The Swanson Saga

A long time ago…there was once a basement in a house along Swanson Court…

Events were held once, twice a year by a group of local Greenville friends. These events became to be known as the epic “Swanson Parties”. They were private events, all of which were promoted to help raise funds for charity. 

The First-ever event raised over 600 pounds of canned food for the Local Soup Kitchen. The Second event raised funds for a good friend who was in a tragic car accident that resulted in having his legs amputated. Our Third event helped raise funds for a little girl who, on the way home from being released from the children’s hospital after battling cancer, was struck by a drunk driver which killed her father and placed her back in the hospital, where they found out her cancer had come back :(  

To date, we have raised over $10,000 for the GHS Children's Hospital, and over $12,000 for other charities including the Chris and Kelly Hope Foundation, The Children with Hair Loss, and The Meyer Center.

These events became too large to be hosted in the basement of a home in a residential neighborhood. With up to 300 people in attendance at times, a larger space was needed. Alast, an old maintenance warehouse downtown was cleaned out to host these events….

History has it, this warehouse was supposed to be the home of the Handlebar back in 2000 before they relocated to Stone Avenue. There was an executed lease and all, but unfortunately, it was petitioned not to be :( But this space was stock full of signs from Greenville’s past, collected by three generations of Stone men lineage, which the youngest is still attempting to collect to this day.

So the decision was made to dust off the space and hang up all the signs and start hosting our events downtown. We had local legend Marcus King shredding in our basement and even opening up for bands in the warehouse, great crowds were showing up and funds were being raised for good…until the city shut us down mid-show and slapped hefty fines on us.

We stopped having events, we went to court, jumped through all the hoops the city put us through, and brought the space up to code. We expanded our services hosting live music, festivals, markets, and private and charitable events as we slowly grew. And of course, as soon as we started having sell-out crowds, the beloved COVID pandemic arrived just in time for us to shut our services back down :(

This will be our third re-vamp, which should be the charm. We plan to keep expanding our services as well as our charitable causes as we try and spread the love of our community to everyone who needs it. We appreciate all the support and look forward to creating a bright spot here in Greenville. Cheers!

-David Rivers Stone Jr. (Owner)