Officially Speaking (CD division): Mike Felten sings away the blues

 

Mike Felten: Fast Mikey Blue Eyes (studio release, Landfill Records)

Tracklist: Three Drinks In/ Detroit Woman/ Dead Old Girlfriend/ Swee That My Grave Is Kept Clean/ A Girl Walks Into A Bar/ Chasing A Rumor/ Homan Avenue/ Godzilla Jones/ 2302/ Y’ll Are Guilty/ Where The White Lady Lives/ Like Listening To Charlie Parker

Review: While, in one respect, Mike Felten’s 6th studio delivers what might be expected from this veteran of the Chicago streets, that’s not the whole story. To the novice listener, Felten might be put squarely in the middle of the “Americana” genre, his previous releases featuring elements of folk, country, gospel, and blues. All with a decidedly Chicago-centric feel. 

Fast Mikey Blues Eyes, like earlier Felten releases, is rich in stories of the Chicago landscape like “Homan Avenue,” an infamous worst-kept-secret where criminals don’t want to end up while in police custody. It’s a place where “the good lord forget about you and the devil never calls.” And where even the innocent are guilty. It’s the kind of story that Brit disciples of Chicago Blues like Fleetwood Mac never imagined when they crossed oceans to play with the founding fathers of Chicago Blues over 50 years ago. It’s a story that needs to be told in these times. So does the story of the resisters like “Godzilla Jones.” 

It’s the musical landscape that is different this time out. Fast Mikey Blue Eyes is firmly rooted in the kind of Chess Blues that attracted all those Brits in the first place. Felten enlists some of Chicago’s most notable living artifacts of that bygone era, people like Corky Siegal (harmonica, Siegal-Schwall Band) and Barry Goldberg (piano, Dylan, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, The Electric Flag). And if that’s not enough, Brad Elvis (The Elvis Brothers and The Romantics drummer for the last 16 years), and Harmonica Hinds (a long time fixture on the Chicago Blues circuit who immigrated from Trinidad).

Harmonica Hinds, who plays on 4 tracks, most signifies the Chicago that Felten grew up and lives in. While the most played-up aspect of the Chicago Blues legend is the one rooted in the great Afro-American migration from the Mississippi Delta, modern day Chicago is made up of a vast amount of immigrants from all areas of the globe. These are the kind of neighborhoods where Felten’s Record Emporium, a long established iconic record store was located. Every shade of human pigment could be seen as the residents arrived home at the L-train stop down the street, returning from jobs around the city and beyond. And with them, their accents, culture, traditions and sweat equity. July 4th was a big holiday for all, one in which the Record Emporium would hold a “feed-the-neighborhood” event in front of the store, which included blood pressure checks by real nurses (you can’t even get that in a doctor’s office anymore). And at Record Emporium, Harmonica Hinds had a venue to play in-stores and hawk his CDs. Bonds were forged. Times change - not always for the better.

 

When the owner/ruling class decided the 3-flats that proliferated the neighborhood, along with its numerous L-stops in the region and its close proximity to Wrigley Field, were prime for luxury condos with young well-heeled and well-moneyed tenants, the neighborhood took on a decidedly pale complexion. That was stage one. Stage two was for retail store landlords to capitalize on the influx of professional class residents by raising rents drastically – rents which no record store or used clothing store could afford. Hipster bars and themed restaurants were now in vogue. Felten saw the writing on the wall and started a second career - one that he had abandoned in younger years, although never completely.

Felten had spent his teenage and early adult years as a member of the Chicago folk scene. Although he never recorded any records, he shared the stages with such luminaries as John Prine and Steve Goodman. When the responsibilities of raising a family demanded a more stable income, he switched to selling used and new records. But he never put down his guitar or songwriting skills. When the real estate market outpaced the record business he was, at last, forced out of business. He started releasing CDs on a regular basis and played 150-200 gigs a year, mostly in small music venues and coffee shops with the occasional midwest tour mixed in. In his spare time he volunteered as a guide at the Museum of Chicago History, teaching classes of children, many of them immigrants, many others multi-generational residents, about the people’s history of Chicago – not always the history you read about in school books. This is the type of oral history you can find on any of Felten’s albums.

Fast Mikey Blue Eyes delivers that, but also an element more personal in nature, starting with the title. “My Mikey blue eyes” is how his wife, Gail, used to refer to him. Used to – Gail passed away two years ago. FMBE is a Blues album, start to finish. It’s an up-tempo blues album – juke joint music. You won’t find any country-ish tales here – no “drowning in my tears” sad-eyed tales of woe. Chicago breeds a certain toughness that you won’t find in more southward states in the midwest. It starts and ends in two different sides of the same picture. “Three Drinks In” is a rollicking, rambunctious tune fueled by Goldberg’s barrel-house piano, Siegel’s vibrant harp, and Brad Elvis’ solid back beat with the focus on communal drinking. “Like Listening To Charlie Parker,” the closing tune, is a slow-to-mid-tempo song that reflects the alone moments. But one where Felten even manages to interject a little dark humor (the “hipster” verse is hilarious). 

Brent Best of Slobberbone once wrote a song called “Find The Out,” which is sort of a self-help song about lost loved ones. With Fast Mikey Blue Eyes, Felten has chosen to stick to The Blues, a genre that, at its best, is all about lifting ones self up, no matter what you might have heard. Felten succeeds here with his most exhilarating release yet. Now get out on the floor (your living room floor until further notice) and DANCE to it. You’ll find the out for covid isolation. [Bill Glahn] 

Sample view. Get dancin'!