Mike Zito

St. Louis, and the long way round

Michael Zito was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on 19 November 1970, and was singing by the age of five. By his late teens he was a working part of the city's music scene, playing the clubs through the 1990s — a period he still treats as a repertoire, not a memory, and which supplied several of the cover choices on his latest album.

His international recording career started comparatively late. Zito made his debut on the Eclecto Groove label in 2008 with Today, produced by David Z, and followed it in 2009 with Pearl River, whose title track — sung with Cyril Neville — took Song of the Year at the 2010 Blues Music Awards. Greyhound arrived in 2011 and was nominated for Best Rock Blues Album. Before any of that, he was being turned down by Alligator Records; he has since described Bruce Iglauer's blunt criticism of his songwriting as the most useful thing he received in those years.

The band years, then Texas

In 2010 Zito co-founded Royal Southern Brotherhood with Cyril Neville, Devon Allman, Charlie Wooton and Yonrico Scott, a five-piece that played its first show at Rock n' Bowl in New Orleans. The group made three records for Ruf: the self-titled debut in 2012, the live set Songs from the Road – Live in Germany in 2013, which won a Blues Music Award for Best DVD in May 2014, and Heartsoulblood that June. Zito left in October 2014 to go back to his own name full time.

He had already assembled a backing band, The Wheel, in 2012, and signed to Ruf in 2013 for Gone to Texas, the record that drew a line under the move south. First Class Life, in 2018, entered the Billboard Top Blues Albums chart at number one. A Chuck Berry tribute album followed in 2019 with 21 guest guitarists, and in 2020 he gave away Quarantine Blues while the touring economy was shut.

Owning the catalogue

Zito co-founded Gulf Coast Records with Guy Hale in 2018, based in Nederland, Texas, and built it around regional roots, blues and Americana rather than around himself — though it has since become the home for his own work. Blood Brothers, the 2023 album cut with Albert Castiglia, grew into a second touring band that Zito co-leads and that has kept its own schedule alongside his solo dates.

Life Is Hard, released in 2024 and dedicated to his late wife Laura, won the Blues Music Award for Blues Rock Album of the Year in 2025, and it is the record against which everything since has been measured. The oddest branch of the operation is Bill Murray & His Blood Brothers, which pairs Zito and Castiglia with Jimmy Vivino behind the actor for an evening of blues-slanted covers and Murray's stage business. A fresh run of dates was announced on 12 November 2025: Boston's Citizens House of Blues on 22 January 2026, Webster Hall in New York on 24 January, White Oak Music Hall in Houston on 5 February, the Majestic Theatre in Dallas on 6 February, then the Au-Rene Theater in Fort Lauderdale on 18 April and Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall in Fort Myers on 21 April.

Outside Or The Eastside

The new album was recorded at Shock City Studios in St. Louis and released on 24 April 2026 — Zito's fourth solo record for Gulf Coast, issued with Proper Music Group, SoNo Recording Group and Virgin Music Group, on deluxe gatefold CD, electric-blue double vinyl and digital. It runs 11 tracks and close to an hour, split between four new songs and a set of covers, with Scot Sutherland on bass, Lewis Stephens on keys and Matthew R. Johnson on drums, and Zito producing.

The originals are local and specific. Downtown At Midnight deals with broken trust and the wreckage of addiction, Grand Avenue sketches ordinary St. Louis routine, and the title track points at the nightlife along Laclede's Landing. The covers avoid the obvious: Lonnie Brooks's Don't Take Advantage Of Me, Buddy Guy's Too Broke To Spend The Night, two Willie Dixon tunes in Just Like I Treat You and Close To You, Nina Simone's Do I Move You from 1967, and Exile's Kiss You All Over. In an interview published in May 2026 Zito said he had wanted something deliberately lighter after the weight of Life Is Hard, and that his test for a song is simply whether he can sing it on stage and mean it.

What changed was his approach to the solos. "Normally I'd practise restraint, but when tracking my guitar takes, I found myself thinking no — I can do more," he said when the album was announced in March 2026. Reviewers heard it: Blues Rock Review scored the record 8.5 out of 10 and flagged Downtown At Midnight as the strongest thing on it, Rock and Blues Muse called the collection sturdy and unvarnished and reckoned the playing was as strong as anything in his catalogue, and Americana Highways landed on "sprawling arrangements" over a maximal blues-rock sound.

The Rockpalast tapes

A second 2026 release documents the harder, leaner live version of the same act. Live At Rockpalast 2024 was recorded on 9 October 2024 at the Crossroads Festival by WDR Rockpalast, with Doug Bykirt on bass and Matt Johnson on drums, and came out on MIG Music as a 2CD and DVD set in September 2026 after an original April date slipped. The 13 songs draw across his career — Mississippi Nights, Life Is Hard and Forever My Love on the first disc, Natural Born Lover, Dying Day and Judgement Day on the second — and the DVD carries the full concert plus an interview. The verdict in print was that it catches him at his most direct, a trio playing without cover.

Where the year goes from here

The 2026 touring year has been continuous rather than campaign-shaped. February and early March were European: Harmonie in Bonn on 28 February, then TivoliVredenburg's Cloud Nine hall in Utrecht on 1 March with Big Daddy Wilson opening. Zito played Keeping the Blues Alive at Sea XI aboard the Norwegian Pearl on 28 March, then a West Coast run in May — the MIM Music Theater in Phoenix on 18 May, Biscuits and Blues in San Francisco on 20 May, Almost Famous Wine Company in Livermore on 22 May and Poor House Bistro in San Jose on 23 May. Late summer brought three consecutive nights at Fanatics Pub in Lima, New York, from 31 August to 2 September, and the Iridium in New York City on 3 September.

Autumn and winter are booked out: two nights at the New Orleans Jazz Market on 27 and 28 October, Ground Zero Blues Club in Biloxi on 31 October, the Sapphire Room at the Riverside Hotel in Boise on 15 November, the Token Lounge in Westland, Michigan, on 22 November, two nights at Cafe Eleven in St. Augustine on 13 and 14 December, and New Year's Eve at the Old Rock House in St. Louis. January 2027 puts him on the Sandy Beaches Cruise out of Fort Lauderdale alongside Keb' Mo', JJ Grey & Mofro and St. Paul and the Broken Bones, and February 2027 returns to Europe — Nica Jazz Club in Hamburg on 8 February, Spirit of 66 in Verviers on 17 February and Blues Garage in Isernhagen on 18 February.