 How about a wireless plan with no credit check, no contracts, and most of the features of post-paid? That's Forward Pay on the region's premier cellular provider, and it starts as low as $19.99 per month for unlimited talk and text. Forward Pay, because we are you. We are Appalachian Wireless. Shaping our Appalachian region, better known as SOAR, has partnered with local tourism commissions throughout the region to present the Country Music Highway Tribute Show Summer Concert Series. The series will kick off July 29th, and will showcase talent throughout the region. Today is a pretty exciting day, it's something that we've been working on really for the better half of the year, just starting engagement with really all the tourism commissions from Greenup and Boy County all the way down to Lettria County, so really along the Country Music Highway, but excited to announce the second annual Country Music Highway Tribute Show, really the 30th annual as well that's going to take place in 2024 on the Northern section of the highway, and so today was a simple way to kind of announce these events this year that are going to be in Paintsville, Whitesburg and Prestonsburg, talk a little bit about the vision behind it and the lie, and really I think most importantly highlight the collaboration and the partnership and the unified effort amongst all of our city and county tourism partners. The series will host two free shows in Paintsville and Whitesburg, Kentucky, finishing with a ticketed event at the Mountain Arts Center August 19th. Tourism is a $60 billion dollar industry in Appalachia, right now about 90% of that's in three areas that are outside of Eastern Kentucky, so just bottom line we feel like there's got to be something we can do to get more of those dollars that are spent annually in a region that we're in the most beautiful part of, right, that we have all these assets, and so when you take the artists that have came from Pike County, when you look at Lawrence County, right, when you look at Floyd County, when you look at Boyd County, I think it's hard for sometimes maybe individual counties to think about how they leverage that asset, knowing it's something that's bigger than them, so we really felt like it was right for SOAR to get involved and to bring people together because we think the best play is a regional play, right, where you're doing something that focuses on the highway as a whole and not just one section, and we think it's going to create a mechanism for us to help raise money and be able to invest that back into projects that promote this asset, you know, for a long time moving forward. All proceeds from the show will go towards supporting performing arts across Eastern Kentucky and the series moving forward. Reporting for Mountaintop News, I'm Brianna Robinson.