Randy Miritello and the Hop City Hellcats

Randy Miritello started writing songs in 1987.  Raised around music in rural Tioga County NY, the highway became his home and inspiration.

With stays in the Arizona desert, New Orleans, Dallas, Northern Michigan and Minnesota and finally, ending up back in Upstate NY, he found his own musical voice playing old-time fiddle and guitar and singing with his friends who later went on to form Old Crow Medicine Show.

In about 2006 Randy formed the band Horseshoe Lounge Playboys with his good buddy Will Lunn and later meeting their musical brother Darin Trass. This is where his songwriting and stage presence was really honed.  Touring around the US led to opportunities to open for such acts as Steve Earle, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Levon Helm Band and many others and HLP still performs, on a more limited basis, to this day.

In 2012 Randy formed Hop City Hellcats to explore more avenues of expression.  Being a little more “electric”, Hop City became another voice with which to write. Once described as “half-way between classic Cash and Dwight Yoakum “in style, most comfortable with an acoustic guitar in hand but, having a different array of backing instrumentation to play with, his songwriting opened up to more styles.  Leaning into his musical tastes of blues, traditional and outlaw country, rock and rockabilly he set out to be the storyteller he always wanted to be.

“A song has to work with just an acoustic guitar and a voice before it can become anything more worth listening to” is what led him back to his roots of performing more solo shows again and that has been a great experience to take back on the road.

In 2022 he signed a writing development deal with SMS Nashville and continues to work on that project.

He has three records produced with HLP and two with HCH, the last one “Relics” on the Record Archive label features guitar legend Arlen Roth on three tracks.