By: Nathaniel Cross
There is something appropriately Pittsburgh about Patti Spadaro. She is grounded but adventurous, hardworking without making a spectacle of the work, and seemingly uninterested in following whichever direction the cultural wind happens to be blowing. Throughout a career encompassing rock and roll, improvisational music, education, yoga, and meditation, Spadaro has followed a path distinctly her own. Her latest single, “Mystic Misfit,” brings those seemingly separate parts of her life together in one of her most personal musical statements.
“Mystic Misfit” is a song about finding your center without surrendering the qualities that make you different.
Spadaro knows something about being different. A guitarist from an early age, she eventually attended Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, entering a musical environment where female lead guitarists were dramatically outnumbered. Rather than allowing that experience to define her limitations, she built a career around musicianship, persistence, and an exploratory approach to the guitar.
Over the years, she has toured and recorded widely, and she has opened for notable artists including Eddie Van Halen, Little Feat, and Melvin Seals & JGB. Her playing reflects the freedom of the jam-band tradition, the emotional vocabulary of blues, and the melodic instincts of classic rock. Yet technique has never seemed to be the destination. For Spadaro, the guitar is a means of communication.
That philosophy extends well beyond music.
Alongside her career as a performer and songwriter, Spadaro teaches yoga and meditation and has developed a college course called “Mindfulness in Music.” Those practices increasingly inform her songwriting, and “Mystic Misfit” may be the clearest example yet of the intersection between Patti Spadaro the musician and Patti Spadaro the mindfulness educator.
The song moves with an easy, spacious groove, supported by Eric Kurtzrock on drums, Ryan Black on bass, and Cherylann Hawk on harmony vocals. Spadaro handles guitars and lead vocals and wrote both the music and lyrics.
There is an appealing contradiction within the recording. “Mystic Misfit” feels relaxed but energized, dreamy without becoming disconnected. Spadaro’s guitar lines wander and explore, but the song always retains its center.
That is fitting, because finding the center is precisely what the song is about.
Its defining refrain, “Meet me in the middle,” operates on several levels. For Spadaro, it can mean returning to her own emotional center through conscious breathing and presence. But it also carries a larger social message about listening to one another.
In a culture where disagreement increasingly becomes an excuse for division, Spadaro suggests another possibility: perhaps people can listen deeply enough to recognize shared concerns even when they approach those concerns differently.
The title is equally revealing. Being a “Mystic Misfit” means accepting that you may not always fit comfortably within the mainstream, and realizing that this doesn’t necessarily need fixing. Individuality can become a source of strength.
That idea runs through Spadaro’s career. Her musical life has never followed one narrow lane, and today she seems increasingly comfortable allowing all of her interests to coexist.
Nature plays an important role in that equation. During the song’s bridge, Spadaro turns toward trees, energy, inspiration, and a sense of higher frequency. The imagery isn’t merely lyrical decoration. Her mindfulness practice places considerable emphasis on awareness of surroundings and experiencing the present moment.
Those ideas were expanded further in the official “Mystic Misfit” music video, filmed, directed, and edited by David Heath against the backdrop of Pittsburgh.
The city becomes more than scenery. Bridges suggest connection. Water becomes a surface for reflection. Spadaro walks deliberately along a path, suggesting mindfulness and forward movement. Sunlight gradually becomes more centered around her, visually echoing the song’s search for alignment.
And when she sings “Meet me in the middle,” Spadaro stands at Pittsburgh’s Point, the place where the city’s three rivers converge.
It’s difficult to imagine a more fitting visual metaphor.
There are also wonderful moments of accidental synchronicity. A bird passes through the scene around the reference to “higher frequency.” A flower Spadaro encounters echoes the flower on her clothing. These small details reinforce the video’s sense that awareness sometimes means simply noticing what is already happening nearby.
Spadaro performs with her sunburst Paul Reed Smith guitar, its flying-bird fretboard inlays providing yet another subtle connection to the themes of openness and freedom.
“Mystic Misfit” ultimately feels less like a departure than an arrival.
After years spent developing as a guitarist, songwriter, performer, teacher, and student of mindfulness, Patti Spadaro has reached a point where those identities no longer need to be separated. They belong to the same story.
And that may be the most compelling idea behind “Mystic Misfit.”
Finding yourself doesn’t necessarily mean fitting in.
Sometimes it means finally becoming comfortable standing exactly where you are.
