DJ PIZZAHEAD

Glencoe resident Andrew Vitale uses his ample creative streak to spin records and at the same time raise money for charity.

BY MITCH HURST THE NORTH SHORE WEEKEND

Andrew Vitale’s day job is leading an innovation team of researchers, strategists, and designers at SalesForce to help customers sort out their digital futures. He’s also been a graphic designer, creative director for an agency, and helped launch the first-generation mobile order and pay app for McDonald’s Corporation. He’s spent his entire career in the digital design world.

But what really scratches his creative itch is, well, music and pizza. Vitale, who was born in Evanston and spent a majority of his upbringing in Glenview, started playing music in a band at Mary Murphy Middle School in Wilmette (he played the bass) and carried on playing throughout high school at New Trier. He played drums in a band in college and in grad school took on a tongue-in-cheek persona of rapper named Laser Love.

After grad school he put a full band together but eventually put his personal creative ambitions aside, but along the way, in a somewhat blurring of the lines between his personal and professional creative lives, he helped start the Prime Eight Art League in River North, which gave creators from around the world the opportunity to find private sector jobs which they otherwise wouldn’t have had access to.

Then COVID-19 hit and during that time he began re-evaluating everything and what mattered to him. He bought a bass (he’d sold his old one) thinking that was going to be the way to return to his personal creativity days.

“That was a catalyst for ultimately landing on this DJ PizzaHead project, which coming out of COVID was a way to connect back with my friends and family while also being able to scratch the creative itch that I was kind of yearning to do,” Vitale says. “This is a super fun passion project for me.”

What is unique about Vitale’s DJ PizzaHead is its focus on charity, and it comes as no accident. Prime Eight Art League not only brought creators from around the world for job opportunities, but the organization also partnered with the Marwen Foundation to provide art education for CPS kids who had none in their schools.

“You can bring students there and then they get ready for college etc. It's a really cool program,” Vitale says. “The Prime Eight Art League, as part of that initiative, we did an annual fundraising event, and I learned really quickly when you launch a project, to have someone even listen to us from a sponsorship standpoint or from a partnership standpoint, tying in the nonprofit angle made us a little more legitimate.”

So, when Vitale launched his DJ PizzaHead brand, he says it was a no brainer to think about him in the same terms. Just a guy that likes spinning pizzas on his record players, but also tying in the charitable angle for World Central Kitchen and helping support fundraising events for whatever the event is raising money for.

“That just makes sense for me to kind of elevate what I'm doing because people can wrap their head around it and it has a little more weight than if I was just a just a DJ, for example,” he says. “Although fun, I'm a little less interested in that. I'd love to tie in other ways to be a little more meaningful and thoughtful about projects like DJ PizzaHead.”

Vitale created DJ PizzaHead in February, and only four months in it’s taken off in a way Vitale couldn’t have imagined. He’s already got 10 or 12 events under his belt, and he’s booked at least one event a month through next February.

He’s still figuring out, in real time he says, what his business model will look like, but as of now he has fee-based events and events that he hosts directly for charities, many of which he does pro bono. He donates ten percent of his earnings for the fee-based events to World Central Kitchen

“What ultimately happens is that both kind of inform each other,” he says. There's a pretty good balance right now of volunteer events that I'm doing and then these forprofit events that I'm doing just because you might get leads from them. So far, it's been about a 50-50 split.

Naming things is just a “bizarro” fun thing Vitale loves to do. He’s named all of the bands he’s been in and has one if not more nicknames for all of his friends. As a Chicagoan, it comes as no surprise he’s a pizza lover.

“I’ve loved pizza my entire life, and I often get a sense of all things pizza because of that,” he says. “So, it makes sense from a personal brand standpoint to kind of light up this idea of pizza. I just married the PizzaHead idea or persona with the project.”

As far as his music selections, Vitale say it’s “more of a concept or a construct where the music fits in”. He doesn't really care about who the band or artist is, it just has to have a feel-good vibe to it. Revelers who attend his DJ sessions can count on some Groove Armada, The 1975, and Luther Vandross.

“Basically, if you're smooth, if you have a smooth vibe, I'm going to put you in the bucket of the playlist or the songs that I'm going to use,” he says.

One more opportunity Vitale is pursuing is partnerships with pizza restaurants. DJ PizzaHead recently performed at Grateful Bites in Winnetka, and he’d like to do more of that.

“There’s some intention there, which is also hilarious. I think there is something about the record player being a platform for pizza places to launch whatever new flavors or just partner with me in particular,” says Vitale. “That opens it up a little bit, too and makes it a little more fun.”

For more information about Andrew Vitale or to book DJ PizzaHead for a fundraising event, visit djpizzahead.com.