Montecito Miscellany

Monte ito Miscellany

by Richard Mineards

Richard covered the Royal Family for Britain’s Daily Mirror and Daily Mail, and was an editor on New York Magazine. He was also a national anchor on CBS, a commentator on ABC Network News, gossip on The Joan Rivers Show and Geraldo Rivera, host on E! TV, a correspondent on the syndicated show Extra, a commentator on the KTLA Morning News and Entertainment Tonight. He moved to Montecito 14 years ago.

Foodbank Feeling Full After Empty Bowls

Kaitlin Denbaars, Danyel Dean, and Jared Denbaars (Photo by Priscilla) After making it an online event given the pandemic last year, the 23rd annual Empty Bowls fundraiser at the headquarters of the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County, just a tiara’s toss from its normal venue at the Ben Page Youth Center, was quite the gridlocked occasion at the weekend.

The bustling event, founded by bubbly Danyel Dean, who has been on the committee for more than two decades, is now one of the most popular bowls events in the U.S., not to mention France, Argentina, Hong Kong, and New Zealand.

The event, which has raised more than $2 million over the last two decades, providing nearly 16 million meals for needy residents, was expected to net more than $100,000 for the Foodbank, which runs 300 programs annually.

Fourth- and sixth-grade students from Crane Country Day School showed their artistic talents decorating the bowls, which participants are allowed to take home as part of the $30 ticket price for a hearty meal of nourishing soup and crusty stone-

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Sally Park, George Leis, Sarah Evans, and Paul Wieckowski (Photo by Priscilla)

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my music but still very much a team sport.”

That team, of course, revolves around Fleck in their willingness to take bluegrass into dimensions far beyond the traditional sound of the Kentucky hills or Nashville studios.

“It took those 20 years for me to amass a certain quality of compositions I wanted to record, so it was important as always to align myself with the guys that are pushing bluegrass into a more current state,” Fleck said.

But the truth is that Fleck’s career has done a lot of the actual pushing even if the younger artists have gone in their own directions.

“Guys like Chris Thile and Billy Strings freely admit that they listened to me a lot and that they know my stuff inside and out, which is an incredible honor,” he said. “And it also makes it easier to work together. Back in 1980, it was hard to teach my music to guys I’d play with. But now they know how my music goes, they know what’s allowed and where the freedoms are in there, and how the sound you get out of your instrument along with the teamwork is critical to it being good.”

It’s also a bit of a two-way street, Fleck said. “I’m definitely inspired and influenced by them. Chris Thile has sparked ideas for me and when I play with him it feels like he’s a younger version of me with more stuff all his own.”

The effort saved in teaching his fellow musicians was welcome, because Fleck felt some pressure to have Heart compare with the two previous albums, calling Drive and The Bluegrass Sessions “high water marks for the time” that had an outsized impact in the bluegrass world. “They were moments in time and position statements, and I wanted this record to stand up alongside them.”

Fleck pronounced himself more than thrilled with the double album that resulted from the recording sessions, with My Bluegrass Heart — which features both highly sculpted songs and improvisation-filled numbers — instantly topping Billboard’s bluegrass chart. And he’s thrilled to be back out on the road playing the music with buddies old and new.

“I have to admit, I’m trying to maintain my equilibrium because I’ve played with everybody before, but it’s amazing to have all the [bluegrass] power in one place.”

Mike Eliason has quite the following on social media for his stunning photography of Santa Barbara County

Man Behind the Lens

Carpinteria native Mike Eliason has taken tens of thousands of photos over the course of his 35-year career as a photographer in town. Eliason spent the first quarter-century as a newspaper photojournalist who worked for just about every paper in town, capturing sunsets and shooting alongside wildlife and wildfires before the Santa Barbara County Fire Department hired him as its Public Information Officer, an extension of his time working as a reserve firefighter for Carpinteria and Summerland in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The new job has brought him to the front lines of local disasters, and his up-close shots of battling the Thomas Fire and the rescue efforts and devastation of the Montecito Debris Flow were ubiquitous not only on local news sites but were also published by national and global news organizations.

But it’s only now that Eliason has entered the world of books, and only because of the pandemic.

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