History, Folklore & Anthropology Instructor, Will Spires.
(photo: Evo Bluestein)

"Working up at Sweet's Mill with people like Kenny Hall and spending days up there, around musicians that I really wanted to learn from or play with, and having it really soak in, was the point in my life I realized that at least for the next fifteen years or so I wanted to play music full time and professionally, and I did, for the most part. It made a lot of people serious about music--what they got into up there and the opportunities they had and the extent to which they were able to enjoy music and a situation as wonderful as that. I think that it did the same thing for a hundred people I could probably name, which was to make them serious about music and make sure that they manage to find the time to be musicians.

 
Kevin Keegan, Irish accordionist. Frank Hicks, country swing guitarist. (photos: Evo Bluestein)
Listen to Kevin Keegan at Sweet's Mill, ca. 1974

It was Virgil's sense of what a Mexican would call a fiestero--someone who knows how to throw a fiesta and has the motivation and the spirit to do it in a way that I don't blush from saying was altruistic.

There was one thing that happened up there from time to time that struck me. There were major virtuoso musicans in idiosyncratic special genres of music that did not come up to Sweet's Mill to hang out but would occasionally drop in for an evening of music like Ruben Sarkisian (Armenian fiddler) or Ron Hughey (Missouri fiddler) and things would stop. People would hear something special on those occasions. Kevin Keegan (Irish accordionist) also made several events up there and brought tremendous energy to the place. We had the opportunity to live a daily life on egalitarian pleasant, comfortable terms with several master musicians in different genres up there, not just the ones who dropped in for the day but Kenny Hall or any others you'd care to name." --Will Spires

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