Women in the News

Three women at the helm of organizing Antlers and Acorns songwriters festival

BOONE — Three friends have come together to organize a new local festival featuring interactions with songwriters — the ones who write the hits — from across the country with Boone itself as the venue.

Antlers and Acorns: The Boone Songwriters Festival is a production of Working Title Farm that will take place Sept. 9-11 with songwriters performing their songs and telling stories.

Three women — Shari Smith, Nicole Sarrocco and Kim Bost — are leading the charge in creating this new Boone-area festival. Smith had the idea after going to Key West and writing about a songwriters music festival there for Broadcast Music Incorporated.

One year when she was at the Key West music festival, Smith inquired with the event organizer how the festival got its start.

“I kept thinking I could do this,” Smith said. “I’ve always been interested in who wrote the song. The idea of a songwriters festival just really appealed to me.”

Smith brought the idea of a music festival back to Boone with the hope of enhancing the creative world that she already knew was in the area. She had a jumpstart on the idea, as she had already been using her home as a space for musicians to practice and write songs.

She said she met with David Jackson, the president and CEO of the Boone Area Chamber of Commerce, to pitch her idea. Smith then needed help with getting a songwriters festival off of the ground, so she enlisted the help of her two friends.

Bost was at the end of running for a North Carolina House of Representatives seat when Smith asked her to join the project with her.

“I could think of nothing better,” Bost said. “Everything was going for the election and then to have this thing to look forward to is awesome.”

Sarrocco on the other hand had just finished a book and said she never envisioned herself being involved in a songwriter festival.

“Everything has changed in such big ways that I’m just grateful to be involved in something that we started planning during COVID-19,” Sarrocco said. “We said, ‘OK, we have got to do something.’ We want to be ready to entertain people. We want to be ready to help shape what the literary world and the music world looks like when everybody’s ready to be entertained again.”

The three are from all over the state with Smith residing in Boone, Bost in Hickory and Sarrocco from Pittsboro. But despite not all being in the same geographic location, they are still bound together.

“One thing I think that really does unite us is that we’re not bound by any artistic description,” Smith said.

The three friends are all artists in their own ways with Smith and Sarrocco being writers while Bost is a more visual artist.

That artist aspect came in mind when deciding on a name for the festival: Antlers and Acorns.

“I love alliteration,” Smith said. “I was trying to think about what September means to me. How can I combine the authentic outdoorsness of Boone and just this creativity, this music. On every one of my hikes, I pick up all the acorns that land on the path and put them around my house.”

Acorns, along with antlers, are what get left behind in nature, Smith said.

“It’s the things you leave behind,” Smith said. “The deer leave their antlers, the trees leave their acorns. I hope that what these songwriters are leaving behind are these little gifts to song lovers.”

As of early July, the festival had about 30 songwriters lined up to perform. The festival was also planning to feature a Saturday Night Spotlight Show at the Appalachian Theatre titled “Voices,” which would showcase an all female line up.

Sarrocco said the festival is all about the audience being able to interact with musicians in intimate and deeper ways. “We were just thinking what can we do to give people a chance and not just stand in line and shake someone’s hand,” Sarrocco said. “It’s just kind of a fun way to do something with somebody that you like and see another side of them.”

The Acorns and Antlers festival is also being put on in association with The Boone Area Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Boone Development Association, the Blue Ridge Conservancy, Booneshine Brewing Company and Lost Province Brewing Company.

Smith said songwriters will perform at locations in Boone including Lost Province, Booneshine, the Appalachian Theatre and the Jones House.

The full schedule has not been released as of early July, but more information on tickets and who will perform can be found at antlersandacornsboone.com.

Nicole Sarrocco pictured with songwriters Eric Erdman and Radney Foster. — Moss Brennan

Women in the News

Longtime community member Bettie Bond honored with Lifetime Community Service Award

BOONE — An award that has only been given out twice since 1986 was recently presented for the third time to its first female recipient by the Boone Sunrise Rotary Club.

Longtime Boone resident Bettie Bond was honored with the Lifetime Community Service Award during the June 21 Rotary Club meeting at Booneshine Brewing Company surrounded by familiar faces from her 50 years in Boone.

“I'm just really tickled,” Bond said. “The people that were there I just love. These were all people that I have worked with on different committees and had such good times with.”

Bond joked that because the award was given during the week of her and her husband's 56th wedding anniversary, they gave the wrong person the award. She joked that it really should have gone to her husband, John James Bond. Someone who overheard Bond say that joked that he deserved a Purple Heart instead.

“It's been a real blessing," Bond said. This is wonderful because this is community based.”

Bond was also named a Paul Harris Fellow by the Rotary Foundation, which is the charitable arm of Rotary International. She was honored with that "in appreciation of the tangible and significant assistance given for the furtherance of better understanding and friendly relations among peoples of the world,” according to the award citation.

Bond first came to Boone with her husband in 1971 to join the faculty at Appalachian State University. About 14 months later, they moved into the house they still live in nearly 50 years later.

Over the years in Boone, Bond has served a variety of roles for the community. One of her current roles — of many — is on the board of the Appalachian Theatre.

“That has been just so much fun,” Bond said. “It's been almost 10 years now. There's not a week that goes by that I'm not doing something.”

This past year, Bond said it’s been really crucial for the theater to keep going and remain engaged with the community during COVID-19.

“It would be so easy for us to just pull back and pray for the end, but instead we have kept our donors and our volunteers and the whole shebang engaged,” Bond said. “That's really, really been important. We've kept that momentum.”

Bond is also president of the Watauga County Historical Society, which she said she has loved being a part of as she is a former faculty member of the Appalachian State University history department.

One of her favorite achievements with the historical society was helping create the Digital Watauga archive. The archive — a collaborative effort between the Watauga County Historical Society and the Watauga County Public Library to preserve and display the High Country's archival memory — was started when a community member gifted more than 200 postcards about Boone.

Some of the postcards were on wood and dated back to the 19th century. When Bond saw the postcards, she didn’t know what to do with them right away, but worked alongside others and determined that the postcards should be digitized. “But I said if we're going to do it, we have to do it right because if we do it right, we are going to get a tsunami of material,” Bond said. “And that's exactly what happened.” Bond said the digital database — which can be found at digitalwatauga.org — now has nearly 30,000 images and about 20 collections in the queue. Those two service positions — Appalachian Theatre and the Watauga County Historical Society — are her top two favorite positions she served in. But those aren’t the only two community service positions she holds.

She is also on the board of the Watauga County Community Foundation and the board of the App State University library. In the past, among other boards, she was also on the board for the Watauga Humane Society.

Bond sees these boards as a vehicle to be a mentor and an example for other community members.

“The boards are the vehicle that you use to make those things happen,” Bond said. “I can't ask people for money if I haven't given myself. I can't ask somebody to serve on a committee that I'm not going to serve on.”

Instead of a biography, Bond was honored at the June 21 meeting with a reading of a poem of her achievements. One of the stanzas read, “She’s chaired the Heart Ball on countless occasions; ‘Horn in the West’’ and Boone Gardens add to her equation. The Humane Society and their Fur Ball, too, there’s simply no end to what this woman can do.”

For Bond, the Boone Sunrise Rotary Club telling her “thank you” for her service, it was the icing on the cake.

“Everyday in Boone is a bonus,” Bond said.

— Moss Brennan