"When I first met Mike Felten a couple of decades back, he operated one of the best record stores in Chicago. He was in that end of the business for three decades. What I didn’t realize initially was that Mike made his own music too. As a mid-‘60s teenager, he regularly rode a CTA bus from his folks’ Northwest Side home down to the Old Town School of Folk Music, taking guitar lessons from Ginny Clemens and Jo Mapes. He later ran in the same circles and played open mics with fellow newcomers John Prine, Steve Goodman, and Bonnie Koloc. It’s taken Mike a little longer than those legends to make his mark, but his skills as a troubadour are now renowned across the Midwest. He plays an average of 100 shows a year, and his series of albums for his own Landfill label includes 2013’s acclaimed Johnny Lunchbucket. Diamonds and Televisions pushes the stylistic envelope for the veteran singer-songwriter, who wrote every song on the set (“Seven Days A Week” is a collaboration with Bob Frank). This is the first time Mike has utilized a full band in the studio, adding multiple new dimensions to his approach—which he admits can be a tad difficult to succinctly define. “Victor Sanders, my guitarist and recording engineer on this album, called it Outsider Americana, if you can figure that out,” says Mike. “I’ve had so many influences. I’ve played in country bands. I’ve played in cover bands. I’ve played in blues bands and rock bands. Where does it fit? I don’t know. In my sets now, I play Muddy Waters and Buck Owens and Smokey Robinson, and it doesn’t sound like any of those people. But the songs are there, so it’s all by people I like.” The title of this album unexpectedly presented itself during one of Mike’s frequent road trips. “We were down in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and there was a pawnshop across the street from this place we went into called Hamburger King, which has been in existence since the ‘20s,” he says. “This abandoned pawnshop advertised ‘diamonds and televisions, cameras and stereos.’” Echoes of Bo Diddley’s primal shave-and-a-haircut rhythm careen through the opening “It All Ends Here.” while “Statue Of Liberty” makes a very belated debut on record. “That song’s probably about 50 years old,” Mike notes. Rest assured Mike has quaffed a lot of “Gas Station Coffee” while driving from one distant gig to the next. “Bohunk’s Daughter” was inspired by the the lives of his Bohemian grandparents, “Get Lost” flat-out rocks, and a jaunty reading of “Mike’s Last Will And Testament” is actually cause for rejoicing. “Pa Kettle’s Bastard Son” pays tribute to one of Mike’s favorite long-ago movie characters. “I love Pa Kettle,” he says. “Not too many people know who he is.” “Emma’s House” springs from a serious place. “Basically, the song’s about Emma Goldman, the anarchist. I never knew that she lived on Sheffield Avenue, over by DePaul University,” he says. “I’m writing about that experience of standing there and looking at a house that I’d walked by a thousand times, never knowing this was the place Emma Goldman got arrested, hauled in and beaten by the police.” The song sports a tinge of country. “Bob Long, the piano player, was thinking Floyd Cramer. When I wrote it,” says Mike, “it was more of a rock song. I was kind of feeling U2. But you never know where these songs are going to lead.”Apart from 15 years spent in rural Michigan after he got married, Mike is a Chicago product through and through. His father worked at Lyon & Healy, a large downtown music store, and his mother sang barbershop harmony to her last days. Mike picked up a guitar at 15, inspired by the British Invasion as well as Woody Guthrie and Big Bill Broonzy, and soon joined his first band, the Bogus Risque Weeds (Randy Murray, the trumpeter on this CD, was their lead singer). Mike eventually settled into a singer-songwriter mode, performing everywhere from the Fifth Peg, Orphans, and No Exit to the psychiatric ward at Illinois Masonic Hospital. “People couldn’t run away,” he wryly notes of the locked-down latter. “I used to do maybe two or three open mics every Tuesday night. And I would write songs for each one of them.” His current Chicagoland stomping grounds include Phyllis’ Musical Inn and the Buzz Café. Mike’s still writing prolifically, still driving long distances from one gig to the next, still the wandering troubadour with countless stories to tell and riveting songs to sing. “I like showing up with just a guitar, sometimes a microphone and amplifier, and doing my songs. So it’s kind of a troubadour thing,” he says. “Hopefully I’m getting better and better, and trying to get in contact with who I am and explain myself to the world.” --Bill Dahl (Author “Motown The Golden Years”)