MIKE ZITO Source: The Sacramento Bee Date: 09/2008 Writer: Jim Carnes

Mike Zito's national debut CD is on the Eclecto Groove label – and that couldn't be more appropriate.
The music is eclectic – Zito's "Holding Out for Love," followed by Prince's "Little Red Corvette," for example – and it grooves (see above).

The singer-songwriter-guitarist grew up in St. Louis and broke into the local bar scene there when he was 19. He has spent half his life as a musician, although it's only recently that he hasn't also had to hold a day job, he said in a telephone interview Monday as he traveled to Lake Tahoe to perform.

He has worked in a music store, a guitar shop and for a guitar manufacturer, "but I never wanted to have another job than making music," he said. "I always wanted to play and get paid to play."

While he was working in that St. Louis music store, Zito also was "playing music six, seven nights a week for money," he said. "I got married really young and always had financial obligations." (His second wife is a teacher in southeast Texas, where he now lives.)

One of Zito's gigs was playing an acoustic set "every Tuesday, four hours a night at a bar. That's a lot of time to fill. There were always songs that people wanted to hear, and I kept trying to find ways to do songs I wanted to do. I've got a whole slew of covers – done my way."

Zito's CD is called "Today," and that, too, is appropriate. It's his beginning, a manifesto from a man who's ready, starting here and now. "It's a journey … that has really just begun," he said. "It's what I have sounded like in my mind forever."
Zito's singing "echoes Al Green," the Toledo Blade says, but comparisons to Bob Seger, John Hiatt or Steve Winwood would be just as accurate. It's a voice that is soulful and bluesy – and assured.

"I've always had a very specific sound – what I know the songs should sound like, what I would like people to hear," he said. "That takes a long time, and a lot of effort, and you have to have other people who can help you."

Among those people who contributed to "Today" (besides his band, Mike "Bike" Baker on bass and Ian Bailey on drums) are producers David Z and Tony Braunagel, and executive producer Randy Chortkoff. Working with that crew – "people who, what they do for a living is make people sound good" – made his first "real" recording, as he calls "Today," "the most enjoyable experience in music I've ever had," he said.

"They could hear what I was going for, and they could get it there. Obviously, I want to get better," he said.
But "Today," he says, is his, "OK, there it is. That's what I was talking about."