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Michael Fitz lends his vocals to Neil Youngâs latest album

By MATTHEW SINGER May 11, 2006 - Ventura County Reporter

..after graduating from college, Michael Fitz went to work offshore as a drilling fluids engineer for a little company called Halliburton. ..later, Fitz found himself in a Los Angeles recording studio alongside 99 other people, singing while their author, rock deity and newly appointed Republican dartboard Neil Young, looked on with amusement.And they said irony died on September 11.âIn a five-year period,â says the Ventura-based singer-songwriter says of his time with the now-infamous energy company, âI wrote about $40 million worth of business. They had a little downturn ... and laid off 80 percent of the company.âThat experience gave Fitz, unique insight â if not motivation â when he was hired to lend his voice to Youngâs incendiary, all-encompassing anti-Bush manifesto, Living With War. An experienced vocalist and musician Michael Fitz â was selected to be part of the ... choir bolstering the legendary songwriterâs scorching dissent. As a result, heâs now indirectly (very indirectly) embroiled in the kind of controversy only Fox News can dream up: Does a Canadian citizen have the right to criticize our country and its elected leaders? Of course he does, says Fitz. âIt used to be people could say whatever they thought and not worry about any backlash. All of a sudden, in the last four or five years, you have to watch your tongue,â he says. âItâs the opposite of what Americanism is about.âFitzâs ...politics may tag him as a native Californian, but the reality of his upbringing is betrayed by his still-twangy accent: He was born and raised in Kentucky. An appreciation for music and art forms half of his DNA: His mother played piano and wrote poetry. But his father, an employee of General Motors, was all business. He refused to buy his son a guitar; he gave him a golf club instead. âWhen I was five, I traded a baseball glove for A Hard Dayâs Night,â Fitz recalls, âbecause I knew my dad would buy me a new baseball glove but not A Hard Dayâs Night.â Still, the pull of his inner Jimmy Page proved to be too strong, and Fitz finally picked up the axe at age 11. He went to the University of South Carolina where he initially majored in music theory and composition. âBut after a couple years, I realized I didnât want to be a band director. If youâre going to write songs and stuff like that, you donât really need a degree.âHe switched to business, and the job with Halliburton followed, landing him in Bakersfield. After severing ties with the company, he moved to Ventura... While building his career, Fitz didnât stop writing and recording songs, putting together about a dozen self-produced albums (and writing over 250 songs) over the years. In April, he was working on a new disc with esteemed vocal coach Rosemary Butler when she received a call from Neil Young, who needed 100 singers ASAP. Despite growing up in the South, Fitz supported Young in his beef with redneck heroes Lynyrd Skynyrd (although he admits a love for Lynyrd Skynyrd too)... and counts them both among his influences. About three days later, Fitz was standing in a studio with him and the best session vocalists in town, singing words off a projector, â[Youngâs] vision was he didnât just want his voice, but a mass of voices, so itâs not just Neil singing it,â Fitz explains. Going in with essentially no rehearsal, it took some time to adjust to Youngâs unorthodox composition style. âOne time, we had a little trouble getting his phrasing,â Fitz says. âHe came out and went, âI donât know what I did, but I stand behind it. So figure it out.â â A handful of the singers marched out, not out of frustration but over disagreement with the content. But âthe majority of them were like me, just thrilled to be a part of it. The songs are really strong, and the materialâs good, and Neil has always been a man of integrity.âAfter the 12-hour session, which ended on an a capella rendition of âAmerica the Beautiful,â Fitz had the opportunity to speak with Young one-on-one. âI told him I had a nephew who is an Air Force doctor in Iraq and that Iâm sure heâd really appreciate the songs and I canât wait for him to hear them,â he says. âAnd he said thatâs exactly who he wrote the songs for: the troops.âNow that heâs had his brush with greatness, Fitz is reinvigorated creatively to finish his own album, titled Never Look Back. Heâs planning to have it done by June. If somehow it does catch fire, Fitz says his business is now self-sustainable enough to spend time away from the office and on the road. But he isnât plagued with delusions of grandeur.âI think the music is really good, .. the people I'm working with a great,â he says. âIt is good work ... Iâm just happy to be doing it.â 05-11-06







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