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.
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.
[Today I’m reposting the post below, from two years ago, because I’ve started relistening to the Valley Heat podcast (and some of the newer episodes from the companion Good Morning, Burbank show) and nothing has made me laugh more. And I think we all could use some good laughs these days.]
This post was originally published on April 25, 2022…
I’m late to the game on this podcast (sorry, I lead a sheltered life), but Valley Heat is the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time.
It’s like A Confederacy of Dunces meets Arrested Development meets Fernwood 2 Night…. Doug’s deadpan delivery, a wacky cast of characters, fun music references, the bogus promo spots, and great theater-of-the-mind audio all combine to create a perfect storm of humor. Every element is note-perfect!
It’s a bit tough to explain because the folks responsible for the podcast have created a whole wacky world within a Burbank, California neighborhood. The protagonist, Doug, ostensibly is trying to crack the case of who is using his garbage can as a drug drop. But really that’s just a doorway to all sorts of shenanigans involving an accident-prone attorney, a house that’s also a nightclub/arcade/pizza parlor/car wash, a mean father-in-law (who also runs a muffler empire), a DEA agent who does stakeouts with his mom, legendary frisbee golf players, mean foosball players, Jan that Movie (listen to learn), and a weaselly optometrist. Speaking of which, here’s Doug talking about his teenage son, who was prescribed transition lenses:
I wound up binge-listening to all the episodes over a weekend and was cracking up the whole time. I don’t know what sort of mind can come up with a Simon & Garfunkel alternate version of the Cheers theme song, but I’m totally here for it!
The Patreon offers bonus episodes, which are equally entertaining. Here’s an excerpt about a new product that sounds perfect… other than the fire hazard: Don’t just trust my judgment on this, trust Eliza Skinner:
Or my buddy Howard:
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have some Jannie Cakes for breakfast…
You don’t even need a Mission Purse. You just need to take action.
Don’t take it from me, take it from my writing hero:
When you take action, you become the master of your universe.
“It doesn’t matter how good it is, or how bad… ” Damn straight! No one starts out as a master of their craft. It takes a lot of “bad” to get “good.” Don’t be paralyzed by the fear of “not good enough.”
“Action is hope”… and we could use more of that in our universe, to combat the Dark Side.
My buddy Rob does PR for the Hamilton Joes — “Ohio’s Premier College Summer Baseball Team.”
He likes to have a bit of fun with the press releases. His most recent one is a prime example:
It’s smart. “I’ll take ‘Talkin’ ’bout a Revolution’ for $200 please, Ken.” (BTW, today I learned that Button Gwinnett has the first signature in the upper left corner of the Declaration of Independence.)
The press release is funny. Especially the line about “crumpet-nibbling fancy-boys.”
And it gets your attention. Which is exactly the point. Rob could’ve played it straight and just mentioned the game and the fireworks. But adding a bit of flair and frivolity makes the release a heck of a lot more interesting.
It’s a kids’ game, for crying out loud.
Oh, that’s right, there’s no crying in baseball. But laughing is always allowed.
I hate Alzheimer’s disease. But I love pie. And I love that someone is using the latter to fight the former. And someone else is shining a light on it.
Chris Joecken is someone I met when he was a student at Cincinnati State, and he was looking to break into the video/agency business. Great kid. Now he’s using his talents to tell powerful stories, and bring light and love into the world.
Beautiful. Simply beautiful. I know Helen makes fruit pies, but someone must be cutting onions in here. Those “ripples” are streaming down my cheeks right now.
Chris’ post is right on point. Thoreau said “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” but I think most of us have it within us to be more like Helen, and channel our energies toward lives of humble service. A pebble in the ocean, maybe… but enough to make a ripple.
What can we do with our sorrow? How can we be stewards of what we already possess? How can we transform our pain into something beneficial for others?
It’s not my podcast, actually. It’s the podcast that Dave Tellmann and I do… or did, rather. But we’re still hauling in the hardware (“we’d like to thank the members of the academy…”) and reaping the accolades (“none of this would’ve been possible without your support…”).
The latest shout-out came courtesy of Cincinnati CityBeat.
Our “97X Rumblings from the Big Bush” podcast has run its course. (We did do a bonus episode recently after Mojo Nixon passed away.) But maybe a few more fans of the station will find their way to our little ol’ show. Which is the point.
“Rumblings” has a lot in common with a kid’s fort.
You can tell a lot of time and effort went into the construction of it, but it’s still clearly quite amateur. And that’s OK. For the few folks that tuned in, it was a time capsule from a time in their lives when the music and the people who shared it mattered a great deal to them. Those connections still matter.
We appreciate the recognition from CityBeat. Now if you’ll excuse us, Dave and I have to go put on our tuxedos for the awards ceremony.
Kevin Sullivan on Life advice from a man who lived it: “A good one Damian. Bring our lens into focus after the long weekend or our long life journey.” Jul 7, 09:38
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