Mike Zito overcomes addiction, embraces blues on return trip to Cape

In some ways, Mike Zito's show next week at The Rude Dog Pub will be a homecoming. Although Zito grew up around St. Louis, he used to be a Cape Girardean himself.

But that was a long time ago -- more than a decade -- and the chart-topping bluesman said he was a different person then.

"I was a really bad drug addict," he said. "I mean, it was really bad; I was kind of wreaking havoc."

He left Cape Girardeau in the early 2000s, only to find himself, as they say, at rock bottom.

He described that period of his life on his blog, Bluesman in Recovery.

The cover of Zito's latests album, "Make Blues Not War."Submitted photo

"Ten years ago, I did not own a guitar. I had pawned them all for drug money," he wrote in 2013. "I did not have a home, could not see my kids ... I was hopeless."

Getting clean, he figured, would mean more than giving up using. It would mean giving up music, too.

"I was so bad off, I thought, 'Well, that's fine. I need to save my life,'" he said.

Somewhere, he said, when he fell for the blues, he also bought into a dangerously misguided mythos -- that for a person to really play the blues, he had to feel the blues. And to really feel the blues, he had to be miserable, using, destitute or all three.

"You know, Stevie Ray Vaughan said the same thing ... but it's so ridiculous. That's such a crazy notion," he said. "But I was 20 years old, and all my heroes died of overdoses."

But that's not the way it works, he found.

"I learned if you're spiritually fit, you can go anywhere," he said. Now, instead of temptation, he said, rocking a bar show helps him stay sober.

"God is good, and life is weird," he blogged.

And if he's returning to Cape Girardeau with a better grasp on life, his accomplishments career-wise have been equally profound.

In November, his newest album, "Make Blues Not War," took the top slot of the Billboard blues chart over records by Joe Bonamassa, Melissa Etheridge and Eric Clapton himself.

"Today, as corny as it sounds, with the new album I'm celebrating," he said. "Now is just the right time. I'm back on my own with a blues album out, so when I saw we were going to be going through the Midwest, I said, 'I gotta go back to Cape and play.'"

Especially, he said, at The Rude Dog Pub.

"I've played at The Rude Dog so many times," he said. "It's such a great, fun bar. We've been all over, and there's not a lot of times we get to set up on the floor right by the door like that."

And while he has fans around the country, Zito said Cape Girardeau stands out.

"Everyone's so awesome to me there," he said. "It's really fun to come back and see everybody."

He said the show isn't about taking yourself too seriously.

"Sometimes music doesn't have to be so serious," he said. "Some of the greatest music we listen to is just fun."

The show will start at 8 p.m. Thursday.

"Robert Johnson. Muddy waters said it, too. B.B. King showed the world that blues is good for you," Zito sings on the title track from the new album.

And if anyone should know the positive, transformative power of the blues, it's Zito.

tgraef@semissourian.com

(573)388-3627

Pertinent address:

123 N. Main St., Cape Girardeau, Mo.