The Official Mike Keneally Website

Hi! It’s Mike again! Hey! And look:

OFF-BROADWAY (a one-off 2006 live performance by Mike Keneally, Bryan Beller and Eric Slick) COMES TO BANDCAMP THIS FRIDAY, May 1!

Off-Broadway will be available at 11:59pm PDT this Thursday, April 30 here. And you won’t believe all the other MK treasures that you can get right now at Bandcamp!

All the archive releases we’ve put out as Bandcamp exclusives over the past several years have held their share of revelations for me, but probably none more so than this one.

Scott Chatfield and I, the co-cap’ns of Exowax, will periodically scour our respective archives, looking for interesting stuff to release. Recently Scott unearthed a massive, stuffed package, mailed to us twenty years previously by a gentleman named Mark Leaver, and residing undisturbed in Scott’s home since then.

This package proved to contain a trove of CD-Rs, with attendant and copious documentation generously provided by Mark, of a one-time show played in St. Louis by what was billed that night as The Mike Keneally Trio – me, Bryan Beller, and Eric Slick, a drummer I’d played with at several Project/Object gigs, but I’d never played my own music with him before. Mark had wired his digital recorder into the soundboard that night and ended up with a serviceable batch of multitracks.

Bryan and I had been traveling together for three weeks prior to this show, doing a bunch of Taylor Guitars clinics in music stores, with Scott tour-managing and merch-slinging. Several months before, a MySpace friend in St. Louis named Dan Kinney had taken note of our upcoming clinic schedule, and reached out to me via the MySpace private message pipeline (the very same pipeline I’d use to secure a gig in Dethklok the following year! MySpace works!!) and proposed that we end our tour with an electric gig in a St. Louis venue, which he then proceeded to set up. It was also Dan who suggested using Eric Slick for the gig, a perfect choice – I’d heard him absolutely eat Zappa material alive, and he was only 19 years old at the time of this St. Louis gig.

The three of us rehearsed the songs, some of my hardest stuff, for the very first time at the venue during soundcheck, and a few hours later we played this gig, and pretty much laid waste to the place. There is a really ferocious energy to this show that seems entirely connected to its one-and-done nature – we didn’t have any other gigs booked afterwards, for us to refine and hone the material further – this was IT, our one shot, and we just sank our teeth into the stuff.

After Scott had found the multitracks after their twenty years spent in a box, I spent several weeks in March and April mixing them at home (with sonic insights offered by Sarah Crochet upon request) and I was frankly flabbergasted by what I heard in the tracks. It understates the case considerably to say that the recording exceeded my expectations. I think it’s fantastic. It’s loud and raw and real and I sure do hope you enjoy it very much; I’m freaking thrilled with it.

Bryan, Eric and I all wrote liner notes for the pdf that comes with the Bandcamp download (as did Dan Kinney who made the gig happen, and Mark Leaver who recorded it). Bryan’s notes make reference to how someone might assume, given Eric’s youth and the fact that he’d never played this material before, that Bryan and I might have needed to sort of coach Eric along during the gig, and this is very much not the case – Eric unapologetically OWNS these tunes, and my unavoidable feeling when listening to this is, why didn’t the three of us do more of this?? Apart from that day’s soundcheck, this is literally the only time this trio ever played together (so far anyway – none of us are done yet), and I’m so grateful to have this recording documenting it.

The tracks:

1. “You Guys Gonna Start Right Away, or…?”
2. Snowcow
3. Father’s Day
4. Intro to Dolphins
5. Dolphins
6. Pride is a Sin
7. My Dilemma
8. Intro to 2001/The Entertainer
9. 2001
10. Intro to Supermarket People
11. Supermarket People
12. Not Really Roy/Intro to Uglytown
13. Uglytown
14. Haugseth
15. Performing Miracles
16. The Mystery Music
17. Panda
18. “Can I Get Some Water?”/Intro to Nonkerchunk
19. Nonkerchunk
20. “Eric, You Rock Tonight”
21. Potato
22. Inca Roads
23. “I Know What You Wanna Hear”/Intro to Breakfast
24. ‘Cause of Breakfast

I’ll leave this here: Bandcamp Friday is the periodic Friday wherein Bandcamp does not take a cut of artist/label proceeds, so the income from every Exowax product you purchase on Bandcamp Friday goes 100% to Exowax. We are continually grateful for the support you’ve shown us on Bandcamp Friday – thank you, friends!

DEBUT ALBUM BY CHRISTINE GOULET – DATA QUEEN – OUT MAY 29
Co-produced by Mike Keneally
Featuring Keneally, Tony Levin and Joe Travers

Christine Goulet is a composer, lyricist, vocalist and keyboardist, with a fascination for all kinds of music and a desire to explore all of it. I’m delighted that she asked me to work with her on her debut album, and I hope you get a chance to hear it when it releases on May 29.

Here’s pre-order information for the vinyl and CD releases.

And here’s the first video from the album, for the title song “Data Queen”.  A phenomenally catchy tune with Travers and Levin tearing it up.

Every song on the album sounds different from every other song on the album – I hope you find a place in your brain/heart/soul for Christine’s unique musical world! This is an ambitious and accomplished debut and it sets the stage for an exceptional musical career ahead – get in on the ground floor with Christine’s music, you shall not regret it.

I GOT SOME GIGS COMING UP, I ALSO GOTTA GO TO SLEEP SOON SO I’M GONNA TRY TO MAKE THIS QUICK

May 21 – I’m sitting in with the Florence Symphony Orchestra for FSO ROCKS, playing rude electric guitar on a bunch of classic rock tracks – I did this with them two years ago and it was a total blast, very happy to be doing it again! Tickets here.

June 18, 20, 21, 23, 25 and 28 I’m guest soloist at a hugely elaborate presentation of Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in Switzerland, replete with orchestra, choir, percussion ensemble, rock band, vocal soloists, the works…it’s gonna be huge. Details here. 

End of September throughout all of October I’m in Europe with Banned From Utopia – I’m not automatically seeing a central ticket hub for the tour online, so please reference the charming tour poster you see here for all the dates.

End of November through the beginning of December I’m going to do some shows in the UK and the Netherlands with The Mike Keneally Report (my trio with Jaan Wessman and Schroeder), with Dave Cureton opening – I’ll have a lot more to say about this in a future Keneallist but for now here’s the tour poster, and the dates I presently have ticket links for:

• Nov 30 – Manchester – Night and Day 
• Dec 1 – Birmingham – The Flapper – (awaiting ticket link)
• Dec 3 – Zoetermeer – Poppodium de Boerderij 
• Dec 4 – Helmond NL – Cacaofabriek
• Dec 7 – Sheffield – Sidney & Matilda 
• Dec 8 – Southhampton – The 1865 
• Dec 9 – Fletching, UK – Trading Boundaries – (awaiting ticket link)

I got some other shows happening through the summer and into the fall that haven’t been announced yet, but let’s just say yer boy is gonna be busy.

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I did it! I wrote this Keneallist! Hoozay! Good night everyone!!

Your sleepy pal,

This link to Off-Broadway goes live at 11:59 p.m. PST this Thursday night, April 30, but you can click here now for tons more MK titles…

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