"…just get an electric guitar/and take some time and learn how to play…"
As a Los Angeles-based guitarist and songwriter, Jim Vitale has toured the world as a sideman, cut tracks as a session player and written songs featured on network TV shows .
The sideman goes solo with his debut album Love And Fate. Vitale’s sound is distilled from a variety of music. The Band, The Black Keys, Tom Petty, Buddy Holly, Lucinda Williams, The Beatles and many others have crisscrossed as inspirations and influences. Love And Fate has a Traveling Wilburys-at-Muscle Shoals vibe. Classic songwriting and an alt-Americana sound produce evocative songs which feel familiar and new. “I came up playing every kind of gig and played what the gigs called for on tours, sessions and countless club dates. All that was great but I needed to focus on writing songs so I could dial up the fun and turn it loose the way I know how to. This album is exactly that.”
Love And Fate features some of Los Angeles’s finest players: Jeff Young (Jackson Browne, Sting) on keyboards, David Sutton (Lucinda Williams) played bass, percussionist Nelson Bragg (Brian Wilson), Christopher Jon Allis (Mike Nesmith) at the drums and Gilbert “Catfish” Mares on harmonica. Shane Soloski produced, engineered and mixed the album at Misphonia Studios and mastering was done by Brian Lucey at Magic Garden Mastering.
Love and Fate was digitally released on April 12, 2024 and the street date for the album’s compact disc package was June 7, 2024. Two songs from the album, “America’s Road” and “You Can’t Let me Down,” have had airplay on over 100 FM stations and podcasts throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and various European countries and also Australia. “America’s Road” was nominated by the 2024 Hollywood Independent Music Awards for “Best Song, Americana/Roots.”