METRONOME MAGAZINE

JUNE 2022

Born in France to American parents, actor-producer-singer-songwriter, Fritz Michel has enjoyed a storied career. Known for his roles in Semmelweis (2001), Syriana (2005) and Angels & Demons (2009), Michel graduated from Yale University with a degree in history and worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council before finding his true calling. Once the muse hit, Michel was off on an enviable journey that most can only dream about. I spoke with Fritz one March afternoon and he told me about his melding of acting. producing and music - two passions that continue to consume him... 

METRONOME: You have lived quite an interesting life. You were born to American parents in France. What brought your folks over there?

Fritz Michel: My father was a corporate attorney. They had a Paris office back then.

My parents went over there a couple of years before I was born. I lived there up until the fourth grade. I grew up speaking English at home with my parents and French at school. Then we moved to suburban New Jersey when I was in the fourth grade. I had a French accent, wore shorts and the whole thing (laughs).

METRONOME: That sounds cool.

It's cool looking back at it now, but it was a bit weirder then. I never played Little League baseball. I had an accent. I never did Cub Scouts and all these other things that kids do.

My parents were pretty strict with television too. I thought the Dukes of Hazzard was a Duke with a castle in France (laughs).

METRONOME: What came first for you, acting and producing, or music?

They were always intertwined. I was a huge fan of music. I've played guitar since I was a teenager, but I was also an actor. My first part was in a show in the fourth grade playing Tom Sawyer.

I did plays in college at Yale and decided to really make a go of the acting. That went pretty well for me, I stuck with it for a bunch of years, but I always had music going through my life. I did musicals, I was directing plays, but music was always a part of my vocabulary.

METRONOME: You were positioned in one of the best cities in the world, New York, to pursue an acting career.

Yeah, it was a good time to do it. The scene in New York during the 1990s was great. There was so much small theater, and you could really get your feet wet. It was during the golden age of indie movies. 1998 and 1999 were the best years for movies in history. There were a lot of opportunities to work then. I took advantage of that and met a lot of people and made a lot of connections.

Then I went out to Los Angeles for the better part of 10 years.

METRONOME: How did you break into the business? Did you have an agent?

I was pretty fortunate. A couple of things happened for me. I got an agent fairly early on, which was a huge break. Then I met a playwright named Oren Safde that I collaborated with for 15 years. A lot of hy journey has been about the people I work with. Oren's dad is a very well-known architect, Moishe Safde.

Oren and I did a number of plays together, but especially focused on an architecture trilogy during the early 2000s. It was well received in New York and Los Angeles.

When I got to Los Angeles I was fortunate enough to be able to use my French. I always played French character actors. I was always a French waiter or a French banker or a French doctor. I could speak the language fluently. Those were the roles that I would get.

I've met a lot of great people along the way that have turned into collaborators through the years.

METRONOME: During that time, were you playing music? Were you in a band?

No, not really. I didn't start performing until 2016. I was in New York that fall, and had an opportunity to play in a band. I had just done David Mamet's play, November, up In Massachusetts on Nantucket. I have done a ton of theater there. I have a long-standing connection with the island.

When I came back to New York I had a chance to play in a band. I was the bass player. I have never really played the bass before, but it came naturally to me. I thought, This really suits me. I threw myself into that, just small things. Then I started a jazz quartet out of that. There were more opportunities to play small cafés and things like that with the jazz group. That was going along nicely until Corona hit.

When Covid hit and everything shut down, that's when I started having songs come to me. I thought it would be a really interesting way to combine directing and performing and storytelling - all these things I love to do along with music. It really all started for me during the pandemic.

METRONOME: Did you record anything before Covid hit?

No. I was just playing in a cover band and we were playing classics. Then I was playing jazz standards. Playing and performing really gave me a window into doing more. I have studied guitar for most of my adult life.

METRONOME: Did you study with any one of note?

Yes. Tony Romano is a pretty well-known jazz guitarist. A guy in Los Angeles named Kit Alderson really helped me a lot. Then, Tosh Sheridan has produced most of my music.

He's a fantastic guitar player and a Berklee graduate. He's become a close collaborator of mine. He produces a lot of my songs.

METRONOME: How did you meet Tosh?

I met Tosh through my jazz guitar teacher, Tony Romano. I was looking for a producer, so called Tony and asked him who he used.

He said, "Go see Tosh. You're going to love him. You guys will get on great."

I made some demos on GarageBand and then called Tosh and we were off to the races.

We started recording during the summer of 2020. I released my first song right after the election. Then I released four singles last year and recorded a new EP that will be out in June.

I was learning how the whole online ecosystem works. It was great. I got back into making videos. I worked with a bunch of filmmaking colleagues. All my songs have pretty elaborate videos on YouTube.

Creatively for me, it's been an amazing period to be able to combine all these passions of mine. The online ecosystem is so interesting that you can reach different kinds of audiences in such a specific way around the world.

I sing a song in French on the EP. I thought maybe I could crack this as a singer and bring my French story into my singing and songwriting. That's why I sing that song in French. I'm hoping it will lead me to audience building and to get in touch with a different piece of myself.

METRONOME: "We Are What We Are" is a well orchestrated, radio-friendly song.

What inspired the writing of that?

That came to me with a melody first. I had a building bassline in my head. I was thinking about the connections we make in life. It reminded me of all the connections I've made through my acting. It reminds me of many experiences and trying to be at peace with some of the mysteries of life. 

METRONOME: That song is well produced. Did you work on it for a while in the studio?

Jason Cummings produced that one. We got the basic track down pretty quickly then he layered it. We did it in probably three or four sessions. We were always doing some kind of work to it.

METRONOME: What instruments did you play on that song?

I just played the acoustic guitar on that one. Jason played the electric guitar and Doug Yowell played the drums. Jason also played the Mellotron for the orchestral section. I'm thrilled with the way it turned out.

METRONOME: "Suddenly You Love Me" is a 1968 song originally done by the Tremeloes. What made you choose to cover that tune?

That started with "Siffler Sur La Colline." That was a song I listened to a lot as a kid growing up in Paris. It was done by a huge popstar, Joseph Ira Dassin, in France when I was a kid. He became a sensation in France, but had an American father and grew up in Brentwood (laughs).

I thought, What if I brought some French music to America?

I'm going to try this.

Then I found out about the Tremeloes

English version from 1968. I thought, this is pretty cool too.

Both versions are essentially a cover of an Italian song, "Uno Tranquillo," written by Ricardo

Del Turco. The stories they tell are very different. The English version is about an on-again, off-again romance and the French one is about a guy trying to pick up a girl and she says,

"Go whistle up on the hill."

METRONOME: How was the licensing of the song handled or is it considered public domain?

The licensing was really easy. I went through Distro Kid and they handled the whole thing. Unless it becomes a massive hit, it's a pretty simple process to license a song.

METRONOME: Your tune "On The Rocks" reminded me of "It Never Rains In Southern California" by Albert Hammonds. Are you familiar with that song?

I was thinking of making "On The Rocks" have that kind of 70s swagger. That was definitely the sound I was looking for. I wanted it to have an urban feel to it.

METRONOME: What spawned the writing of it?

My grandmother was a collector of children's literature. I was looking through an old edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped and came upon this amazing picture.

It had some great imagery. I wanted to make it relatable in a song. That song came very, very quickly for me.

METRONOME: My favorite tune on the EP was "King of Corona." What influenced the writing of that?

"King of Corona" is actually one of my earlier songs. That was really borne from my personal experience during corona. That's almost my origin story as a songwriter. It was about being in my apartment for six weeks solo with the walls closing in. I got sick with the virus. All of a sudden you saw no one. It was really eerie. I was completely quarantined and couldn't connect with anyone, I was sweating it out in the dark and walking the streets alone. I wasn't able to see my children for quite some time. Everything was changing in the world. In Manhattan, it was like a bomb had gone off. Everything was shut down. It was super bizarre. That's where that song came from. I wanted to write something that my listeners could relate to.

METRONOME: The videos that you shot for your songs are excellent. Who did the choreography?

I met a guy through some theater work that I had done. His wife was a dancer. She choreographed all of the dance parts. That's the "We Are What We Are" video. I thought it turned out beautifully. That video really serves the music. I wanted all types of people in it.

All shapes and sizes. We are what we are.

METRONOME: What's coming up in the future for you?

I'd love to perform this music live. I've been in the studio for the last four months recording and now I want to get them in shape to play them live. I've been working on them with Tosh as an acoustic duo. If that goes well, I'm thinking of getting a band together. I feel like I have a full set with all of these songs. If I get a band together, rock & roll is where it's at. Maybe it'll be in France, maybe it will be in London, maybe it will be in Los Angeles or maybe it will be in New York. How cool would that be... if I'm so lucky.

- Brian M. Owens