Have you ever wondered about the offstage world of a professional musician? Every month in this column, bluegrass now will provide a glimpse into the lives of some of your favorite bluegrass stars. To see captions, just move your cursor over the photos!

Mike Marshall has just made a big mess in his kitchen. “I did two days' worth of tomato sauce! I roasted the bones, caramelized the onions, and cooked everything down.” Bones? “Oh, I used pork neck and beef neck bones, and some ribs. I roast them for a couple hours, and then throw it all together with tomatoes and spices-I have pretty good herbs this year. The flavors are going crazy!”

Among his fellow musicians, Mike's culinary skills are legendary. “Cooking is quite a passion for me. When I moved from Florida to join David Grisman's band here in California, it became very evident that I was too broke to afford the food I'd grown up on! So I'd call Mom: 'Hey, how do you make those roasted peppers? What's the deal with the sauce?' Now I make all my own pastas by hand-ravioli, gnocchi, all that stuff.”

So, it shouldn't surprise anybody to learn that in spite of his very Anglo sounding surname, Mike is of Italian descent. “My great-grandfather was from Italy, near Naples, and his name was Marciarielli. He came to America in about 1885, speaking no English, and moved to a community in Western Pennsylvania where there was a lot of mining. He worked in a limestone quarry run by Scots and Irishmen, and they said, 'Welcome to America! Here's your new name.'”

His mother's family is from the Abruzzi region of Italy. In 1984, Mike had the opportunity to play at a bluegrass festival there. He took along a couple of very special guests. “My mother's dad came to America in 1912. She and her cousins used to write letters back and forth, but nobody had been back to the village until I brought Mom and her sister there. We took the train down and met all the relatives. It was life changing, in every way. And the food!” He groans happily with the memory. “Every day we were taken to another relative's house for another three-hour lunch!”

These experiences are precious. “When I bring music to people, often they want to share the things they do and love. I've certainly gotten to eat way above my raisin' because of this business!” Recently, Mike and his wife, violinist Kaila Flexer, began an unusual musical/culinary exchange; he chuckles with delight when he talks about it. “I'm trading guitar lessons for cooking lessons with the head chef at Chez Panisse [the highly acclaimed Berkeley restaurant founded by legendary chef Alice Waters]. My wife is teaching his son violin, so we get together, have two lessons, and then cook!”

Mike, Kaila, and their four-year-old daughter Lucy make their home in Oakland, in California's Bay Area. He has an elaborate garden and he even makes his own wine. “I've got about 20 gallons of Cabernet that we picked ourselves north of Sacramento last summer. One of the recording engineers I work with is into this, too. That's what we do: we make records and wine!”

The Marshalls have a lot of fascinating cross-cultural musical adventures. Mike talks about his wife's work with great admiration. “She does a far-out Eastern European klezmer/Bulgarian fusion of her own. It's really interesting, with a Gypsy flair and lots of odd meters. We're both music junkies, and we keep our ears wide open for everything out there.”

Mike has recorded with Psychograss, Darol Anger, Stephane Grappelli, Mark O'Connor, Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer, Joshua Bell, and now Chris Thile, with whom he just released Into The Cauldron, an exciting new collection of duets. His influences are numerous. “I fell in love with Brazilian music a few years ago when I went down there. I was brought to my knees. There's a whole tradition of playing mandolin in Brazil called chorro. Small four- or five-piece bands play this music in the cafes and bars-intricate, amazing melodies. I went gaga.” Mike came home with CDs and sheet music, and spent the next four years immersed in the style, playing with all the Brazilian musicians he could find in the Bay Area.

“I think it's done wonders for me, rhythmically and melodically. It really affected how I think about music.” He laughs as he considers the experience. “The first time that happened to me was when I was 12 years old and went to my first bluegrass festival!”

Visit Mike online at www.mikemarshall.net.