Champion flatpicking guitarist headlines guitar/art festival at We Moon Spirit

By Louise Ritchie

Flat picking guitarist Steve Kilby – the North Carolina guitar champ and seven-time winner of the Fiddler’s Grove Festival guitar championship – will offer a guitar playing workshop and a free concert Nov. 25 at We Moon Spirit Women’s Center.

Kilby’s appearance will be part of the annual Guitar and Art Festival organized by Tallahasseans Ken and Virginia Miller.

The show also will feature musical instruments built by the Millers, engraved colonial powderhorns by Ken Horne, and jewelry by Steffany Appleton, a New Orleans resident, who says that her work is inspired by the “magic” of her city. The Millers launched the festival after years of traveling to festivals in the Southeast to display their handmade instruments.

“Five years ago, we decided to start our annual guitar-art show to share our art with Tallahassee,” Virginia said. “We try to include other high quality artists to allow them visibility and ad variety to the show.’’

The couple began making instruments together in 1990 after Ken returned to Tallahassee, his hometown, but Ken has been building and repairing instruments since the 1960s. During the early 1970s, he worked for several years at Guild Guitar in Rhode Island. Later, he focused on repairing instruments while also building one to four instruments a year.

The instruments that the Millers make include mandolins, classical and flamenco guitars, banjos and “guitarcimers” (guitar dulcimers of Ken’s design). The prices range from $3,000 to $6,000. Because the instruments are completely handmade, each takes three to four months to complete. Some of the instruments are made completely out of Florida woods.

“We only build about 15 instruments per year, and each of them is unique in different types of … tone, woods, shape and decoration,” said Virginia, who cuts the instruments’ inlays in shapes such as oak leaves and birds made out of shell, stone, steel, and various woods.
Musicians from as far away as Switzerland and Italy have purchased their instruments, she said. Well-known musicians who have bought instruments made by the Millers include Allen Shadd, a Florida champion guitar player who has also won many national awards, and Kevin Roth, who Virginia described as Florida’s premier dulcimer player.

Bob Cox, a Tallahassee musician, compared his Miller-built quilted mahogany dreadnaught guitar to the “very expensive pre-war Martins owned by a friend who is a collector … It is a beautifully made and tastefully ornamented guitar with spalded magnolia around the sound hole and an Anhinga inlayed on the peg head.”

“If I ever get another guitar,’’ Cox said, “it will be another Ken Miller, probably with a different wood for variety.  On the other hand, if I never get another guitar, it won’t matter because I am so pleased with the one I have.”

The events will be Sat., Nov. 25 at We Moon, 1816 Mahan Drive.

The Kilby guitar playing workshop costs $35 and will be 10 a.m. until noon.

Only 15 students may enroll.

To register, contact the Millers at 850-386-4157. The art/guitar show will be free and open to the public from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m.

The free Kilby concert begins at 7:30 p.m.