Songs, saddles merge at STAR fundraiser
The sweet sounds stemmed from the 10th annual Songwriters in the Round fundraiser at Shangri-La Therapeutic Academy of Riding (STAR).
Taking notes from the famed Bluebird Café’s songwriter rounds in Nashville, the event brings together four country music lyricists to raise money for STAR’s 40-year mission of providing equine-assisted activities for people with physical, mental and neurological disorders.
This year’s event took place on Saturday, Aug. 29, raising $69,000 to support STAR’s mission. The night brought renowned musicians Phillip Lammonds, Matt Warren, Nicole Witt and Andy Austin, who sang together beneath a string-light chandelier with guests looking on from chairs near the small stage.
“This is my second Songwriters in the Round, but it’s STAR’s 10th,” STAR executive director Emily Justus said. “So it changes a little bit every year, and this year we have about 225 people here in a sold-out arena. They get this really cool, intimate event.
“The best part about this event is you don’t really know which direction it’s going to go. These are songwriters that are playing off the cuff, and they’ll say they go where the audience takes them. They tell different stories, and that’s where it starts.”
On Saturday, the stories came from four wide-ranging careers.
“They’re all a little different,” Justus said. “They are from the Carolinas, Tennessee, all over. And they all have different careers, writing for Hootie and the Blowfish, George Strait, Rodney Atkins. So it’s a wide-ranging, talented group that’s been in some pretty cool rooms. This is our second-biggest fundraiser of the year, and all the money goes back to our programs.”
And those programs pair the aforementioned horses with human beings who appreciate the animals’ steady nature.
STAR offers therapeutic riding, a “Heroes and Horses” program for veterans and a “Reflections” program for those dealing with Alzheimer’s and early-onset dementia. There is even a program called “Minis in Motion,” where STAR workers take miniature horses into senior centers for people to appreciate them.
“The great thing about equine-assisted learning is that it’s for everyone,” Justus said. “We are able to work with children as young as 4 and up. There’s really no ceiling of age; you don’t really graduate from our programs.
“But it is a really unique offering for families dealing with disabilities or special situations that they can’t find therapeutic activities for elsewhere. We are a really unique offering in this region. And there’s also this incredible unspoken language between horse and human. What we do here is really hard to replicate or duplicate in anything else. It’s really all across the board. Horses are for everyone.”
Justus recalled one example of that message, as a beloved horse — Samson — reportedly stood perfectly still during a lesson with a rider perched in his saddle.
“And in the middle of the lesson, Samson just stopped and would not move, no matter what the instructor said,” Justus said. “A few seconds later, his rider began having a seizure. So he could feel it before anyone else even noticed. It’s a cool thing you have to see and know to experience.”
Lammonds, who has been part of the songwriters’ round at Shanghri-La for multiple years, reinforced the impact of what they do on a daily basis.
“Man, I’ve learned so much. I had no idea half of the things they do,” he said. “The scope they cover and how useful it is and everything that happens is based on a connection with two animals, a human being and a horse.
“I’m a dog person from way back, but everyone that has come says this is just an amazing event. At the end of the day, it’s so easy to see what is happening here. Anybody that’s got that same kind of heart, they need to be a part of it. If you’re sitting around wondering what you can do for your area, I can’t think of a better thing.”
