) hole in the wall bar just a spit down the road and turned it into a place where everyone in the community is welcome. The smoke has cleared, and the bar is alive with good conversation, cool music, and amazing artwork.
Open bluegrass jams every other Thursday. Wine from 4 Mile Wine Company (another local business). Live music occasionally.
When COVID hit, Keith (at left below) and Amy figured out a way to turn lemons into lemonade. They enlisted friends (most notably Rob Warnick, at right in the photo below) and their kids to help paint a whimsical mural on the outside wall.
[The full mural story from WCPO-TV is here.]
Keith and Amy passed the torch — in the shape of the keys to the bar — to Tyler Shelton last year. He’s a local kid whose talent took him away from Camp Springs for several years, before his heart called him back home.
The talk by Keith and Tyler last week was very cool. Nearly everything they do has an element of collaboration and community in it. Here are two true stories that illustrate that:
There’s an 81-year-old man named Jim Kuper who lives “five hills over” as Tyler put it. He walks to the bar, and he used to walk back home along the road, with no sidewalks or berm in sight. Keith and Tyler created t-shirts with “Get Jim Home” on them, and proceeds went toward a fund to pay for Uber/Lyft rides home for Jim. To this day, there’s a Mason jar in the rafters where folks can contribute to the fund. (Although thanks to the community they’ve built, usually someone at the bar will be Jim’s chauffeur.)
Tyler’s beer coolers (all three of them!) gave up the ghost, and right now he’s doing a “beer-raising” campaign to pay for a new one. Selling locally-brewed Wiedemann, of course.
What struck me most as I scanned the crowd at the talk was that there were dozens of people there — artists, photographers, writers, illustrators — that I’ve met, and become friends with, through Keith. All great people, and my life is richer for having met them.
Keith’s an amazing artist. He can capture the magic in his mind and bring it to life in ways that are visually arresting and strikingly beautiful.
But I think his greatest work of art is a piece that’s been under construction for decades and has yet to be completed: it’s the living, breathing, caring community he’s grown with those hard-working farmer hands of his.
Sometimes it happens one pint at a time.
At last check on Instagram, Tyler’s 500 pints campaign was just over the halfway point. If you’d like to join me in boosting that total, hit me up.
And if you’re in need of a super-talented graphic designer/illustrator/art director/muralist who pours his heart and soul into every project, hit Keith up.
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