Check Out David Spitzfaden’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to David Spitzfaden.

Hi David, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Music has been one of the most important things to me since I can remember. My mom is a singer so ever since I’ve been in the womb I’ve been surrounded by music. I give her a lot of credit for my music taste because growing up she had me listening to Michael Jackson, Earth, wind, and fire, Kenny Loggins, etc. At first, I knew I was yearning to perform in someway, but it took a couple of tries to land on music. I tried dance (I was a competitive hip-hop dancer from the age of seven till twelve.), I was a stage actor from middle school all the way up until the end of high school, playing roles such as Shrek in Shrek, the musical Reverend Hale in The Crucible, and Jean Val Jean in Les Misérables. But it was towards the end of my eighth grade year when I first picked up the guitar. I had played Trumpet in middle school, but that didn’t necessarily feel right either. It took me about a year to take the guitar seriously. But it was once I heard Pink Floyd for the first time, and heard David Gilmour‘s guitar playing, that I just had to figure out how to make the guitar sound and make me feel like that.

Immediately after I started taking the Guitar seriously I started writing music as well and started performing in bands. My first live show I got to play with a band was at this benefit concert that they would put on at my high school every year. All the local high school bands that at least had one student going to the school could perform up to a three song set. And so about a year and a half into playing guitar I got a band together and we performed for the first time. I still wasn’t great at that point, but there was something about that experience that shifted my soul a bit and I not only wanted to do it again, but I wanted to get better at it. And so for the next year, I would play guitar for six hours straight after I got home from school neglecting homework and other projects I was supposed to be working on.

When I was 17, I got to play my first gig where I got paid. It was at this restaurant where every third Thursday of the month Kenneth Rexrode would put on a showcase and have 6 to 8 Acts play. He very kindly let me and my band have that experience. That night the headliner, after seeing my set, invited me up to jam with him and another one of my friends, Anthony Cullins. It was the first time I ever had outside validation that I was doing the right thing. The next morning, I woke up and went straight to my mom‘s room, and up until this point we had been researching colleges with the intention that I was going to be studying acting but when I walked into my mom’s room that morning, it was with the decision that I wanted to go to school for music and that being a guitarist/songwriter/singer/arranger/music Director was what it felt like I was meant to do. We Stumbled upon the Los Angeles College of music through a recommendation from a friend and that was the only school I applied for after doing their summer experience program. And so I moved to Passadena in 2019.

It felt like everything was lining up. I also at that time got the opportunity to go on my first tour with the Casey Hensley blues band in Europe. We were there for 10 days and played in Belgium Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Also, within my first three months of getting to LA I played my first show in LA ever at the Mint.

I was gigging regularly both with my band and with the Casey Hensley band and getting to travel. I was making a bunch of friends who were like-minded to me in our musical creativity. I had finished up my first quarter at LACM and was about to finish up my second quarter. It really felt like nothing could go wrong and I was unstoppable. Then about a week before my 2nd quarter was scheduled to go into finals, in the middle of class, our school president told our teacher to stop teaching and that he was about to send an email out to the whole school saying that because a lot of the other universities in LA county had been shutting their doors due to the COVID-19 outbreak, that he found it necessary to also do so and so the rest of classes for that day and for the next two weeks would be canceled and that he hoped we all stayed safe and healthy. At first, I didn’t really think much of it. I had a couple gigs down in San Diego both for my band and with Casey Hensley and I just figured having two weeks off from school would give me more time to be able to drive down there and relax in between the gigs. So excitedly, I went back to my apartment at the student housing and packed up my bags and my girlfriend at the time and I hit the road and went to go stay with my parents for what was supposed to be two weeks. Couple days later I had one of my gigs with Casey. It was for St. Patrick’s Day, and the first thing we noticed was that there really wasn’t that many people at the gig. But again, we didn’t really think much of it and we were planning to go to Arizona the next week to play a couple shows. And I also thought that worked out because I now had two weeks off from school when I was going to have to try and figure out how to make that work. And a couple days later, the US announced a mandatory lockdown.

Like many people at that time I didn’t know if the world was ending. I knew all my work had been canceled, but I didn’t really think about it like that at the time yet. My school had started online classes so I was still studying music, still able to play music but about three months in I realized that we had no idea how long this lockdown was going to take. Meaning I had no idea when I was going to be able to play music live again. I tried replicating some live performances by doing live streams, but it never really felt the same. And there was a big portion of time that I started to doubt whether or not I was doing the right thing or if I should be taking this as an opportunity to start studying something else. Something I could do without the worry of needing to be able to play live.

That all changed though, when towards the end of 2020 one of my classes that quarter was called small band showcase. And usually what the class entails is that you put a band together, a five song set, and you spend that 10 week quarter rehearsing and at the end you get to perform for a showcase in front of panelists. Now, at the time they were suggesting that we try to do it remotely where we have everybody play their parts separately from their homes, record them, and then we put it all together for a video or if we can get people together in a room we do that but we do it safely and you can just record it on your phone. Me being the overachiever I have always been, I saw this as a perfect opportunity to do something that I had been wanting to do for a very long time. I decided I was going to use this assignment to make my very first live in studio recording. I had also planned to have it professionally filmed as well so I could not only use this for my assignment but also so that I could use it as promotional material. I had a chunk of money sitting in my account from the Covid relief checks, and I thought what better way to use it than to funnel it back into my art.

Luckily a lot of the musicians I usually work with were in Southern California and all of them just so happened to have a bunch of free time on their hands and were also itching to be playing live with musicians again. So it was almost seamless getting the band together and figuring out rehearsal dates because everybody had a lot of free time. And it was also very easy to book a studio as well. So we had five rehearsals outside in my parents driveway. then on December 15, we all gathered into Thunderbird Studios in Oceanside, California, had a very small audience who were all wearing masks, and tracked six songs. Five original songs done with a seven piece band, And one Jimi Hendrix cover with me, the bass player and the drummer. It all turned out amazing, and we all had an absolute blast. There was something about that Jimi Hendrix cover, though that stuck with me, especially the connection I immediately had with the bass player, Baltazar Montoya, and The Drummer, Riku Myllykoski. It’s not easy to play a power trio setting. Each musician has to know how to fill the space correctly and confidently enough for the sound to work. And somehow on a whim and an offhand desire to record a Jimi Hendrix cover that evening I had found a trio combination that I hadn’t experienced.

After I got an A+ on that project, I decided to put out the videos, but also to release the recordings as a live album on Spotify. I’d put out some music before, that I had written in high school, and some stuff that I had done during those first three or four months in Covid, but this live album is the first thing I was truly proud of and had no doubt that I had made something special. And it’s still one of my favorite things I’ve made to this day.

It was all perfect timing I made those videos as well because, come a few months into the new year thing started to open back up. So I had the perfect promotional material to get back out there. So my newly appointed momager and I went out on many journey, getting contact information from nearly every venue in the San Diego area. Within a couple weeks we had a couple gigs booked and Baltazar, Riku, and I started having a couple rehearsals to get a 2 to 3 hour set going. It was a little slow on the get up, but there was no doubt that we were doing exactly what we were supposed to be doing. Towards the end of the year, we were gigging regularly and starting to make a little bit of a name for ourselves. My school opened back up for in person classes in the fall of 2021 so me and Riku, who also was a student at LACM moved back up to Passadena together.

From that point on I started working hard on my education. Making sure I had the right private lesson teachers. That I was taking full advantage of my classes. That’s when I met Jameel Roberts. He was my private lesson teacher while at LACM. An amazing human being and creative force. He’s worked and written with artists such as Usher, Ariana Grande, H.E.R. And many more. At one point after one of our classes, he asked me what I was doing the rest of that week. I told him I had a couple classes, but not much. He told me that he and his production partner were working on a Christmas album for Lizzo. He then asked me if I would like to come in and play guitar on that album? I immediately said yes. So I talked to my teachers and got out of my classes and later that week was in KingSize studios, recording guitar for six songs on this Lizzo Christmas album. I was equally excited and nervous because it was an amazing opportunity, but I had never done anything close to this big before. I really wanted to do a good job. But at the same time now looking back, I wish I would have just relaxed and enjoyed the process a little bit more. But at the same time, how could I? I was 22 and recording Guitar for one of the biggest pop stars of the late 2010 and early 2020s. I’m forever grateful for that opportunity because that was another one of the moments in my career that I really had some reassurance that I was on the right path.

Since then, I’ve been recording and releasing singles, my most recent one being “Monsters” which I also made a very cool music video for. My next release being a song called “Torn Apart.” Coming out on. June 17th, 2025. I’m also still super ingrained in the San Diego music scene, my hometown. I split half my time down there and the other half of my time here in the Los Angeles area. The past three years I’ve been nominated for San Diego a music awards. My first nomination was for my song “Cross that Line” feat Marian Mulock, my second nomination was for my song “Death of Me” and my last nomination this past year was for my song “Cracked the Code”. It is an honor to be recognized for my art in that way I couldn’t be more grateful. May band and I have also had the opportunity, over the last two years, to get to travel the West Coast of the country playing at universities. Some of which being University of Washington Bothell, Cal State LA, Pacific University, Eastern New Mexico University, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, and University of Idaho. These have been such fun gigs and we can’t wait to keep doing more of them. Also through meeting some amazing artist managers, Andrea Torchia, Audrey Pine Wright, and Lee Resnick, I’ve gotten to work with artists such as: Gabi Sklar, Maryjo, Greg Shilling, Kyra Fields, and Ashley Elle. I’ve also gotten to work with amazing artists like: Marian Mulock, Lendryx Barnes, Cristina Hron, Roko Blazevic, Camilla Gratton, Casey Hensley, and many more!

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Definitely that time with Covid and kind of having a feeling of not knowing if I’d continue to have a career.

Also, more recently, I was having a lot of stomach issues due to my lack of dealing with my anxieties and stress. A lot of those feelings really immobilized me. It took the fun out of being a musician for me cause I was uncomfortable so often that even when performing it was difficult to get my mind off of it. It really is key to take care of yourself both physically and mentally. In general but especially when you’re a musician. They all go hand in hand.

Also sometimes the moments that are slower and maybe I don’t have as much work. There’s not job security in this industry. Most of us are independent contractors. That can get scary. But that goes back to taking care of yourself mentally and knowing it’s okay to rest in those moments and trusting that more will come.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I make pop/rock music! But what I really try to focus more on is the feeling that the music gives and that it matches up with what the song is about. So if the song calls for a slightly different genre than what I usually do, cause I feel it will get the point across better, that is the genre I will put the song in. I pull inspo from all my favorites. Michael Jackson, Mac Miller, John Mayer, D’Angelo, and many others. I make music that comes from a deep place and a place of me usually working through my own feelings. I put it out in hopes that those who listen to it feel understood if they’ve had similar feelings. If not the deeper meanings then that they just enjoy the music itself.

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I was super extroverted. Loved performing. Always wanted to perform. Music, Acting, Dancing, you name it. I loved to play as well. You never caught me wanting to do homework. I loved (still do) legos and video games but my favorite thing was always playing outside. I used to stop my mom in the middle of movies or reading books so we could act out what just happened. I used to make my mom play “Beat it” by Michael Jackson in the car on repeat. I loved music so much. Always noticed arrangement details. I would point out horn lines and bass parts to my mom at 10 years old. It was engrained in me.

Pricing:

• If you want to book the band you just reach out at davidspitzfadeninfo@gmail.com or davidspitzfadenmusic@gmail.com and we can quote a price. 🙂

Contact Info:

• Website: https://davidspitzfaden.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/david_spitzfaden?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dspitzfaden/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@davidspitzfaden?si=P6bTRt9WpGOhzw_s
• Other: https://linktr.ee/davidspitzfaden

Image Credits
Finlay Mathias
Mike Reardon