Who Is Michael Hozz

Long before he had a guitar in his hands, Michael Hauswirth was already listening. 

At four years old in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the hum of a vacuum cleaner, the creaks of an old house, and the instruments in his grandfather George’s hands were enough to pull him in. Music didn’t arrive as a lesson. It arrived as a feeling.

Christmas morning at nine years old made it official. His parents gave him his first guitar. He still calls it the best Christmas he ever had. 

That was the start of a life spent chasing sound.

Since 1988, Michael—known on stage as Michael Hozz—has made a living doing what that little kid heard in the walls: playing, writing, and connecting with people through songs. He has opened for and shared stages with national acts, carried a songbook that stretches from the 1950s to right now, and never stopped adding to it. Covers keep rooms singing. Originals tell the rest of the story.

Those originals live in a deep vault. Dozens have already been released. Many more are still waiting. On nearly all of them, Michael plays every instrument himself and records everything in his home studio, Hozz Studios. No shortcuts. No one else. Just the songs as he hears them.

He lives in Republic, Michigan, still writes, still records, and still shows up night after night—solo, with longtime bandmates in Uncle Ugly, in acoustic partnership, and in country and rock outfits that have carried him across the Upper Peninsula and beyond. Almost a hundred of his songs are out in the world now. 

Search Michael Hozz and they’re there.

The vacuum still hums in the memory. The guitar from that Christmas morning is still doing its work. 

The journey that started in a U.P. house has never really stopped.

On Stage and Off

Music has never been a single lane for Michael Hozz. It has always been a life with more than one room. For nearly four decades he has played guitar, composed and sang with Uncle Ugly, the band he helped start in 1988. Members came and went. Successes came and stayed. What remains is the original core—still touring, still recording, still putting songs on the radio and videos on screens after all these years.

He sits behind the drums for Tom Katalin and the Highway 41 Band, a country outfit rooted in Michigan’s Copper Country that carries its sound across the northern reaches of Michigan and into Wisconsin. Different chair. Same heartbeat.

With Gena Johnson he becomes half of Iron Daisy Acoustic: his guitar and voice beside a voice that can scorch and soothe in the same breath. Together they move through an ever-changing mix of songs, and people keep showing up because the room feels smaller and warmer when they play.

He drums again with Boots and Sandals, another country band of seasoned players and a set list that knows how to work a night.

Music On Manitou

For five years Michael Hozz has been the curator of Music On Manitou—a series that asks something rare of both the artist and the audience. The stage sits on Lake Michigamme, reachable only by boat. There is no drive-up, no accident of walking past. 

You choose to go.

He has spent those seasons gathering the region’s most respected players and a few voices from beyond Marquette County, then setting them down on the water where the evening can do the rest. The music travels across the lake. The lake answers back.

Season 6 begins in June 2027. Same water. Same invitation. 

Another summer of songs that you have to cross the lake to hear.

Brought to you by the Iceman Mark Hangen!

season 5 recap

And then there are the nights that belong only to him. A handful of solo acoustic shows where nothing stands between Michael and the songs—just one musician, the guitar, and whatever the room needs to hear.

Away from the stage he is an ordained minister. A man who loves dogs, hunting, fishing, hockey, family, God, and America. Not in that order. Just all of it, at once, the way a life is actually lived.

Same hands. Same heart. Different rooms. Always music.

Contact The Hozz