Left Hand Laurel : Gene Hayworth and Keith Waters

Gene Hayworth and Keith Waters are awarded the Left Hand Valley Courier's Left Hand Laurel for bringing the Niwot Jazz Festival back to life and for putting in the time and energy to organize Niwot's Oktoberfest.

"We're really lucky to have the support of the Local Improvement District (LID) and the Niwot Cultural Arts Association (NCAA)," Waters said regarding Oktoberfest. The event will be held this year on Sept. 30, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. in Cottonwood Square.

"There will be beer and food trucks and three bands dressed in traditional garb playing Bavarian "oom-pah" music. There will be a dance floor. Folks can dress in costume and the headliners are the Denver's Thirsty 5," Waters continued.

Hayworth and Waters opened Inkberry Books in Cottonwood Square in 2018. "It was always a dream of mine to own a bookstore," Hayworth said. Before his recent retirement in 2021 from academia, Hayworth was a tenured professor and librarian at CU Boulder. Waters, an accomplished jazz musician, is still a professor of music at CU Boulder.

The partners, who have been together since 1979, moved from Boulder to Niwot in 2020. They had originally moved from the East Coast to Boulder in 1995.

"There used to be a jazz festival on 2nd Avenue," Waters said, "but it died a while ago – pre-pandemic. It was a ticketed event run by a local restaurateur with tents set up."

"We decided we would revive it," Waters added, "[and] make it a single day, free, with local jazz bands brought in and name vocalists." In 2021 and 2022, the jazz festival, thanks to Waters and Hayworth, was revived as the Niwot Jazz Festival, and it will live on, although Waters mentioned that because he is on sabbatical from the university this year, he has decided to forestall the continuation of the jazz festival until next year.

"We had some sponsors from the LID and used money from the silent auction to support the musicians," Waters added. A graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Waters lived in Washington, D.C., with Hayworth, where Waters played jazz piano professionally in jazz clubs. Waters said he "got to play with some notable jazz artists in D.C."

"And," he noted, "I was able to work my way up the ladder starting in hotels and embassies and even, once, at a political event for Al Gore."

Hayworth was born in Pennsylvania and Waters came from Long Island, but both men spent most of their youth in North Carolina, where they met at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro. Hayworth majored in art and English and worked for many years in a variety of jobs, including computer technology, before going to Syracuse University for a Master of Library and Information Science degree.

In addition to running Inkberry Books these days, Hayworth owns a publishing company called Owl Canyon Press, and the pair host many local and national authors for book readings two or three times a month at the bookstore in Cottonwood Square. They also host artists and musicians in the shop for talks, followed by wine and appetizers.

Hayworth, who has also written and published academic books, had held a variety of jobs between 1995 and 2002, when he was hired by CU Boulder as a tenured professor and Social Sciences librarian. He said he got into his publishing business "because I had been for years selling used books on-line through Amazon."

Multi-talented, Hayworth and Waters have been experts in building community in Niwot through their various activities – from hosting creators at events at their bookstore to reviving the Niwot Jazz Festival and Oktoberfest.

The pair also love to travel and have been learning Greek on-line for an upcoming trip to the Mediterranean and several Greek islands.

Jim Ringel, a local author, has been quoted as saying that the pair are working hard "building a real community" around books, music and art.