Hi dear people. We hope you’re okay and we are sending you all a bunch of love.
Mike Keneally’s Wooden Smoke Asleep –
A dream you might dream
after listening to Mike’s 2001 masterpiece, Wooden Smoke.
COMING TO BANDCAMP
THIS FRIDAY, March 7!
Look at that! It’s Bandcamp Friday time again and we are introducing to our Bandcamp catalogue a magical little item from the year 2001, Wooden Smoke Asleep.
This link to Wooden Smoke Asleep goes live at 11:59 p.m. PDT this Thursday night, March 6!
You can also go here now for all the other available Mike Keneally titles…
After we had completed the recording sessions for Wooden Smoke, Scott Chatfield and I batted around ideas for what a companion disc for the album might be like. Our first two special editions had featured an interview disc (Nonkertalk) and a live show (Dancing with Myself); for this album we decided to create something that would really extend and deepen the concept of the main album. Scott came up with the title Wooden Smoke Asleep during a walk on the beach, along with the overriding concept behind it: you, the listener, have just listened to Wooden Smoke, after which you fall asleep…and Wooden Smoke Asleep is the dream that you have about what you just listened to.
As such, the album combines some stripped-down remixes of songs from the main album, twisting around a bunch of additional material from the sessions such as “Me, Innate,” “Kane St.” and two “episodes” of “David Lynch’s Curtains” (and we humbly offer the timing of this Bandcamp release to the memory of Mr. Lynch). These pieces were then combined into two long suites, Side One and Side Two-style (“The Canyon” and “Bob Sleep”).
Scott and I had tremendous fun weaving these two long suites together, and as the studio was in Scott’s house, he would sometimes get up to some audio mischief without my knowledge – including what turned out to be my favorite piece on this album, “Boom 2001,” wherein he layered the voices from “Boom” atop the rhythm track from “2001.” It works perfectly and I would have never thought to try it.
There are some nice musical conversations on this album – “Kane St.” (named after a street my family lived on in 1973) is a peaceful two-guitar improv by Rick Musallam and myself, and “Me, Innate” (a play on “me and Nate”) is a construction featuring Nathan Hubbard’s atmospheric percussion and two grand piano tracks. Lee Elderton’s sax soloing on “Curtains” and “Manhattan” takes things in a more urbane direction – his playing on the closing song “Manhattan” (played over the guitars from the song “New England” – a New England/Manhattan chowder reference) is meant to be the sound of reality awakening you from the dream this album represents.
Associate producer Matt Resnicoff gave me the “Indian banjo” you hear on the song “Paloma,” the first piece of music I wrote on this unusual instrument (Paloma is the brand name).
The making of Wooden Smoke was a very special time and this album is a treasured part of it for me. Ch-ch-ch-check it out!
As a reminder, Bandcamp Friday is the occasional Friday when the Bandcamp platform takes no percentage of income – all proceeds go directly to artists and labels. We’ve got at least two other Bandcamp projects well underway for later this year, including Volume 3 of Freaks in a Mellow Mood by me and Bryan Beller – watch! this space.
A NEW MARCELO RADULOVICH/MIKE KENEALLY ALBUM on BANDCAMP: THURSDAY
The collaboration between me and Marcelo continues on its hectic pace of productivity – this is our sixth album in a year-and-a-half! Thursday is the fourth installment of our days-of-the-week instrumental album series. The kick-off point for this album was Marcelo’s request to me to find some old cassettes in my garage archive and bring them around to his place to transfer them to digital and see what we could do with them.
The first song on the album, “Seul sur son étoile,” is built around a recording of my 11-year-old playing the pop standard “It Must Be Him” on the Hammond organ (“Seul sur son étoile” is that classic melody’s original title), and “On a Green Shell” is based on an acoustic guitar improv I recorded when I was 16. A good amount of the otherworldly sounding stuff on this album was played on my Lava Drops fretless guitar, an instrument I love and which gives me access to new ways of approaching melody. And Marcelo’s amazing chops as a rhythm-maker and sonic architect continue to take my breath away.
Each of our albums has a unique character all its own; I love them all and Thursday is yet another very special addition to our ongoing collaboration.
DEVIN TOWNSEND – THE MOTH and NORTH AMERICAN TOUR
Devin’s ambitious orchestral/choir/rock band suite The Moth has been occupying my mind a lot lately – as I type I’m sitting on a plane to Canada preparing to work with him on it some more – and it will finally receive its world premiere later this month in Groningen, Netherlands (at the Oosterport, the same building where we did Nonkertompf Live all those years ago, but in the big room this time!). The shows sold out quickly I’m afraid, but aha!! The second show on March 28 is streaming live! The link to get your shockingly non-expensive live ticket to the stream is here!
Tickets can now be purchased for the Devin Townsend North American tour in May – this won’t be The Moth, this will just be the Devin rock band quartet slamming through a bunch of tunes for you, but it’ll still be plenty epic and I’m really looking forward to it. This tour will be promoting Dev’s PowerNerd album which came out at the end of last year, but we had to get through The Moth before we could tour PowerNerd – all things in due time!
There’s lots more live stuff coming later in the year and you will hear about it all here, proud traveller. Please stay well, I’ll do the same. Here’s hoping for the best for everyone.
<3
xomk
This link to Wooden Smoke Asleep goes live at 11:59 p.m. PDT this Thursday night, March 6!
Why not purchase ALL THE OTHER delightfully diverse Mike Keneally releases at Bandcamp right now?
