Kerrville Folk Festival 2024 | New Folk Song Competition

April 17, 2024 by Mike Vitale in Music, New Music, Life, Live Show, Good Music

Wow, what an exciting morning! I have the privilege of being one of 24 finalists in the Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk Song Competition. There were 1,341 extremely talented entrants this year, a record number of folks who have the ability to make this world a better place, one song at a time: it is a blessing to share this lifetime with such beautiful creators.

I am so thrilled to have the opportunity to widen my constellation of new friends at this Festival. What a lovely opportunity this is to fill the love battery with the company of such good hearts and minds and spirits.

I was taking a look at all the incredible creatives who have played this festival in the past, and feel gratitude to be in such stellar star stuff company: Nanci Griffith, Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen… there are too many to name. Headlining performers have included Willie Nelson; Peter, Paul, and Mary; Lyle Lovett; Mary Chapin Carpenter.

I sent in six songs this year, and the two that were selected are called “Infinite Jest” and “Want”.

Infinite Jest

https://youtu.be/Rm0y-DDh7NY?si=WSaaLUosdx12ucCF

Want

https://youtu.be/071Ik0FA0fo?si=RwQZ3CFno_fno8dm

Thanks again to Kerrville Folk Festival for what they do, and for listening to all of us share our hearts, minds, and souls.

“Life is a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.” - Bill Hicks

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UPCOMING SHOWS

Infinite Jest | Mike Vitale (Original)

April 06, 2024 by Mike Vitale in Love, Life, Good Music, Music, New Music

In Buddhism, our nature within The Universe is described as self-excitatory intelligence, or in other words, The Universe creates itself, which in turn, creates us, to perceive itself as a Universe. We are all a small piece of some larger cosmic entity, when one stops to think about it.

In Taoism, Verse 1: “The Tao (or way) that can be told, is not the Universal Tao (way). The name that can be named is not the Universal name. In the Infancy of the Universe, there were no names (there was no one to perceive it). Naming fragments the mysteries of life into ten thousand things and their manifestations.”

This is to say, as smart as we might think we are, we do know the Universe. It is a mystery to us. One that we feel, rather than try to rationalize by giving it a name, or giving God a name.

Bill Hicks, a young stand-up comedian, would end his sets with this short sentiment written below. This was a man who had cancer, and knew he was going to die. He started experimenting with hallucinogens to try and help make peace with his own ultimate and rapidly approaching demise:

“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the Weather.”

Think about that for a second. It is powerful. You are capable of so much. You are capable of expressing yourself, and bringing joy to others, to create jokes that bring people together in laughter, or to write a song that unites folks under a common thread.

Have you ever thought about how art is the medium in which truth is universally accepted by the masses? That is how comedy works. We laugh, because it’s true. We sing, because it’s true. Truth is subjective. We are all experiencing the Universe subjectively.

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UPCOMING SHOWS

"Infinite Jest" | Mike Vitale (Original)

December 10, 2019 by Mike Vitale in Life, New Music

Faith is a curious creature, who even when roaming the confines of a dictionary, grazes on the delights of strange words:

faith
/fāTH/
Learn to pronounce
noun
noun: faith
1.
complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
"this restores one's faith in politicians"
2.
strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

I have had times in my life where I have lacked faith, and yet others where the fruits of faith were in overabundance for harvest.

There is so much that we feel in this world... versus say, think in this world—and the grey area between those two opposing forces of dichotomy seems to be where this creature dwells, grazing on those strange delights of words I was mentioning earlier—perhaps, waiting to be noticed, so that another may appear, just like it—like the spooky action at a distance that Einstein talked about in 1947.

Something like quantum entanglement in the realm of particles and quantum mechanics is so incredible to behold, but it doesn't mean we understand how it works.

We instead just might observe a photon lighting up, and find another just like it, identically lighting up at exactly the same time, in an opposite place in the universe (which we have, and continue to). We build computers using these discoveries, yet we are no closer to understanding how something can be a hazy cloud, until it is observed. I know all of this sounds like nonsense, but it is what quantum mechanics is trying to make sense of, at the moment. We have people postulating that we all live inside a holographic projection, right now, in an effort to find a unifying theory for everything. It's called The Holographic Principle.

I don't know where to begin trying to understand things as wacky, intangible, and deep as this—but then again, maybe that's the reason why its this convoluted in the first place. Who knows for sure? Not me. But, I can write a song about it.

Infinite Jest
words and music by Mike Vitale

Maybe God gave the punchline
And we were too young to interpret the meaning
Or maybe we’re all just a comedy of errors
And so on and on logic wrestles with feeling

Universe, are we all alone
in an endless space full of human abstraction?
The chills running up and down my spine
A conversation, or just a chemical reaction?
And if God already tipped its hat and gave its last regard
With infinite jest and a question written in the stars

Who here thinks God’s got a sense of humor?
Maybe one day it’ll raise your hand
Despite what you’ve read between wonderment and rumor
Our only sacrament is our ability to understand

The chicken from the egg?
Or the egg from the chicken?
We take it all so serious with our scientific method
If we could learn to laugh with egg on our face rather than be angry, indifferent, and tepid

and mixed up somewhere between particles and strings and the king of kings...
We might find an answer
Or maybe God just speaks in stones and trees and the bones of things like an exotic dancer

Thanks to everyone on Patreon for helping me to make music videos, and to record, mix, and master music all the music I've been posting to Spotify, Apple Music, and all the streaming services. I'm very grateful.

If you are interested in being a part of it, you can learn more here: http://www.patreon.com/mikevitalemusic

A very special thanks to patrons Amy Armitage and Fernando Gallegos.

Long Beach Independent

May 31, 2018 by Mike Vitale in New Music

I recently had the opportunity get some press for my new acousitc album EMPTY CIRCLE by the Long Beach Independent. Here is a link to checkout the article below. Thank you kindly to Jewell for the interview!

http://www.longbeachindependent.com/2018/05/listening-to-mike-vitale/

EMPTY CIRCLE is now available on Apple Music

May 14, 2018 by Mike Vitale in New Music

Empty Circle by Mike Vitale (that's me!), is now available for digital streaming on Apple Music. If you are an Apple Music user, go ahead and click here to give it a listen:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/empty-circle/1384636182

If you're not an Apple Music, go ahead and click it anyway. I have no idea what will happen. Let's find out!