'Music is a phenomenal medium': Musicians in recovery at Grace House release album of religion, redemption

KEVIN STAIRIKER | Lancaster Online Digital Staff Sep 17, 2022

Ep. 129 Phil and Grace Shober Podcast Transcript

Steve Martorano 
The Behavioral Corner is produced in partnership with Retreat Behavioral Health -- where healing happens.

The Behavioral Corner 
Hi, and welcome. I'm Steve Martorano, and this is the Behavioral Corner; you're invited to hang with us as we've discussed the ways we live today, the choices we make, the things we do, and how they affect our health and wellbeing. So you're on the corner, the Behavioral Corner. Please hang around a while. 

Steve Martorano 
Hey, everybody, welcome again to the Behavioral Corner. It's me, Steve Martorano, "King of the Corner ." That's what I like to tell myself. Behavioral Corner -- it's a podcast about everything because that's what affects our behavioral health. It's made possible by our great underwriting partners Retreat Behavioral Health, you'll hear some more about them a little bit later. We return on this episode of the corner to a topic we visit frequently. And that's the topic of substance abuse. I needn't go to great lengths about the devastation of substance abuse. It's well documented, and many, many people, unfortunately, have personal experience about the dark place. This disorder can take those people who are affected by it, and not just the people who are inactive us, but their entire families, their loved ones -- they're all dragged down into this light life-threatening disorder. But, and this is what we're here to remind people frequently, there are ways out of this darkness. And there are stories of ordinary people who found themselves in extraordinary circumstances, not only overcame substance abuse, and its devastation. But in a sense, we're raised up by the experience. So lives that are now sober, successful, and inspirational. There's no other way to put it. And I have living proof of it in great friends of this program, who have been with us before. The daughter, and father team of Grace Shober. Grace needs very little introduction. She is a great friend of the program. She's a star in the making as part of a duo we call the "Movie Mavens." She and her colleague, Maggie Hunt, review movies for us. If you're missing that program, I feel sorry for you because Grace is terrific. And she brings with her, her father Phil. Hi, Phil, it's good to see you again.

Phil Shober 
Good to see you. Thanks for having me.

Steve Martorano 
I want to reintroduce Mr. Shober. When I met him, he was a successful financier. He was a president (or) vice president of a bank, I suppose. It was over 10 years ago that his life changed dramatically. Grace struggled with a very, very serious substance abuse issue. Herion almost cost her her life and her family. And it changed Phil...Phil's life and his wife's life as well. After having retired...he's retired now as a banker and is remarkably enough now an ordained minister. His Church is St. Paul's United Church of Christ. And it's a path he didn't expect to follow. But he has successfully now as I say ordained in the middle of all that. Fighting Grace's problems, Phil and his wife Geri founded Grace House, which is a series of sober living facilities in Lancaster County. Again, if that road weren't unusual and inspiring enough Phil and Grace are here to tell us about another path they're on. Phil is now a budding singer-songwriter, which is...no, I'm not making it up. And it all has to do with battling substance abuse. So there I know, that was a long-winded guy, but I think I hit all the right notes. I feel so let's...Grace has shared her story with us, openly and frequently. We'll return to Grace in a second. But tell me about your journey briefly. I mean, you know, you're sitting there as I say, a regular guy with a regular job and a regular family, and then a monumental crisis. You seem to be a guy who when you set your mind to something, get it done. What inspired you first to decide you'd follow this religious path?

Phil Shober 
Thanks for having me, Steve. Appreciate it. And I will correct one thing. I'm not a singer. Songwriter, I'm becoming Yes, a little bit. But I don't think I strum a little guitar that it. Leave the singing for the others. Leave the singing to the others, thankfully. Yeah, I mean, I'm certainly not an overachiever. So I'm a normal guy. Regular guy...

Steve Martorano 
By whose definition Phil? I mean, come on. Anyway...

Phil Shober 
I overachieved maybe taking naps. 

Grace Shober 
He's being modest.

Steve Martorano 
His resume speaks for itself. Grace, you don't have to...

Phil Shober 
Listen. I'm a poor Lancaster County farm boy, I grew up in Ephrata in Lancaster County. This is who I am. And you're right. I was working...I worked for a bank. I was in banking for 36 years, commercial banking, and retired from Bank of America. I guess it's been three years now or so something like that. And, yeah, but 10 years ago or so, it gets a little murky as, the timeline, and that's fine. You know, we obviously realized we had, we had a problem with our youngest child - who is sitting right next to me, thank you, God. She's sitting right next to me right now. And she was...I will say always say she was...she was the greatest and easiest child. And she really became a real real problem and had a real problem. And we discovered that and, of course, went down a very, very long, difficult road to recovery. And we're just very, very thankful that she's alive and prospering and helping other people, and we just thank God for that. Every single day. She's, she's a beautiful young woman. So you know, through that process, we did my wife and I opened the first Grace House. We're sitting in it right now, the first Grace House is this house that we're in right now. And we opened it 10 and a half years ago. And now there are three Grace Houses. This is no longer a Grace House. We have three other Grace Houses, and Grace now owns...she herself owns this house now. With her husband and children, they live in this house. This turned out beautifully. And these are all answered prayers and miracles, Steve, you know how it is, in a big way,

Steve Martorano 
Grace, it's no exaggeration to say that there is a very strong possibility that you would not be sitting here right now at one point.

Grace Shober 
Definitely, yeah, I think it's more of a miracle that I'm sitting here. Then, you know, it's more of a surprise that I wouldn't be it's, you know, it's just, it was really, really tough. And it's, I mean, I say it all the time, but my dad is my best friend. And he's the reason him and my mom's too, but like, definitely the reason that you know, I was able to make it out of here. Alive. 

Steve Martorano 
Right? Yeah, there's so much about your story that we could dive into deeply when you use when you say he's your best friend. That's a cliché. But as I always tell people, clichés are all true. Otherwise, they wouldn't be. 

Grace Shober 
I love clichés.

Steve Martorano 
They wouldn't become clichés if they weren't true. And if the definition of a best friend is someone who saved your life, then yeah, your dad's your best friend, no doubt about it.

Grace Shober 
We're always in one.

Steve Martorano 
So yeah, it's like an active best friend. It's not like, doesn't You did me a solid and saved my life. And I'll see you at Christmas. These two guys couldn't...couldn't be tighter. Phil, you retired from banking and decided that you want to have you want to follow the spiritual path. How did it come about?

Phil Shober 
Well, you know, I had been involved in Bible study groups. We had started a men's Bible study group at the bank 15 years ago, just until recently. But really what happened was, Steve, about four years or so into the Grace House experience, we really felt like there was somewhat missing a spiritual dimension to our program with the race House. I was really trying to work with the church that we were attending at that time with a big church. I was hoping maybe they would help us a little bit more with that. And it didn't, it didn't quite click, and it was nobody's fault, but just didn't quite come together. So we were talking to Grace about it at the time. So six years ago, a little more than that. We decided we were just going to do it ourselves. And what we decided to do was to have a small church service once a month at the race House, and it was in the living room of this house again, that we're sitting in right now. And so the first Sunday of every month and it started in July of 2016. We had started a small half-hour church service. And I was creative as the I'm going to call it the race House Sunday School, you know, not so great. And in Grace said, the ladies would like to call it Grace House Blessings. I said, "Well that wins." That's a lot better than... So that's what we call it. We call it...we still call it that to this day. And we've never missed our first Sunday in the six and a half years since we started. And I kind of, you know, facilitated that it was sort of the pastor, the pastor of the race House Blessings. And it was...it was just it was great. It was so great. It was so cool the way it worked. And it was a really neat little format. It was inspired. I mean...I mean, by the Spirit, not by me, but it was just...it worked so well. And, then about two years into it, we started holding it because we didn't have room here in the living room to bring in friends and neighbors and whatever. So two years into it we started holding it at St. Paul's Church in Bowmansville, which we were we now attend. Where I'm now the pastor. But I wasn't the pastor at that time. Of course, I was a member. So we started holding it at the church. And they just...that congregation...they just embraced it. They the soaked that up like a sponge, and they loved it. And so then we had room to bring more people in, alumni, and it just kind of grew from there. And before too long, that church found itself in need of a pastor, the pastor left, and they said, "Why don't you be our pastor?" And I said, "I'm about to retire from banking, which I wanted to." And I said, "Okay." So I follow the path to being authorized, as I'm not technically ordained, an ordained pastor, I'm authorized to be an authorized minister for that church. So I am on the authorized Minister of St. Paul's church.

Steve Martorano 
Well, I, I know Grace has a lot to be thankful for in her life. But I remember her telling me and beaming as she did, that she couldn't be happier to be a "pastor's daughter." Which I thought was remarkable. You know, it's an incredible story. It really is an incredible story, you, and Grace, and you've not had a substance abuse problem, you would have had, you know, a different life., obviously. It's hard to imagine, though, that even...I know this sounds odd to talk about good coming out of something like a heroin addiction. But it's hard to imagine, had you not had that problem that you and your family, your mom, your father, now, you and your colleagues would have been in a more advantageous position, more helpful position, and richer life as a result of that, beginning in that darkness.

Grace Shober 
Everything happens for a reason. And so, like, I do believe that, and I feel blessed for the struggle. I'm just because I can't...like I think about that, too. And I actually said this to him before. I was like if somebody said to me if "If I can give you a billion dollars to be 18, again, what would you do?" And I was like, "Nope, I wouldn't do it." You know, because then I actually would be afraid that I would change certain things. And if I changed certain things, my life would not be what it is right now. I love my life right now. I love my children. You know, I love, like, my daughter wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be married to the person I'm married to, the job I have. None of it would have been here. And so I wouldn't change anything.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah. When people talk about regrets of doing things differently, I often think of that. I think well, yeah, maybe, but what I change anything, and then and then just like you, I look at my grandchildren, I look at what I've done, I relationships, and I go, "Hey, you mess with one little thing. And then everything changes." So that's the hand you guys were dealt, and it's so important to remind people who are, you know, being sucked into the devastation of substance abuse that with, you know, honest, hard work, dedication, luck, you wind up, you know, saved physically, spiritually in every way. And in your case, the two of you, helping lots of other people through Grace House. It's a remarkable story. Like, you know, I tell Grace, I've told your story many times to many people who shake their head, who shake their heads and go, "No, no, you can't help them. You can't help them." I go, "Well, you can help some of you. Some of them are...and some of them have unbelievable stories. I won't bore you." Anyway. So okay, so now let's get to what we're really here about, which is, Phil, somewhere along the line, pick back up a guitar that you used to fiddle around with when you were a kid and heard a melody from your childhood that you thought you'd try to play on the guitar and maybe make that into a song. And, lo and behold, I may have mischaracterized you as a singer, or songwriter. But you certainly are not only a songwriter, but you have now been involved in another effort that involves music. Tell us about Musicians in Recovery, right?

Phil Shober 
Yeah, that's right. 

Steve Martorano 
Tell us about that. 

Phil Shober 
Well, and incidentally, it's a guitar I had to buy back from a pawn shop at one point, Steve. I won't tell you...

Steve Martorano 
All guitars, I can tell you I'm old I am I used to use a typewriter. All guitars and typewriters wind up at some point in pawnshops. 

Grace Shober 
It wound up there because of me.

Phil Shober 
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. It was missing from my house one day, Steve. I had to go find it. So that's okay. I was able to buy it. 

Steve Martorano 
I liked that a lot. Anyway, so yeah, so it's not like you just decided to teach yourself guitar. You had a little background.

Phil Shober 
A little bit. Yeah, I'm not a great guitar, but I'm, you know, intermediate at best guitar player. So but what was happening...what was happening, Steve, with the Grace House Blessing prayer service, we were...and it started out playing with some recorded songs, you know, contemporary, Lauren Daigle, whatever. Good stuff, we would play, like a recorded song, but then, it really started when one of our Grace House ladies, Grace said to me, "But we've got a Grace House lady who can really sing." I'm like, "Okay, well, let her sing". And her name was Bri, Bri O'Connell. And this was in...her first time singing was in March of 2019. And it changed everything, and it really did, because it really changed everything. Because she was such an unusually good singer, that then we really started to feature her. And then we would incorporate, we brought in some guitar, like played a little guitar with her and she would sing, and then our church piano player got involved with it and it all kind of came together. Like the Partridge Family say "It all came together when mom sang along." It really just started to really click. And it then we was, of course, thinking contemporary...we sang contemporary songs...we sang, you know, old hymns, everything sounded good. And then I would had been dabbling with thinking of a couple of songs myself. And the first one was called Sweet King. And I didn't, but I didn't know, and I had it written out, but I didn't know how to convey it. And Bri said to me, "Well, just sing it to me." You know? And so I had to kind of sing it, they're trying to convey to her, and she just like, got it. She just picked it up. So and she was so into it. So between Bri and then our piano player, Anna (Fortuna) at the church, Anna is a piano player, they were so like, into it, you know, like so happy about creating something. And because COVID was on us now, we just wanted to create. And so we did our first original song, and we performed it. And I think it was in the beginning of actually was in July of 2020 we actually performed this song for the first time in church. And then after that, they started to flow. There was another one and another one. And before too long, I started to think we're gonna record some of these, and I'm gonna make them like exist. So the goal became to do a recording. I had to find a, you know, like a recording studio and stuff. And it took some time it took quite a while actually, to get a list. And we ended up having 10 songs. We have some more, but we picked 10...10 of our own original songs. We found the perfect recording studio and Lancaster. This guy says great. And the schedule, I'll tell you with these...with these people, these young people, Steve, they've got tough schedules. I mean, they're working like crazy. And so Bri and Aaron Rucker got it. He got involved with a guitar, and he got...

Grace Shober 
Also, in recovery.

Phil Shober 
...and he's a great singer. And then Dana Cullen got involved with her French horns. She's unbelievable with the French horn. And then we got our son -- her brother, my son -- involved with the drums. And it just all came together. But the scheduling was brutal to get everybody together in the recording studio. So we pretty much got everybody together on June 1 of this year. And had to we had to get it all done quickly...kind of quickly. And we got it all done. And we recorded an album in basically live in two days essentially. And then, there were another couple of days of mixing and editing that I did with the sound engineer, John LeVasseur, in his studio. And honestly, this is, I guess this is just a podcast, if anybody sees this podcast, but this is the album, and it just...if I do say so myself, it turned out fabulous. 

Grace Shober 
It's awesome.

Phil Shober 
We brought Grace in because I said, "Well, Your Grace, you got to be on this." So Grace came in and added some background vocals to the album. So she's singing background and on the album. It turned out great.

Steve Martorano 
Hold on. Hold it up again. Phil. We like to think people see this. But here's what...here's what's cool about it. He's holding it in his hand. It started as just a whim, and there it is, right there in his hand they; made they made a record. So almost for your older people out there. It's almost like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland saying, you know, "We'll paint the barn and have a show. It just shows you what you can do. Grace, you see a lot...lots of people, lots of women who come through the House... Houses, how often? I bet you it's very common. How often do you find people who are trying to get straight and trying to live clean and sober life who suppressed real talent?

Grace Shober 
All the time. I mean, in every kind of aspect of like, you know, whether it's art, whether it's singing, you know, writing all that, it's...it's...it's very often, like my dad said, like, Bri was like, I mean, she's just got an unbelievable voice, you know, like she was, you know, meant to sing type thing. But we, you know, we have other, we've involved other people, we had a girl named Frankie, and she would sing, and people love to do it. You know, and so I think it's really important, it gives them something that they look forward to . Something, you know, that gives them like, purpose, you know, and things like that, and kind of brings out like you said, that hidden talent.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, you know, it's, it's a great example of the...the price paid by substance abuse. I mean, obviously, it's a struggle to stay alive. I mean, that's the most immediate consequence, don't, you know, don't die. But all that other stuff that's there. That could have been expressed, not everybody's gonna wind up with Adele, or you know, Beyonce, but there are people who can play instruments and maybe sing a little. They're not doing that just when they're trying to score when you know when they're really using. So the price of this...this disease of addiction is enormous. And sometimes, we forget about what's lost. So I know it's not just listening, sitting around and making a record, seeing how it sounds. This gives a full expression of what people had lost. And now got back. Yep. By being able to go into a studio and make a song and makeup, you know, make up a whole bunch of songs. So where can people, first of all, we're going to buy it, and we're going to hear some of the songs?

Phil Shober 
Well, the album is called Grace House Blessings, Turn the Page. So the artist is Grace House Blessings,, and the name of the album has Turned the Page. And it's on every platform you can think of, you know, whether it's Spotify or Pandora, it's on Apple Music, it's everywhere. It's on all those platforms. You can also just Google it and find each of these all the songs on YouTube, and they're all there. You can if you really, it's funny, how's the I don't know, a lot of people won't have CD players anymore. I do. I like having a CD player and a CD in my hand. But and uh, you can get the physical CD through a website called CD Baby, and you can buy it, they'll send...they'll mail you the CD. So yeah, that's how you can you can find it. You can get it just about anywhere. We'd love for people...it was funny, because our first goal was to just have these songs exist, and just memorialized. And now, because it almost, I don't wanna sound prideful about it or anything. But it all turned out better than we expected. We really would like people to hear it.

Grace Shober 
Or the other way that somebody could get it is if they come to St. Paul's UCC and Bowmansville. We'll give them a free one. 

Phil Shober 
Oh, absolutely. You'll get a free one.

Steve Martorano 
The first 50 people at the service this Sunday get a CD. It's a great idea. I love that idea. How often have you guys performed this stuff in front of an audience? 

Phil Shober 
All the songs have been performed in church, but only in church. And I mean, there's people from here every week, you know, somebody from this, that someone this album is in church every week, and we're performing now. We don't always perform the songs. But these songs get performed and have been performed in church.

Steve Martorano 
Our guests are Phil Shober. He is, as I said, a retired banker, now a pastor at St. Paul's United Church of Christ,. His daughter, Grace, who runs a Grace House for the family now., Let's take a moment here and talk about the challenges of writing this kind of music, which has a strong, I won't say, religious but spiritual ethic behind it, but not scaring people away. Unfortunately, it happens with too much God. Were you mindful of that problem, Phil?

Phil Shober 
I didn't have to be mindful. I don't think because my style is so kind of laid back about theology. I'm not heavy-handed about theology. I just think that it's, it's about love. It's just about love. And if you lead with love, you're going to be okay. And so I think that the songs just kind of exude that. Naturally, each of the songs came from sort of different places. I mean, some of them, I literally like dreamt them and woke up with a song in my head that I didn't know where it came from. And I quickly wrote it down, you know. And others were more deliberate, like there was one time we did a sermon about the character Tabitha from the book of Acts. And I really wanted to very deliberately write a song about Him. So we did that. But that was It's kind of unusual. So the but the processes are different. But never...I just don't have a heavy-handed approach.

Steve Martorano 
Grace, you know what I'm talking about. In your early efforts to get sober. When you would go into maybe a counseling session or you know, AA or whatever you whatever you're doing your reaction to hearing, even the suggestion of God helping you didn't exactly resonate, right?

Grace Shober 
Yeah, I mean, it...it sometimes you're like, because you're angry at the time, and you're confused, you know, all those types of things. But what I like to say to people in recovery now, look, we don't need to listen to ourselves when we're, like, in early recovery. We need to listen to people who know what they're doing and know how to stay sober and get out of that darkness. And so, for me, I like to tell people, even if they're scared of it. Just do it anyway. You know, do it anyway. Because it's gonna it's like, That's it, you know? Like, are we going to sit here and fight about what's what or who's who? Are we just going to, like, try it and see what happens? You know? I definitely had like those times where I was, I would almost call it combative, like, "No, this isn't..." And it just never ended well for me. I just...I understand that. But people do...if you're in recovery and listening to it, I don't typically sugarcoat things is you know that Steve, If you're in recovery, and you're listening to this, don't allow that to hold you back from getting into recovery for trying new things, hearing new things. You're not special. There's a whole chapter in the Big Book called Be Agnostic. You're not the only person who isn't like totally sure. So read that chapter and get...get moving forward.

Steve Martorano 
Guys, thanks so much. I could talk about your work and your journey a lot longer. I'm always...it always lifts me up just to hear it just just, and I believe me, I don't knock wood, any personal experience and what you guys have been through it, but it is just, again, as I said, inspiring to see how far you can rise up out of this stuff. It's called Turn the Page. Grace House Blessings, I want you to do something for me, guys. We're gonna have a leak. And by the way, it's Spotify and everywhere. You can find this for yourself. But when you do and listen to it, a couple of things. One, it's good. I've heard some of this stuff. It's good stuff. These are people that just said, let's try this. So it's good stuff on that basis. But as you listen to it, keep in mind, lots of these folks were very, very bad shape. Very bad shape. And they've done this. They've done this. So you know, you can do something too that's how I come away from this. Phil Shober. Grace Shober, thank you so much. And good luck with the songs, and we'll have you back when the Grammys are announced.

Grace Shober 
Sounds good. 

Phil Shober 
Thank you, Steve.

Grace Shober 
Thanks, Steve.

Steve Martorano 
Thanks so much for your time, and we'll catch you next time on the corner.

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