Mike Owens is an Americana roots musician who plays several instruments but is known primarily for playing harmonica and slide guitar on resonator type guitars. Originally from Southern Missouri, he now lives about 50 miles from Chicago in rural Indiana. He formed an Americana band “THE HOMEMADE CHERRY BOMBS” longtime music partner Rudy Albach on bass and John Luke on drums.
As a young boy, Mike worked as a laborer in truck patches, green houses and washed pots and pans in a restaurant, quickly learning about hard work for low pay. Chefs, waitresses and dishwashers would joke about how Mike would loudly sing in the heat while scrubbing the burnt pots and pans. After high school, he enlisted and served in the Army in Vietnam. Later, he went to college as an adult and received a bachelors degree.
He has worked on the farm, in an automotive plant, in a furniture factory, in a meat packing plant, as a construction laborer, at stuffing sale paper mailings, worked on the railroad, and served as a railroad union representative. His work often had him traveling and working in areas of Missouri, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kansas and Illinois as well as states outside the Midwest .
His music, a roots melting pot of those areas from the Ozarks to Chicago and beyond, reflects a blend of musical styles ranging from old style country to blues. He has been described as “a force on stage”, “powerful” and “an energetic blues man” .
