For a young man, 25-year-old singer, songwriter, guitarist Shane Fitzgerald has a passion for old school music. He integrates all the genres that fall under the umbrella of American Roots - jazz, rock, blues, folk and country - into his consciousness. As a musical chameleon, he can wear a cowboy shirt and sing Jimmy Reed’s ‘Baby What You Want Me To’’ at one gig, and at the next, play swinging jazz guitar, the likes of Barney Kessell or Joe Pass. With a presence in each of these worlds, there may appear to be a dichotomy of sorts but as he explained throughout our conversation that traditional roots are prominent in all genres as well as current musical tastes and trends.

Recently I sat down with Fitzgerald and over lunch the Rhode Island resident spoke of his early jazz studies, first with drums and later with guitar following a path from Jazz to American Roots music. He also expressed to me his interest in physical fitness and his love for, and the similarities between, cooking and music. Throughout my time with him, he waxed lyrical upon every topic we visited. Scholarly in his speech and thoughts, I found him to be quick, clever and confident.

Who is Shane Fitzgerald I wondered?

“I’m still trying to figure that out man,’’ laughed Fitzgerald. ‘’I’m a musician. I play music full-time. I grew up in Rochester Massachusetts. My family moved down to Plymouth right after covid around 2021. Shortly after my family moved to Plymouth I moved out and lived in New Bedford for a couple of years. I was playing around the Cape and New Bedford. Then I moved to Rhode Island which is where I am now.’’

I asked Fitzgerald what got him into music?

“My dad was a drummer and played out in different bands then and still does today. He’s always been a drummer and was always in bands so that was my introduction to it,’’ said Fitzgerald. “My first memory is me playing drums in my basement jamming with my brother and his friends. I was ten or eleven years old. My brother played bass and he is eight years older than me. They didn’t have a drummer so I played the drums. I thought it was the coolest thing ever especially playing with those older guys.’’

Your main instrument today is the guitar. Why and how did you switch?
“I guess I always wanted to be upfront. I don’t mean to sound arrogant or anything, it’s just that’s the place that I wanted myself to be in,’’ said Fitzgerald. “It took a while. I studied drums for about two years from sixth grade towards the end of eighth grade and by that time I had spent a little bit of time with the guitar.’’

A childhood friend of Fitzgerald’s introduced him to the studio albums ‘Nevermind’ and ‘Bleach’ by Nirvana. It resonated with him. It was then, he said, that he decided to be a songwriter. His interest in the guitar followed and flourished. By the end of Fitzgerald’s freshman year of high school, he was studying guitar with Louis Locicero of Bristol.

“Louis was a Berklee guy. A fine guitarist. I was studying with him every Thursday night until I graduated high school,” said Fitzgerald. “I was very much into American roots music then but when I started to study with Louis it became a different trajectory. He taught me styles that were based off of American Roots but more advanced. I was into finger picking at the time and I was listening to ‘John Fahey’ and a guy from Sweden ‘Tallest Man on Earth’. He started to teach me jazz and we went down that path for a long time before we even touched on the blues. Then I got into country music towards the end of my studies with him.’’

Why did you pick Jazz to study?

“It kind of picked me. I had been exposed to jazz prior to my guitar lessons with my drum teacher,” said Fitzgerald. “I remember watching videos of jazz greats, in particular, Miles Davis’s second quintet as opposed to his first quintet which was a little bit more approachable. It was very heavy stuff and I was twelve years old but I was intrigued.”

Fitzgerald found himself studying jazz guitar, then roots, blues and country. It was an atypical musical pathway considering most students start with less complex music and eventually climb their way up to the more intricate.

“I kind of worked backwards,” said Fitzgerald. I was exposed to jazz when I was very young and I think I was fortunate that things went that way. It would’ve been so much harder to digest as I got older. Jazz is like another language and you have to learn how to speak that language authentically and to play that idiom naturally if you want to find your own voice. When you’re in your mid-twenties, and you get older it’s tougher to learn, I believe.”

After high school Fitzgerald began to put bands together, trying to find the right combination of players with his eye on performing and recording as a full-time musician.

“Me and my buddy Eli, who was a drummer, got together to play. Damon, who was an old friend of mine got involved with me and Eli as well, so we had a band,” said Fitzgerald. “The summer after high school we began to employ more serious musicians. Nick jumped on board as well as Kelly who was a fantastic singer. The band was called ‘The Responders’. I wasn’t even singing at the time.”

“We didn’t make too much headway but we played in Providence a lot. We played at the JFK library in Boston. We recorded an EP and I wrote all the songs. Four songs in total. The band was more alternative music. A lot of it was inspired by Joy Division and Talking Heads. We did a bunch of shows. We played the ‘Middle East’ in Boston. Also, a place on Mass Ave called ‘Out of the Blue’ which was a cool little spot. We didn’t make any money and we weren’t even old enough to ask for drink tickets.”

As with most bands, a period of flux soon loomed large. The singer Kelly left to pursue other interests and other players came and went but Fitzgerald’s musical footprint and identity was beginning to take shape.
“After all the different bands that I started, it has brought me to what I’m doing now which is more Roots,” said Fitzgerald. ‘’I don’t want to say that jazz music is not included in this, because it is, but I got very heavily into country music when I started to learn to sing because I have a low baritone voice and it works for that genre. I went towards that - I thought it was a good fit.”

“I’ve been spending the last three years or so trying to solidify that kind of music and genre and trying to become comfortable being the front man. Now I just go out as Shane Fitzgerald with the band behind me. On the down low we are known as the Shane Gang,’’ laughed Fitzgerald.

What kind of music are you currently writing?

“My writing these days is definitely influenced by country and rootsy blues stuff,” said Fitzgerald. “There’s a little bit of a disconnect between the stuff that I write and the stuff that I perform. I can’t get away with doing a full set of originals all the time. I don’t think anyone can. Audiences want to hear what they are familiar with.”

“The people who are inspiring my writing now or I guess the people that I try to relate to in at least the modern climate are folks like Justin Townes Earle, who’s a huge influence on me. And not as much but I’ve been listening lately to Cat Clyde, a girl from Ontario. I’m also heavily into Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris.’’

When you’re ready to write, where does it come from and what’s your thought process and approach?

“There’s a million different ways to write a song. I try to connect thoughts, emotions and feelings. You have to allow yourself to allow it to happen. It would be so much easier to say I’m gonna wake up today at eight o’clock, have a cup of coffee and write a song but it doesn’t work like that with me. It has to come to me,” said Fitzgerald.
“Sometimes you get inspired by a movie or a book. I just read ‘Songs of a Sourdough’ by Robert Service (a book of poetry published in 1907). It’s got some interesting wording which I think can capture the audience just as well as a profound thought. If you word something a certain way or something sounds a certain way when you say it, it could elicit emotions and affect someone in a specific sense. But at the end of the day, as a songwriter, you need to figure out your goal when you’re writing a song.’’

What non-musical musings inspire you?

“Movies can inspire me. Clint Eastwood is great. He creates space which creates tension. He’ll just stand there for five minutes before anything happens,” chuckled Fitzgerald. “I recently saw the John Wayne movie ‘Shane’ which I was named after. The last scene where he rides off into the pitch-black valley is very powerful.”

Fitzgerald went on to tell me that he’s into exercising - holding a NASM certification for personal training - is a devotee of poetry, particularly John Keats and Walt Whitman and is a cook and self-described ‘’Big Foodie’’ who is just as at ease creating Jambalaya as he is Panna Cotta.

I asked if he noted any similarities between cooking and music?

“Yes, probably that I don’t follow the rules enough,” he laughed.

How much do you rely on social media for the music business?

“Honestly very little. I don’t think it accomplishes much. I think the whole social media thing is a little disheartening. I feel like it really confuses people, specifically a lot of younger people who are trying to get their name out and get into music,’’ said Fitzgerald. “They think that social media is the way to go, but it comes down to this: if you actually want to be a good player, and you want to be a good songwriter, go out and hang out, hang around with working and non-working musicians or be around them in some facet and soak up what they’re doing.”

These days Fitzgerald and his band can be seen at many local hot spots including The Nest, The Warren Folk Festival, The Vault in New Bedford, Cisco Breweries, Pivotal Brewery, Borealis and The Quencher in Newport, to name a few.

What’s the best advice you’ve gotten and is there any you might want to pass on to people getting into the business?

“I’m personally bad at taking advice. I feel like I have to discover things on my own. It’s not me trying to say I know it all, it’s probably just because I’m so hardheaded and I know what I want to do, but to get there, I have to take my time to sit with my feelings and my thoughts before I can make decisions — me and the other eight jurors in my mind.”

“As far as advice I would say, be authentic. Be honest with yourself with whatever you do,” said Fitzgerald. “If it’s your original music you want to pursue, then do it. And if it’s covers you want to do, make sure that it’s only covers that you love. Either way, let your choice of music be your voice.”

For more info visit Shane Fitzgerald Music on Facebook, Spotify and YouTube.

Michael Khouri is a Barrington resident writing occasionally about the Rhode Island music scene. Reach him at mkhouri@cox.net.

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