By Esther Sanchez
Radio Personality, Television/Music Producer, Concert Promoter, musician and businessman are just a few of the titles that Coachella Valley resident, Jimi “Fitz” Fitzgerald can list on his long, if not diversely impressive resume. Born in the suburbs of Washington DC, Fitz spent most of his adult life in New York where he performed as a musician and host at an array of events in a plethora of venues. During the late 1980s he was in LA working on a project when he decided to make a weekend trip to the desert and fell in love with what is now home. Fitzgerald: “I just felt a pull to this desert, you know? There was this gravitation thing that, once it gets you, you can’t escape.”
Although Fitz is well known for his support and promotion of musicians whom he refers to as, “World-class artists who happen to live in the Coachella Valley,” next Saturday, June 13th Jimi Fitz will be debuting his own original music for the lucky crowd at Schmidy’s Tavern in Palm Desert. Fitz: “I am very proud that I have been collaborating with a lot of fantastic people who have made this project what it is becoming. Currently I have Lewis Richards who plays bass and is also a co-producer, Lacey Johnson on keys, Adrian Olmos on sax, Scott Wittenberg on drums, and on guitar I have both Alex Vo and Mic Dangerously of ZEN ROBBI who will be performing along with me this weekend.”
In addition to the support of top-notch musicians and producers, Fitzgerald has been blessed with pricelessly tangible support from his singer/songwriter wife, Wendy, who has created music side by side with Fitz throughout their relationship and wrote lyrics for this project. Fitz: “Wendy comes up with amazing concepts for songs. Some are very inspiring, some are party songs, others are more serious and insightful. We really take you on a musical journey. The creative process is such an amazing path to go down in life, that’s why we do it. It’s all about these collaborations and the inspiration that comes of them and the bonds that are formed. It’s something that artists know well and at the end of the day, we are really only doing what we love with people we choose to surround ourselves with.”
Surrounding himself with wonderfully talented and creative folks is one of the things that Jimi Fitz does best. He has built a reputation throughout Southern California as a guy who wants to build and foster unity amongst musicians of all ages, styles and genres. One of the ways he is doing just that is through his new radio station, FM 103.9 The Breeze, which is unlike almost any other radio station around. The concept behind The Breeze is the idea of playing a variety of music from multiple genres and eras. The ability for a disc-jockey to hand-pick the music he/she plays instead of being confined to a list of a handful of songs that are pre-determined and practically played on a loop-cycle. If you ask me, it sounds like the way the radio-gods always intended it to be. Fitz: “The old-school top-40 stations used to be that way. They would play rock, country, R&B, disco, Motown…….they played what you wanted to hear instead of predetermining what you should hear. On The Breeze you might hear something old and familiar or new and unusual. We also love to feature music from right here in the desert where we have such a rich heritage of music from basically every genre and era that American music has to offer.”
Don’t miss out on the rare and exciting opportunity to see Jimi Fitz perform his original music along with longtime desert favorites, Zen Robbie. Sat, June 13th. 9:00 pm at Schmidy’s Tavern. $5.00 cover-charge, 21 & older with ID.
