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Homegrown distillery is on the move in Lewisville

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By ADAM SCHRADER
Published in The Dallas Morning News on Sept. 17, 2015

If you’ve driven around Old Town Lewisville in recent months, you may wonder what’s happening where the abandoned Piggly Wiggly once stood at 225 S. Charles St.

It’s the start of a move city officials are excited about. The homegrown Witherspoon Distillery is expanding its operations from its previous location at 545 N. Cowan Ave.

James Kunke, a spokesman for the city, said he’s also excited to see the work being done at the new location.

“They are giving a beautiful facelift to a building that has sat vacant for many years, and they will serve as another draw for visitors to historic Old Town Lewisville,” he said. “Witherspoon is a sponsor of Western Days and we all hope they will be able to open in time for the festival, but whenever they open it will be a great addition for the area.”

The 15,300-square-feet building was constructed in 1988. It’s divided almost equally in thirds for liquor production, barrel storage and the bar and retail area — with an additional outside sitting area of 4,000 square feet.

Construction is slated for completion by the Lewisville Western Days festival, Sept. 25- 26, said Quentin D. Witherspoon, master distiller and the namesake founder.

Natasha Dehart, head of sales and marketing and a founder, said the business partners looked at multiple locations all over Lewisville.

“The city has been so supportive so we really wanted to stay here. But there were a couple other locations that just ended up not being feasible cost-wise or that things just didn’t work out,” she said. “This property presented itself just kind of out of the blue.”

Dehart said that if the distillery opens by the festival, she will consider it a soft opening with an individual grand opening “about a month after the craziness from the festival dies down.”

“The city is very supportive of us going in here,” Dehart said. “We plan to be a part of pretty much every festival that happens in Old Town Lewisville.”

The company is scaling up significantly with new, customized equipment, Witherspoon said. While the new location is only about a mile from where the distillery currently stands, it will be closer to downtown Lewisville. To commemorate the upcoming move, the distillery is selling new T-shirts.

Witherspoon, a former Marine, founded the distillery with his business partners Laurent Spamer and Ryan and Natasha Dehart in 2011. He developed a passion for distilling spirits while in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic where he was one of five tasked with protecting American diplomats.

The Marines formed relationships with international diplomats who shared specialty beverages from across Europe with them, not anticipating the lack of refrigeration. At the time, Witherspoon was in charge of filtering drinking water from the Congo River. As the goods spoiled, Witherspoon decided to distill the wine into brandy and the beer into whiskey.

The business became licensed as a distillery in 2012 and has been pumping out whiskey and rum since. It is Witherspoon’s second attempt in the area; he tried to start a wine vineyard in Flower Mound in 1995.

In 2013, the Denton Record-Chronicle reported that founders were already working on plans for expansion, “looking at historic spaces in Lewisville to convert into a destination distillery, where the company will be able to provide tours, serve drinks and sell bottles — thanks to new legislation passed this session in the state Legislature.”

Witherspoon partnered with Glazer’s, an alcohol distribution company, and asked for its input on what customers wanted in a product instead of waiting to see if anyone would buy the final version.

“We’re throughout the state of Texas now and our expectation is that sometime in 2016, we should be able to bounce out of the state into a couple other states,” Witherspoon said. “We’re currently doing our first ever single-barrel project with Total Wine [liquor retailer] and we’re really excited about that, and we’re going to continue to experiment.”

The founders hope to experiment with brewing beer and are already looking at candidates to hire for helping with the brewing side, they said.

“Quentin’s passion has always been on the spirit side,” Natasha Dehart said. “Me and my husband have been home brewers. Our plan is to very soon acquire a brewer’s permit and start serving beer out of the bar. We’re hoping to offer our first beers later this fall.”

Distilling equipment also functions as brewing equipment. As a regular part of making whiskey, distillers essentially start making beer, adapting the process along the way. So the equipment setup can easily be modified for beer production.

“These guys are making beer all day long; it just doesn’t have hops and they end up distilling it,” Natasha Dehart said.

Right now, the company sells whiskey and rum in Goody Goody Liquor, Total Wine, Spec’s, Fossil Creek and to several independent clients in the D/FW area. The spirits are Witherspoon’s River Rum (a white rum), Bonfire (a cinnamon-infused rum), The Cross Timbers Single Malt Whiskey, and Witherspoon’s Texas Straight Bourbon and River Rum Reserve (an aged rum only sold out of the distillery).

After the expansion, Natasha Dehart said they plan to make and sell brandy, vodka and an agave spirit similar to tequila.

“Basically, we’ll be making any liquor type you’d find at a fully stocked bar only for sale in cocktails and stuff at our bar,” she said. “It will allow us to test the market and see if these are things we’d eventually want to take to a wider distribution.”

Dehart said that the Cowan distillery had about 200 visitors for tours a week, which offered quite the testing setup for what to take to the market.

“Our goal is to hold as many tours a week as we can accommodate,” she said. “We’ll probably start off with just a few days a week and then we will also have a fully stocked bar which will be open a few days a week and extend hours as demand grows.”

Witherspoon’s new location will also serve as an event venue, such as concerts, birthdays and weddings. The founders are already booking events as early as October, Dehart said.

“We actually designed this outdoor space to accommodate live acts both inside and outside,” she said. “We changed design about halfway through the process because we didn’t have any space for live acts in the original plans.”

The new location will have a shuffleboard table in the bar area, and a cornhole beanbag game setup for play outside. It may also offer a regulation-sized bocce ball court. Founders have also been in touch with multiple caterers, all within a ten-mile radius of the new location.

“Also, next to the beer garden is going to be an electrical box and paved area where we can fit two food trucks that can serve right over the fence,” Dehart said.

The old property was a lease and will be turned back over to the leaseholder. Some of the equipment won’t be put into use.

“We’re surprised by how much growth we’ve seen in the last few years,” Natasha Dehart said. “We hoped for it and planned for it, but when it actually happens, it’s exciting.”

Jenna Duncan contributed to this report.

Flower Mound country star competes in new contest

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By ADAM SCHRADER
Published in The Dallas Morning News on Sept. 16, 2015

Kaylee Rutland, a Marcus High School graduate, is now an up-and-coming country singer and songwriter.

The 20-year-old debuted with her first EP, Kaylee Rutland, in 2012 and a single “Into The Circle” featuring Colt Ford and Grammy-nominated, platinum-selling country star Jamie O’Neal in 2013. She released her second EP, Good Day to Get Gone, last summer. In June, neighborsgo reported that she was working with O’Neal on a new music tentatively set to be released later this year.

She is also competing in Nash Next competition, an online talent competition in its first year. Nash Next, who produces the competition, is a new record label under the Nash Country umbrella of Cumulus Media. Nash Country has signed the likes of Reba McEntire and Martina McBride.

Rutland said she’s excited about the Nash Next contest.

“It really connects in today’s market with how we engage and interact online,” she said. “The entire experience has been so fun and I’ve learned a lot about the different deadlines, social engagements and the quick pace of entertainment.”

Briana Mendoza, who is on Rutland’s public relations team, said Nash Next is an innovative online talent competition that has never been done before.

“But similar to an online American Idol in that they’re looking for America’s next big star,” Mendoza said. “So far it’s pretty awesome.”

The contest is comprised of six challenges total, with four remaining. Rutland is No. 1 on the leader board.

The Challenge started June 15 and ends Dec. 6. It was open to solo modern country artists and modern country bands. Entrants were U.S. citizens or a permanent legal U.S. residents, at least 16 years old, and not employees or immediate family members of any Cumulus Media subsidiary companies.

During the audition period, artists created profiles on a web platform made specifically for the competition. Like other social networks, the artist’s mission is to engage with fans and get people to visit their stuff and vote for them by Aug. 7.

The platform gave musicians a score on how much engagement they received.  Organizers selected the top-100 scoring entrants during the audition period as competitors.

Mendoza said Rutland rocked the audition period, catching the attention of contest organizers and partners before the competition truly began. Rutland released some songs she had been working on for an album earlier in the summer exclusively on Nash Next to give her a boost in popularity.

The first challenge was to do a cover video of one of three songs. There were two days of voting. The judges’ opinion was 70 percent of the score and ranked the top 85 for the challenge, cutting the bottom 15.

This week, Rutland finished the end of the second challenge – a Twitter challenge where she was tasked with creating a jingle for Nash Next. She remains in first place as contestants go into the third trial, to cover a Justin Bieber or Ariana Grande song.

Radio station 99.5 The Wolf in Dallas has been promoting her throughout the competition with tweets saying “She’s from Dallas & she’s really talented! Let’s help her out Wolf Fans!”

If Rutland holds on to first place through the end of the sixth challenge, she will receive a recording contract on Nash Next.

Rutland said she also enjoys the competition because of the other contestants and would still be happy to see one of them win.

“All of the contestants are so talented,” she said. “It’s fun watching and learning from each of them as well.”

In the meantime, Rutland is still going to school at Belmont University in Nashville and performing shows like at GrapeFest in Grapevine and Festival at the Switchyard in Carrollton on Nov. 7.

Bat at Lewisville’s Lake Park field tests positive for rabies

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By ADAM SCHRADER
Published in The Dallas Morning News on Sept. 25, 2015

Lewisville city officials asking for help in identifying children who were seen playing with a rabid bat between baseball fields 7 and 8 at Lake Park sometime between 10 and 11 a.m. Saturday.

The bat tested positive for rabies but the children were gone before animal services arrived on the scene and they still have not been located, said Ethel Strother, animal services supervisor for the city of Lewisville, said Friday.

Bats aren’t too common in the area, especially during the day.

“Any wild animals, even stray cats, you should call animal control and report it because they can carry rabies,” she said. “if you see any nocturnal animals during the daytime, like bats, skunks and raccoons, you should contact the authorities immediately.”

Strother said that she doesn’t want to start a panic, but the incidence is cause for concern. Bats have such small teeth that they could bite a victim who might not even know they’ve been bit.

“So it’s urgent that the kids come forward because they have a 10-day window to start the rabies vaccinations,” she said. “We’re already on Day 6.”

During that 10-day window, bite victims won’t show rabies symptoms, so once the flu-like symptoms start, it’s too late to start the treatment series.

“Nearly all the fatal cases in Texas came from a bat and people didn’t even know they were bit at the time,” she said. “The thing is, we don’t know how long the bat was there before those kids found it. Maybe another group of kids touched it first. There was the potential to have a lot of traffic in that area in that day, so we don’t know.”

If you can help identify the exposed children, call animal services at 972-219-3478. For more information, visit cityoflewisville.com.

Sculptor says his Las Colinas mustangs ‘created such an impact in the area and people love it’

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By ADAM SCHRADER
Published in The Dallas Morning News on Sept. 24, 2015

Las Colinas is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its mustang statue one year late because of last year’s road construction. But organizers had several events lined up this week, including an opportunity to meet the sculptor, Robert Glen.

In case you missed him, neighborsgo conducted a brief question-and-answer with him.

For more information, visit www.mustangsoflascolinas.com or www.robertglen.com.


Q: How does it feel that the sculptures have stood the test of time?

A: The bad thing about that is that I’m 30 years older. If I’m in the United States, one way or another, we take the trouble to come out here and touch the horses and check it out. What becomes more amazing all the time is that it has created such an impact in the area and people love it. Everywhere I look, there are emblems of the horses in the area. As far back as when Ben Carpenter was still around and I would stay with him when I was in town, he and I used to come down here every night just to look at the horses. He just wanted to see them like I did.

Q: Now from my understanding, you’re from Africa?

A: I was born in Nairobi, Kenya, and lived there most of my life so far. For the last 25 years, I’ve been living in [a] Tanzania National Park, where I do my sculpture animals from life and Sue [Stolberger, his partner] paints from life. Even the horses.

These horses were actually the original mustangs in America. That breed, from the south of Spain in a place called Jerez, was brought here by the Spanish conquistadors. So I went there to study those particular horses, the Andalucía horses. Every horse is born a different color but they end up white, which is interesting. When they brought the original horses, they were stallions for fighting and conquering.

Q: How long were you in Spain?

A: For three weeks. It was fantastic. The family I stayed with has continued the breeding line of those horses that started about 2,000 years ago.

Q: How important was that trip for the outcome of the statues?

A: I think everything. It helped me know what this particular breed of horse is like and helped me depict it in very close representation. They galloped the horses around for me and showed me their behavior. So I had a pretty intensive study for that time.

From day one of the project, it took seven years to make these horses. And from day one, we traveled with a film team who filmed the whole project all the way through in different stages, and a lot of still photographs. They were there in England during the bronzing at the foundry too. [The film can be seen at http://www.ictn.tv/specials/06302008-14.]

I went to school in Kenya. I had other things to do in my life than school. I started getting involved with birds at the museum when I was 12. My parents then realized I was a little bit strange because I didn’t want to get involved with school. So I was introduced to the ornithologist, who is probably more responsible for my natural history life than anybody.

Eventually, I went to Denver, Colo., when I was 16. I was accepted by taxidermist and animal sculptor Coleman Jonas. I thought I knew everything and he very quickly straightened me out. That three years was everything about where I am today, because of what he said to me and what he taught me about how to look and what to do.

‘A survival story’: American Indians celebrate their history at Grand Prairie event

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By ADAM SCHRADER
Published in The Dallas Morning News on Sept. 27, 2015

GRAND PRAIRIE — Robert Soto, a Lipan Apache from McAllen, led a jubilant Apache song at the Chickasaw-owned Lone Star Park on Saturday morning to open Everlasting Fire, an event commemorating Texas’ annual American Indian Heritage Day.

The day was set aside by state law three years ago as a time for American Indians to promote their culture and stand up for tolerance and rights. In addition to songs and dancing, the day included discussions about the Indian Child Welfare Act and the legacy of American Indians.

After the song, Lydia Gonzales led attendees in an opening prayer, followed by Soto’s request in song for God’s guidance.

American Indians remain far from having equal rights, Soto said, asserting that he experiences discrimination every day.

“Today, you’ll see the story of native Indians is a survival story,” he said. “We have survived what some call the greatest genocide in all human history.”

American Indians and Alaska natives made up 1 percent of the U.S. population in 2014, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Soto said he hopes celebrations like Everlasting Fire will encourage American Indians in areas like Dallas “to unite and get more tribes the recognition they need for governmental privileges.”

“We need to make our voices heard,” said Peggy Larney, founder of American Indian Heritage Day.

It starts, she said, with letting others know that American Indians are still part of society.

“Many people in the Dallas area think we died. … So we want them to know we still live here,” she said. “This day is very important historically because many others don’t realize genocide happened in their own country.”

Larney said the heritage day aims to help younger generations feel pride in their culture’s history.

“We have youth working together to promote native Indian pride and nationalism, which for a while was suppressed,” she said. “But they’re coming out now and becoming leaders in their cities.”

Stephanie Vielle, who grew up on a Blackfoot Indian reservation in Montana, said the fight for tolerance begins between tribes. If tribes are struggling to understand one another’s customs, they shouldn’t expect non-American Indians to understand tribal cultures either, she said.

Vielle said military service is one avenue through which younger American Indians are finding renewed interest in their heritage.

“In the military, they reinforce military culture,” she said. “So, like me, many native veterans have to undo themselves from that and reconnect with their native tribes like an outsider, which makes you appreciate other tribes.”

Cliff Queton, a Crowley resident of Kiowa Indian heritage, said he enjoys celebrations like Saturday’s. He and his two grandsons set up a teepee outside the venue.

“This is just a taste of native Indian culture,” Queton said, “but we enjoy that people can learn about a culture that isn’t their own.”

LakeCities Ballet in Lewisville to stage ‘Dracula’ for 10th year

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By ADAM SCHRADER
Published in The Dallas Morning News on Sept. 28, 2015

LakeCities Ballet Theatre will present its 10th fall performance of Le Ballet de Dracula at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 16 and at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Oct. 17 at the Medical Center of Lewisville Grand Theater, 100 N. Charles St.

Children can come dressed in Halloween costumes and wear stage makeup to dance with Dracula’s brides during a pre-performance junior bride workshop at 12:30 p.m. Oct. 11. The workshop, for children ages 8 and older, is free with the purchase of a performance ticket and an RSVP to guild@lakecitiesballet.org.

A haunted house will provide spooky entertainment before each performance and during intermissions. Admission is $3; however, bride workshop participants can enter free with a performance ticket.

Tickets are $17 for general admission and can be purchased at the door, by calling 972-317-7987 or by visiting lakecitiesballet.org.

BBQ joint that started in a trailer sets up shop in historic Sanger building

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By ADAM SCHRADER
Published in The Denton Record-Chronicle on June 1, 2014

SANGER — Jay Coin always enjoyed cooking barbecue, but he spent seven years building up the nerve to open a restaurant.

His wife, Mindy, finally convinced him to open Texas Smoke BBQ Co. last July in a small travel trailer.

By January, he had moved into a building next door. And this week, less than a year after opening, the business will begin operating in a new spot, a historic building in downtown Sanger.

“She knew I wanted to do it and was 100 percent behind me and said, ‘Do it. You’ll never know what will happen unless you try,’” Jay Coin said. “That’s what I did.”

Coin said he is “big on downtown” and hopes the downtown Sanger community will continue to pick up. He said recently he couldn’t wait to reopen his restaurant on Sanger’s square to help downtown thrive.

“The downtown [Denton] area has exploded, and I love the old buildings and the feel of the old town,” he said. “Denton’s done a nice job of bringing the Square back to life, so hopefully that will happen here.”

He said other local businesses can help each other.

“Babe’s [Chicken Dinner House] is a big draw here, so hopefully with the out-of-town people going to eat at Babe’s, they’ll notice our place and say, ‘Maybe next time, we’ll come out and try this place,’” he said.

The previous location of Texas Smoke BBQ has been closed for more than a week, with a sign on the door directing people to the new location on the Sanger square at 205 Bolivar St. If all goes as planned, it’ll open Tuesday, Coin said.

“We were doing good enough to move out of the trailer, and now we’ve just outgrown the place we were in,” Coin said.

The Coins said they have always liked the Bolivar Street building, which is bigger and offers more room for seating.

“We always said if we ever happened to do a restaurant or a bar or something, we’d love to get this building because it’s a rustic, really neat old building,” Jay Coin said.

Mindy’s father and one of his employees at his construction company have done most of the work to help them cut costs. They’re upgrading to commercial equipment for the move, which should reduce production costs in the long run, he said.

The menu will largely remain the same, though Jay Coin is hoping to add chicken, turkey and ham, which had been offered as specials at the other locations.

To help with the new location, Coin has brought in Don Jost, who owned Wimpy’s Hamburgers when Coin was in high school. Jost will be working on the “day-to-day things” that will help Coin run the restaurant.

Coin said he prides himself on using fresh ingredients and never reheats his food. Texas Smoke BBQ Co. will be open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. or until they sell out — whatever comes first.

“I’m trying to set myself apart from other places and, what I can, I get local to help with freshness,” he said.

Mindy Coin ran a salon in the suite next to the restaurant but closed it to help her husband. Now she rents a booth at another salon in town, squeezing appointments in between her responsibilities at the restaurant.

“It’s something he’s always wanted to do and he can’t do it by himself,” she said. “It works out because I can schedule my appointments in the mornings or evenings and work around my kids’ schedules.”

The restaurant has been popular, with some regulars coming up from Denton to dine.

Glen McDaniel, who runs a gun store inside Sanger Hardware, has eaten at Texas Smoke daily since Coin started serving barbecue in a trailer. McDaniel said he can’t say enough about the restaurant’s cobblers or the meaty ribs.

The food and service were good and consistent, but the previous locations were too small, McDaniel said.

“I’m glad to see them get out of there,” he said. “They’re really crowded over there and were getting great clientele. I’ve walked over there before and had to come back over here and wait a while and go back because they were really full. All the seats were taken because they get a lot of business. But it’s always worth the wait.”

Bright Realty behind new Aldi in Castle Hills development

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By ADAM SCHRADER
Published in The Dallas Morning News on Sept. 29, 2015

Aldi plans to begin work on its new location on the southeast corner of Josey Lane and Windhaven Parkway in the first quarter of 2016.

The grocer will anchor the 13-acre retail site in Castle Hills, which is being developed by Bright Realty. The land includes six other commercial pad sites and two other tenants are currently under contract, according to a news release.

Aldi has plans for more than 450 grocery stores in Texas, The Dallas Morning News reported in February. As of early 2015, Aldi opened 89 stores across the state since 2010, with 52 in North Texas and 19 in Houston.

Bright Realty’s 2,600-acre master-planned Castle Hills community has almost 4,000 single-family homes.

“The projected population growth within a mile of this development is more than 20 percent in the next five years,” said Chris Bright, CEO of Bright Realty, in the release. “We are proud to be a part of that activity and success for the area.”

For more information, visit http://brightrealtyco.com/ or call 972-410-6600.

Fort Worth resident’s video goes viral after his defense of southern accents

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By ADAM SCHRADER
Published in The Dallas Morning News on Oct. 5, 2015

Fort Worth resident Chad Prather declared himself “unapologetically Southern” in a 2-minute YouTube video that has garnered more than 1.5 million views, an article in The Guardian, and an appearance on Fox and Friends Weekend.

Prather, 42, patterns himself as a modern-day Will Rogers-style observational humorist. He works for Ride Television Network, hosting It’s My Backyard, and has a travelling humor show. He has almost 20 videos with more than a million views.

But in this video, Prather seeks to defend the South and its heritage after an online encounter earlier this year. Right at the height of the debate on Confederate flags, he received a message that asked him to comment on it, he said.

Prather responded that it wasn’t a debate he wanted to get into at the time, he said, but this video provided the opportunity to respond to others who have told him that he’s not intelligent because of his dialect while standing up for southern culture.

“They told me the South, with ‘that backwoods mindset’, is what’s wrong with this country and to stop polluting the world with my ignorance,” Prather said. “Someone really did not get sugar in his coffee that day.”

Prather, who shoots his YouTube videos from the cab of his truck wearing a cowboy hat, said the beauty of this video is that people across the world started speaking about the South in a positive way, as they should, because the South is a place to be proud of, from its economic and academic strengths to college football.

“We’re not the Confederate South,” he said. “There’s a heritage to that history, but there is a culture here to be admired.”

Prather said the feedback he has received has been overwhelmingly positive, “which is unheard of in a day of keyboard bullies.”

“They were saying ‘Yes there are gentleman in the South. Yes there are manners in the South. We like having the doors held open for us. We like ma’am and sir,’” Prather said. “I even get those kinds of responses from people in the Northeast where you typically do get a lot of that condescension to southern culture. So I’m still proud of that.”

But, Prather can still understand why some can assume someone is uneducated because of their dialect and past history.

“I’m not ashamed of the southern dialect, but you want to sound educated,” he said. “I have been in some places in the Deep South where you need a Rosetta Stone for Rednecks, there is no way to understand what some of those people are saying.”

Prather, who is originally from Georgia, said his accent was much heavier in the past. He started softening it when he was 19 years old.

“I had given a speech and I heard a recording of it,” he said. “I decided to change some things and worked really hard. Now, my accent is virtually gone.”

Prather said he rarely encounters hostility, rather the opposite, because of his accent. Largely, people are drawn to accents that aren’t their own, he said. Personally, he’s drawn to British accents — even though he has a hard time understanding them, he said.

“If I’m watching a movie with heavy British dialect like The King’s Speech or Bridget Jones Diary, not that I’m admitting to watching that, but if I have to watch with subtitles to understand what Renée Zellweger is saying,” he said. “There is the idea that if you say something with a British accent, you sound more intelligent. Put a good communicator who speaks with a British accent onstage, they can say something with almost no substance and people in America want to listen to them.”

Prather, who often speaks in other countries, said that he, in turn, has found out that foreigners listen to him more in the exact same way.

“People everywhere see a southern accent as something they want to hear,” he said. “All I want is for people to take a look at other cultures, whether it’s southern, northern, western, whatever, and learn to appreciate the beauty of every one of them and what they bring to humanity.”

Lively Fest in north Oak Cliff celebrates reggae, Caribbean culture

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By ADAM SCHRADER
Published in The Dallas Morning News on Oct. 12, 2015

Dozens of people danced in the street to live reggae music Sunday evening at Lively Fest, a celebration of Caribbean culture in the Tyler-Davis Arts District of north Oak Cliff.

Hundreds turned out to the festival, in its second year.

Through most of Sunday afternoon, a sparse crowd shopped or ate their way through Tyler Street, part of which was closed for the event. But by sundown, the crowd had livened up.

Oak Cliff resident Sergio Mendez, 20, said he doesn’t usually listen to reggae but was excited to learn about a different culture.

“The food and vibe looks good, too,” he said. “And I’m excited to listen to music that gives people such a spiritual feeling.”

Ras Elijah, 38, one of the festival organizers, owns Roots & Culture, a local Caribbean-themed shop.

“Lively Fest is one love, bottom line, because that’s what this world needs,” he said. “It’s a rainbow out here: white, black, Hispanic, gay, straight — everyone just feeling the one love vibe.”

Elijah said reggae is beloved in all cultures because of its peaceful lyrics.

“In the Caribbean, we call it irie — when everything is cool. Reggae music brings out the irie feelings and I want everyone to experience that,” he said.

“Reggae music is not only important today, it is needed today more than ever,” he said.