Butch and Melinda Trucks join Rena Blades and Brad Deflin at the Cultural Council’s Culture & Cocktails event at The Colony Hotel in Palm Beach. Photo by Corby Kaye’s Studio
By Thom Smith
A whole lotta love was present at the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County’s first Culture & Cocktails night of the season, but a little lust also crept into the conversation. Titled “Hits and Mrs.”, the early November session at The Colony hotel in Palm Beach featured longtime Palm Beach residents Butch and Melinda Trucks. He’s best known as the drummer and one of three remaining original members of the Allman Brothers Band, and she’s a highly regarded artist whose work has attracted national attention.
Longtime Palm Beacher, Allman fan and Total Digital Security founder and President Brad Deflin handled the interview that was illustrated with dozens of slides.
One, way back in 1976, featured presidential candidate Jimmy Carter with the band, which played several concerts to raise campaign dollars. “Remember when Carter said he had lusted in his heart?” Trucks beamed. “Well, he was talking about Melinda. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.”
For decades, rock ’n’ rollers have been dispelling the myth that life ends at 30. They just keep playing — well past their 30s, into the 40s, 50s and now in their 60s. Many still produce significant music, taking their cues from the bluesmen, jazz legends and, yes, the classical masters who continue to perform well into their 80s.
But the road does not go on forever. The band’s chemistry has always resembled that of a family, close-knit but always branching out. Guitarist Warren Haynes is often referred to as the “hardest-working man in show business.” Likewise, when the Allmans are off the road, percussionist Marc Quinones and bassist Oteil Burbridge are playing somewhere.
Trucks is 66, has an autobiography coming out in February. He and Melinda split time between Palm Beach and their “new” home, a pre-liberté farmhouse in French wine country. He hinted privately that change is gonna come, but not because he, Gregg Allman (turns 66 Dec. 8) and fellow drummer Jai Johnny “Jaimoe” Johnson (69) are eligible for Social Security.
Butch’s nephew, guitarist Derek Trucks, a mere 34, injected new life into the band when he joined in 1999. Two years later he married blues singer Susan Tedeschi and in 2010 they formed Tedeschi Trucks Band. Their blend of blues, jazz, rock, world music and fusion has earned two Grammys. Rolling Stone ranks him 16th among the best guitarists of all time.
“We may lose Derek,” Trucks admitted. “He’s got his own career to pursue.”
Indeed. Tedeschi Trucks will be at Mizner Park on Jan. 18 to headline the Sunshine Music & Blues Festival. On the bill: Leon Russell, Hot Tuna, Stanley Clarke, Tab Benoit and others.
Culture & Cocktails returns Jan. 6 with “Jewelry & Palm” a conversation between Stefan Richter, longtime Palm Beach specialist in rare and estate jewelry, and John Loring, design director emeritus at Tiffany & Co.
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Out of Denmark, in Delray. Six years after closing shop a little farther up Federal, the Moller family is back in business with their seductive Scandinavian specialties in Delray. Vater und sonne Jorgen and Christian Moller have set up shop in the Delray Plaza, on Federal just a few blocks south of Linton. It’s all there: the warm bread with herb butter, the koldt bord (the Danish version of smorgasbord), steamed mussels in mustard garlic sauce, roasted crisp duck with sweet and sour red cabbage and light berry sauce, Copenhagen crepes with Kijafa.
And just as with the late, great Charlie Trotter, who learned his culinary ropes at the Jupiter Beach Resort, they have no walk-in freezer. That way, it’s fresh, every day.
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Big change at the Palm Beach International Film Festival. After two decades at the helm, Randi Emerman is off to helm a movie. Her replacement: Caroline Breder-Watts, a familiar voice since 1992 when she signed on at WXEL. Watts also served as communications director at the old Florida Stage and in 2012 joined WLRN, where she hosted and produced South Florida Artsview and Listening to Movies.
Breder-Watts has lots up her sleeves. To study the art of film, its historical significance and its relevance today, she’s expanding an earlier series at the Delray Beach Center for the Arts with Cinema Talk at The Crest. The first session, “Movies That Changed the World” in November, featured clips from films including The Jazz Singer, King Kong and Psycho. The topic on Dec. 16 is Jaws. (DelrayArts.org.)
Though respected internationally, the festival locally is “the best-kept secret,” festival chairwoman Yvonne Boice said. Unless it can raise more revenue, it may not be around much longer. Step one is a membership drive for contributions from $100 to $1,500: the highest included at one-year membership in the Sundance Institute.
Additionally, Breder-Watts and her husband John, through their Arts Radio Network, have teamed with Arts Garage just down the street to produce a series of radio plays based on classic movies in the spirit of Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre. Next up is It’s a Wonderful Life on Dec. 12 (www.artsgarage.org). On with the shows.
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Speaking of theater, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, The Wick Theatre’s second production, continues through Christmas Day, followed by 42nd Street on Jan. 9 with Loretta Swit.
If you have spare time during the day, The Wick has added Costume Museum to its marquee. Theater owner Marilynn Wick started in the business by providing costumes for Broadway, Hollywood and lots of stages and sets in between. Now she’s showing them off — Yul Brenner’s gilded King and I tights, Mae West’s furs, Richard Burton’s Camelot armor. (thewick.org).
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Gone west, young man. Angelo Elia, regarded as one of the top restaurateurs in South Florida, may no longer have a stake in D’Angelo Trattoria in downtown Delray, but he’s not far away. Elia’s Casa D’Angelo still flourishes in Boca Raton, and now folks in the suburbs can try his pizza and a few other delights at D’Angelo Pizza in The Shoppes at Addison Place on Jog Road, just north of the Boca city limits. Peter Masiello, formerly at San Domenico in Manhattan and Frank and Dino’s in Deerfield Beach, runs the kitchen that offers such delights as zucchini flowers tapas, octopus and potato salad, an assortment of red or white pizzas, cannelloni, lasagna, calzone and frittata. Mangia.
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His grandmother fought breast cancer for 20 years, but eight months after his mother was diagnosed, actor Rob Lowe’s mother was dead. “How does it happen?” Lowe asked the more than 1,500 guests at the Boca Raton Regional Hospital Foundation’s Go Pink Luncheon on Oct. 25 at the Boca Raton Resort & Club.
The disease also killed his great-grandmother, so Lowe knows the odds were against his mother, but when she was diagnosed at Stage 4, she had never had a mammogram.
You’re never too young to pay attention to your body, he stressed, emphasizing early detection. Fear, he said, is “the most powerful enemy we face.”
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Hot dates: Jazziz is promising a wild New Year’s Eve party as it launches its second season, but the lead-ins won’t be bad either. Guitarist Lee Ritenour drops in Dec. 10-11, and flutist Nestor Torres on Dec. 15 and 16. Actress/chanteuse Molly Ringwald returns Jan. 7.
Two very different women are on the bill in January at The Crest Theatre at Old School Square.
If you’ve ever heard Paula Poundstone, you’d never dream she’s from Huntsville, Ala. Actually, a month after her birth, her parents headed to Sudbury, Mass. Poundstone, who’s been delivering her special brand of stand-up comedy since 1979, will perform Jan. 11. For a weekly dose of the 2010 inductee into the Comedy Hall of Fame, catch NPR’s Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!
On Jan. 16, Linda Evans likely will tell some tales of old flames, including Manalapan resident Yanni, with whom she had a relationship from 1989 to 1998. The couple made one of its first public appearances at Chris Evert’s inaugural pro-am tournament in 1989.
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So much has happened since Evert’s first event — which incidentally featured Whitney Houston as the headliner — especially good things for programs supported by Ounce of Prevention Fund of Florida and the Drug Abuse Foundation of Palm Beach County. Such stars as Jon Lovitz, Elisabeth Shue, Alan Thicke, Gavin Rossdale (pregnant wife Gwen Stefani stayed home in L.A.) and American Idol’s David Cook joined Martina Navratilova, Pam Shriver, Brad Gilbert and Patrick McEnroe on court and at the gala to raise $600,000 from Nov. 16 to 18. In 24 years the event has raised nearly $21 million, and Evert already is working on the silver anniversary bash.
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Three local authors have been honored with gold medals in the 2013 Florida Authors and Publishers Association Book Awards competition. “Old Floridian” Harvey Oyer III was cited in the Florida Children’s Fiction category for his latest book The Last Calusa: The Adventures of Charlie Pierce. The latest in Oyer’s series about the legendary Florida pioneer and “barefoot mailman” — his great grand uncle — also received a silver medal in the general children’s book category.
Pioneering Palm Beach: The Deweys and the South Florida Frontier won a gold medal in Florida adult nonfiction for Ginger Pedersen and Janet DeVries. Acclaimed as the “lost story of Palm Beach,” it chronicles the arrival in “the Lake Worth country” in 1887 of homesteaders Fred and Byrd “Birdie” Spilman Dewey. They could be considered the area’s first developers and later whirled in Palm Beach social circle with the Flaglers, the Phippses and the Vanderbilts. Pedersen, of Boynton Beach, is dean of curriculum and educational technology at Palm Beach State College in Lake Worth. DeVries, who lives in Lantana, is a historian and archivist.
Incidentally, at Pedersen’s urging, the Boynton City Commission voted to rename Veterans Park, a half-acre at the corner of Ocean and Northeast Fourth Street, as Dewey Park to honor the city’s founders.
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Next spring, Lake Worth will open a new glassworks, as an old beer warehouse is converted into the Benzaitan Center for the Creative Arts. A unanimous City Commission approved the project in early November. The project eventually will include a foundry and a ceramic center, as the city continues to provide working and living spaces for artists and craftsmen. Benzaitan is a joint venture between Jupiter-based Living Arts Foundation and IBI, an international firm that promotes development through the arts.
Living Arts is well-connected. Jupiter artist JoAnne Berkow is its president and founder. The board includes Berkow’s husband and developer, Steve Tendrich; gallery owner Paul Fisher, who also is business manager for legendary glassman Dale Chihuly; politically connected businesswoman Elizabeth Fago; retired developer, philanthropist and arts patron Willaim Roebel; real estate broker and arts patron Honey Bryan; and Syndie Levien, a financial adviser with Morgan Stanley and an art collector.
With interest in the arts community rising as interest in shuffleboard fades, Lake Worth’s old stick and disc center on west Lucerne will be converted into a community cultural center. The city will offer art classes, after-school programs and exhibit space, but it still has to come up with some money.
The Community Redevelopment Agency is chasing a $150,000 state grant, and ideas are being sought from area cultural groups
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Not everyone comes to Delray for St. Patrick’s Day. The Boca High School band, 73 strong, will march in the Big Apple’s parade, the world’s oldest, but it needs money, about $900 per member. The city is coming up with $12,000, but that’s barely enough for the trombone section. Band members are hosting bake sales and car washes and welcome any donations (338-1400).
Speaking of parades, Delray’s Holiday Parade is set for 6 p.m. Dec. 14 and runs from the Intracoastal bridge to West Fifth Avenue.
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Bright spots: Despite losing a football coach in mid-season because of marijuana use, the FAU football team, responded by whomping Tulane, 34-17, and ending the Green Wave’s four-game win streak.
Tulane’s starting quarterback, Nick Montana, completed only seven of 22 passes for 76 yards, three interceptions and no touchdowns. In the stands, his father, Joe, who played a little at quarterback in his day, could only watch.
Hungry seafood lovers seize the opportunity to get a fish fix Nov. 9-10 during the second annual Delray Beach Wine & Seafood Festival on Atlantic Avenue east of the Intracoastal bridge. Among the restaurants participating were such local favorites as Boston’s, Ceviche, Caffe Luna Rosa, Eclectic Eats and 50 Ocean. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
Thom Smith is a freelance writer. Email him at thomsmith@ymail.com.
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