“In a way, I’ve done what I expected to do,” says Spencer Barnitz, who’s better known as the frontman for Santa Barbara’s quintessential good-times band, Spencer the Gardener. As we interact and talk over lunch, I can’t help but notice a soulful, quixotic quality that’s woven through his direct manner, sharp insight, and hard-earned wisdom. I’m stunned to learn that he named his band after the main character in Jerzy Kosinski’s novel Being There, for that book’s protagonist Chance the Gardener does remind me of Spencer.
“I had an ideal childhood, and then physically started falling apart,” he shares self-deprecatingly. He’s referring to the car crash that happened in 1991, right after his band had released two successful albums. The accident broke all of the bones in his face and took him out of commission for a year. “I have plates in my face,” says Spencer. Then 11 years ago, he had open-heart surgery to repair a mitral valve prolapse.
Spencer was born in Santa Barbara and raised on the Mesa. “I was the only Spencer growing up,” he explains. “Now there a lot of kids named Spencer.” He attended Santa Barbara High, where he really got into playing the guitar.