Review Fix chats with singer-songwriter and guitarist Mike Felton, who discusses his new album, “Fast Mikey Blue Eyes.â€
About Mike Felton:
He’s been accused of trafficking in “Outsider Americana.†Perhaps a better handle for Mike Felten’s highly distinctive musical approach would be “Chicagoana.†The Windy City is deeply and inexorably ingrained in the veteran singer-songwriter’s mesmerizing musical odes, right down to the names of streets that he’s wandered down and the shady characters haunting them in decades past. Mike knows where all the bones are buried and he’s not shy about letting us in on the secrets, blending folk, blues, and rock influences to spread the news.
Review Fix: How did you get involved in music?
Mike Felton: Grew up into. My mother and aunts all sang, cousins too. I was lucky enough to be able to listen to my parents 78’s. Louis Jordan. A lot of boogie woogie/swing. Still have a spot in my heart for Glenn Miller and Ella.
Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?
Felton: It’s pure torture. Laughing at that. It is second nature for me. I can pick out a human moment in a crowd and draw from it. An outstretched hand, a turned back. It is there all around and then I speculate on it. A silence, a sound. We don’t exist in a vacuum. The sound you hear when your heart is breaking. The scent in the air when you know everything is going to turn out the wat you want it. I remember standing in a train station on the morning when we arrived at a truce in Vietnam. The comforting embrace of a stranger in a dark moment. We’ve all been there. I just put some chords to it and add it to my album.
Review Fix: What inspires you?
Felton: Just saw an African-American man standing in downtown Kenosha with a handmade Biden-Harris sign. Burnt autos in the background and boarded up storefronts. Kind of the discord that was there when we started this country. Reminded me of Crispus Attucks. Tough time. It all comes around. We are living songs and the coda keeps sending us to the beginning. We struggle all over again.
Review Fix: What does music mean to you?
Felton: It is my life and my legacy. My first album in 2003, Landfill, was full of old song friends that I didn’t want to let die. Maybe not the best sonically, but they meant a lot to me. If you want to know me, listen. I’m telling you.
Review Fix: How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard you?
Felton: Sometimes I wonder about that. During the recording of Diamonds and Television, 2017 Roots Album of the Year, I turned to my engineer, Victor Sanders, and asked him what kind of music this was. He suggested “Outsider Americana.” I’ve played with lots of bar bands through the years and did a lot of solo gigs too, Rock, Country, Blues, whatever. I have a love for American music, but I love the sounds that other places bring too. I try and take it and maybe imitate, but it winds up sounding like Mike. I can do Hank Williams, Muddy Waters, Carter Family, Chuck Berry back to back. I see a common thread.
Review Fix: How are your live shows different from your studio work?
Felton: It is more stripped down. I can’t afford to oay a full band. Pete Mazzeri had been playing upright bass with me for a bit. I don’t like playing things exactly the same and Pete can rise and flow with me. It is organic. Takes a special musician to play live with me. I love John Lee Hooker. And if you listen to that Robert Johnson box with all the outtakes, he’s playing different songs with the same lyrics. The show is patter and interaction. The studio is the granite standard. There is a place for both.
Review Fix: What inspired your latest single?
Felton: “Detroit Woman” was written driving from Chicago to Detroit for one of the Assembly Line Concerts I did. Liked to be in Detroit, but it is five hours away. Met a lady who worked on the assembly line, quit a good waitressing job to make less for a job with a future. Then she got canned in the bankruptcy. Met a couple of great ladies singing with a church choir that jumped up and did ‘Hit The Road Jack” with me. Wish I could’ve got them to come record in Chicago.
Review Fix: What are your goals for the rest of 2020/2021?
Felton: Get this pandemic over with and survive. A lot of the places that I’ve played will be out of business and I’ll have to start over a bit. I’d like to get to Europe. I’m a Chicago boy, but I’d like to see some of the world. I’ll keep writing. Try to find some people to be right for me.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Felton: Probably get those 15/16 songs I have in the can out. Write more. Follow where it goes. Audience always dictates what they want. Studio always takes some things in a different direction. I put what I do into the hands of excellent musicians and let them interpret.
Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?
Felton: Yeah, support your local, favorite artists and venues. It’s tough out there all the time, but now it is really grim. Thanks for your love and support. Hope you like listening.
https://www.facebook.com/mike.felten
Leave a Reply