Φ is an album that I spent 4 years making with the help of very talented friends in the field of music. It speaks my heart in the language of song and story: my story, and the story of those around me. If you are interested in taking a journey with me into the depths of these tales, you may do so by finding this album on your favorite streaming service by following the link below, or by clicking that beautiful album cover next door:

PHI on all STREAMING SERVICES

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – Mike Vitale is here with ϕ, and you don’t have to try and say it. You just need to listen to it. (In case you’re wondering, it means “Phi”).

The roots indie musician from LA has been in the process of creating ϕ for quite some time. A labour of love that began four years ago in Long Beach, Vitale fuses heart and love and musings on a 12-track full-length that finds him yodeling, to enchanting us with wanderlust; inviting us to spin starry circles in lovers lengths. ϕ is a beautiful lullaby that leaves you lingering on each hook.

His first full-length acoustic, Idiosyncrasies, dropped in 2007, followed by his six-track self-titled album featuring a full band in 2012. Following the release, Vitale took the show on the road along the West Coast, playing wineries, venues, bars, and colleges in support of the album.

“The album is called PHI as this is the Greek letter representing the Golden Ratio,” Vitale explains. “It is an irrational number that goes on forever, just like Pi, but Pi deals with the circumference of circles, where as Phi deals with spirals and can be found in much of life we see around us. The way plants and trees organize the spread of their leaves for maximum sunlight to accomplish photosynthesis, for example—or the layout of a pinecone or a pineapple (it is a spiral if you look closely). The Fibonacci sequence is directly related to Phi, as well as platonic solids. It is a mystery, written in math—I adore concepts such as this.”

Vitale says the album began from a love story and grew into a collection of chapters of life teachings. While he perused an “Americana” vibe on the album, truth be told, he fell in love with simply trying to write a good song and putting out an album that didn’t specify a certain genre. Self-produced, Vitale’s fingers touched every inch of the songs that came to tying ϕ into the collective it became. “I’ve been teaching myself how to produce music for the past 10 or 12 years,” Vitale explains. “I studied music theory and composition in college, so I am an astute student of music and instrumentation—I also have many talented friends who played on this album, and as a friend of mine said, “your songs are only as good as the people playing on them.” I believe this to be true and I feel that a good producer tries to utilize their strengths in order to highlight the song. The song is king.”

And each song has its own specific story and is bookended by these two in particular: “Kathy’s Song”: a love letter to a friend’s mother who lost her battle to ALS. “Younger Days” is what he refers to as “a love letter to my life. To my friends I have made throughout the years, that lead parallel lives to my own. We grow together—yet, sometimes we also grow apart—and our perpendicular intersections of life experience are special—however, nothing is more sacred than the present moment. Now is when we choose to be the best version of our self.”

“Time Machine” triumphantly proclaims that we are travelers through time and space, fragile in our bodies, and strong in our ability to move freely within our own memories and to create and abstract our own future; we will our dreams into existence. “Empty Circle,” “No Vacancy,” and “Gone” all ruminate on the loss of love and confidence at the hands of an aborted relationship.

Also featured is “Running Away From Home”; an anecdote of a second grade Vitale, running away from home to become a Werewolf like his hero, Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf. “Imagine filtering “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” or “Tom Sawyer” through the lens of my own personal ambitions to be a werewolf in second grade after watching “Teen Wolf” 347 times—you know, for research purposes.” The song was originally released in 2015, exclusively on Bandcamp, with proceeds donated to the Michael J. Fox Parkinson's Research Foundation as a one-year-long campaign to raise money for Parkinson's Research.

The lead single off ϕ is “Home”. An alternative roots ditty with a subsequent music video that hears Vitale promising, offering, and providing; the song finds our protagonist prepared to be there for her. “Somewhat embarrassingly—or probably more accurately, just in time: I wrote the chorus of this song well over ten years ago,” Vitale explains. “However, that is where the song stopped. For the life of me, I had nothing more to provide to the contents of its possession. It had no walls or interior in which to stretch one’s legs, or to relax comfortably on the couch and admire its inner being. It had no kitchen to create soul food. It had no bedroom to make love, and to rest a weary head—let alone two—and so it sat, in my creative nexus, forgotten and alone, looking for a mate. No verses. No Pre-chorus. No body. No arms or hands to softly caress the listener. No legs to dance on. I moved from Fullerton to Anaheim to Long Beach. Nothing,” he says, explaining, “Finally, I moved to Los Angeles, California and met a girl who became its muse. She provided inspiration that manifested several verses—and the verses reverberated, yet, not off walls or roof or floor—but off of a person. People. They are home—more so than any bed in a room, in a floor plan, of a wooden house, on a block, in a neighborhood, in a town or city, could ever be.” The subsequent music video for the song was directed and edited by Vitale who taught himself how to video edit by watching instructional Youtube videos during the COVID-19 pandemic. “It became an exercise in seeing if I could tell a story with a small amount of footage,” he says. “I had approximately 1.5 minutes worth. Could I make a four-minute music video out of such little footage? I tried my best.”

Despite the set back in sheer length of time the album took from start to completion, what Vitale provides is an entire book-ended storyboard of life experiences, mashed over beautiful melodies and cozy harmonies. From “Puppy Loves” adorable yodels, to “Time Machine” asking life’s most perilous questions and seeking answers like a gentle hug to each of us, Mike Vitale invites us to push play on an album that simply chronicles the simplicity of life. It can be that simple.

Stream “Home” from ϕ wherever you find music!

In My Own Words:

The greatest gift I have as a musician is to help people realize the strength in vulnerability and story. Songwriters, if we choose such adventure, share all of the good and bad events from our lives, whether directly or peripherally, intimately and with detail—and in this sense, we are vulnerable—however, it is all in the name of letting others around us know this eternal truth: they are not alone in their feelings.

I have cultivated this notion to the best of my ability over the past several years through my own unique amalgamation of influences that champion the music I admire within the realm of written song.

With the help of several friends I put together an album of 12 songs that span several genres within the realm of Singer/Songwriter, Country, and Americana.

After concluding a tour of the United States in August and September, I have resumed my journey on the road to meet and play music with folks in the Southern portion of the United States in October of 2021.

I repeated this tour schedule in 2022.

For 2023, I am touring the United States once again, throughout the months of June, July, August, October, and November. I am playing my first music Festival called the Pensacola Beach Songwriter Festival.

In 2024, I found myself touring the West Coast, the Midwest, and the Southern United States, playing the Cactus Cafe in Austin Texas for the first time. I also played the Kerrville Folk Festival in Kerrville Texas for their New Folk Song Competition. I played a show in Whitefish, Montana for the first time. Toured through parts of Washington and Oregon I had never been to. Played my first show in Kentucky and witnessed first hand, how beautiful it is there.

I played a music concert series in the park in the mountains of Georgia, near the border of Tennessee. Played house concerts and songwriter rounds in Nashville with friends I met at the Kerrville Folk Festival. Toured through Minnesota for the first time, and played Madison, Wisconsin. Played new places in Michigan, and revisited folks in Ann Arbor and Detroit.

I did more than I can ever commit to words. I lived. I am living still.

SPOTIFY

SOUNDCLOUD

LIVE VIDEOS

SOLO ACOUSTIC: “Home”

SOLO ACOUSTIC: “Kathy’s Song”

SOLO ACOUSTIC: “Gone”

FULL BAND: “FOOL FOR YOU (Live at Studio 333)”

SOLO ACOUSTIC: “TIME MACHINE”

SOLO ACOUSTIC: “YOUNGER DAYS”

MUSIC VIDEOS

Home

Time Machine

Younger Days

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS

CURRENT TOUR DATES

TRACK LISTING

1.) Younger Days