Lawyer/Musician Mike Roman takes a musical stand

Mike Roman's electric guitar weaves a spicy trail through the summertime air. He tucks his chin close to the collar of his brown button-up shirt, his fingers flying over the strings, his foot tapping in time to the music. "It's time to dance the cha-cha." The words float across the crowd, mingled with bright brass and summer rain maracas.

"To me, when you say 'Cha-Cha Time!' you can put in the word 'cha-cha,' you can put in any word you want," Joseph Miroballi enthuses, "It's cocktail time! It's naptime! It's let's-go-out-and-have-beer-time! It's a song that talks about a moment when you stop doing everything that is cumbersome and laborious and you just have a good time," he says.

Miroballi may sound like your average fan, extolling the virtues of Roman, one of his favorite musicians, but he's actually an attorney. For that matter, so is Roman. The two met 15 years ago at an Illinois Trial Lawyers Association dinner, where they bonded over their mutual love for Carlos Santana. Years later, Miroballi would co-produce Roman's album, "Cha-Cha Time!"

Roman is the 55-year-old frontman of Mike Roman and the Tellstars, as well as a successful criminal and immigration lawyer practicing out of an office in the Southeast Side of Chicago. Dressed to the nines in a snappy electric blue shirt and silky tie, Roman exudes suave confidence. When he talks about his music he leans back in his chair, lounging in a manner that suggests he's more used to cradling a guitar than a briefcase.

For Roman, the not-so-twin passions of music and the law go hand in hand. "When I cannot open one door as a lawyer, I open it with music," he says. The lawyer became rather infamous among Chicago legal circles in May when he attempted to give a copy of his CD to R. Kelly during the rapper's trial, after which he was escorted from the courtroom. While local papers ridiculed Roman's actions, he insists that Kelly had requested a copy of the CD. "It was not my intention to create any kind of disturbance," he says.

Miroballi laughs slightly as he remembers the episode, "Mike makes his own opportunities," he says, "If the opportunity doesn't present itself, then he'll make it present itself."

Roman's been making his own opportunities since he was a kid, growing up in Guadalajara, Mexico. His father died when he was a little over a year old. "I don't remember him, other than a picture frame," he says, his voice still heavy with the accent of his home country.

He did, however, know that his father played the violin, and from an early age he scratched out tunes while his aunt played the piano, songs like "Torno a Surriento," a passion-filled Italian standard that was later covered by Elvis Presley.

According to Roman, Guadalajara was also the birthplace of the mariachis, and a congregation of the musicians used to practice about three blocks from his house. He and his friends would head down to watch them play. "I would very patiently watch and play-especially the guitar players. And that's how I perked up interest in traditional Hispanic music," he says.

Roman has been a long-time fan of Carlos Santana and his unique sound, "You listen to two, three notes and you know its Carlos." The lawyer-cum-cha-cha king would eventually get a chance to jam with Santana, after Jose "Chepito" Areas, the band's timbale player, caught Roman's act with the Tellstars at Northern Illinois University.

The lawyer put the "Mike Roman" in Mike Roman and the Tellstars after he moved to the South Side of Chicago in 1963. He lived on Commercial Avenue with his mother; sister Delia; and Pachita and Jimmy Martinez, his aunt and uncle.

Roman had a tough time of it at Our Lady of Guadalupe elementary school; while he struggled to make the transition from Mexican teen to American, the nuns told the other students that they were not to speak to him in Spanish. More than anything, the young man wanted to go back to Mexico.

But, at home, Roman found solace in his Uncle Jimmy, who used to be a drummer in a band called the Hungry Five. "He would ask me to sit down with him and pick out a certain drum or percussion pattern," Roman says. He remembers learning to play composer Maurice Ravel's "Bolero" from the movie "10."

Martinez was a steel worker, a charismatic man who everyone called "the life of the party," a phrase Roman's sister, Delia Joyce, also uses to describe her brother.

"My Uncle James spent a lot of time with my brother, and I would say he was a father figure to both of us," says Joyce. Roman himself became a second father to Delia's son, Danny. He was the boy's godfather and took him to his christening. He also felt his sister's pang of loss when Danny drowned in Lake Michigan 17 years ago.

Uncle Jimmy met a tragic end as well; he died in a car accident only one year after Roman came over to America. But Roman had already heard the call of music. He and a group of kids from his block formed a band when they were in 6th grade and started playing shows around the Southeast Side. They would rent out concert halls and charge admission-that money, along with pennies pinched from odd jobs and paper routes, fueled Roman, who went on to the University of Illinois, and later DePaul University College of Law.

"We don't come from a wealthy family," says Joyce, "I think that my brother was pretty much able to make it on his own."

According to Roman, he has indeed made it-both on the stage and in the courtroom. His first case was a real heater-that's law slang for a media favorite. A young Hispanic man was charged with kidnap and rape, even though he was at his own wedding at the time of the incident.

"No state's attorney wanted to try it, because it was a loser. But it was a catch-22, because they didn't want to drop it. They knew if they dropped it, we're going to sue the City of Chicago," he says. Needless to say, the solid gold alibi, along with Roman's defense, won the case.

The lawyer has also rubbed tailored elbows with some pretty big Chicago personalities. During college, Roman worked as campaign manager for former Chicago alderman and mayoral candidate Edward Vrdolyak, who is currently heading to trial for allegedly corrupt real estate practices. The young Roman used to play with his band at Vrdolyak's events.

Looking back on his former mentor, who took the college student under his wing, Roman laughs slightly. "I'm going to be giving him my album-but I'm not going to do it in court," he says.