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Keneally.com
The Mike Keneally Website Updated |
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With Mike's Fairly Exciting 20% December Discount Sale, you can pick up loads of Mikey Merch for the holidays on the cheap! Mike and Marco Minnemann's new Evidence of Humanity CD/DVD for only $16 each if you buy two! Mike's first four Exowax CDs for $36! You get the idea. Just order $40 or more (excluding tax and shipping) of anything from MooseMart during December, use the promo code SNOCOW, and you'll save 20%. We're fairly excited and we hope you are, too! |
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Mike talks about The SCAMBOT Holiday Special is available as an instant download for only $5 at MooseMart. (Listen to The SCAMBOT Holiday Specette, a one-minute sampler, here.) ABOUT THE SCAMBOT HOLIDAY SPECIAL
Possibly as a result of all that, I think he had an unusually strong influence on the construction of The SCAMBOT Holiday Special, but I also feel strong echoes of Firesign Theatre in it, and of Brendon Small's work on Home Movies. And also, very specifically, the influence of variety TV shows from the '60s to the present. So that's a little listing of some of the influences on this insane little thing. This is an interesting little holiday presentation which I've written and produced here. It's about fourteen-and-a-half minutes long; five tracks, with tracks 1, 3 and 5 acting as framing devices for tracks 2 and 4, which are full-length studio recordings of the songs "Holiday Face" and "Salve-Dependent Scorpions." "Holiday Face" is a new acoustic instrumental recording done specifically for this release. It reminds me compositionally of "Thanksgiving" but has an even more intimate studio vibe than that song, and I tracked it with Mike Harris engineering at Chatfield Manor. Me on all instruments: two acoustic guitars, bass, organ, tambourine and other percussion. Bunch of vocals and a wah-clavinet solo at the end that I'm really happy about. "Salve-Dependent Scorpions" is an alternate take of an instrumental piece from the upcoming multi-volume work SCAMBOT. The basic track was recorded on analog tape by Tom Trefethen, and has me on Hammond organ, Rick Musallam on electric guitar, Bryan Beller on bass and Joe Travers on drums. (This was, surprisingly to me, the first studio session of the Guitar Therapy Live version of the Keneally Band.) Later at Chatfield Manor we overdubbed two takes of Evan Francis on alto sax, and two takes of me on lead guitar. The version which will be on SCAMBOT will be entitled "The Scorpions" and will feature such completely different guitar and sax performances that it's essentially another composition. Have to admit to a strong Frank influence on the guitar performance. Tracks 1, 3 and 5 of the The SCAMBOT Holiday Special ("The Quest," "The Swordfight" and "The Owl") are twisted little combinations of electronic music done on a Moog, other added effects, and dialogue/narration/singing which advances a peculiar narrative (I originally wrote it as part of the actual SCAMBOT album-slash-comic book story continuity). I couldn't find a way to wedge it into SCAMBOT comfortably, but it now forms the conceptual backbone of this Holiday Special. It's in these short segments, which illustrate a surreal imaginary late-'60s television holiday special about a quest of some kind, that the Firesign and Brendon influences come to the fore, but there's also some heavy Lumpy Gravy and Läther influence in there. I can't help it, sorry. *** Thank you for continuing to enjoy and be interested in the stuff I do-- I seem to be getting more fired-up and productive as time goes on, and I very much appreciate you being part of it all. may you soon receive a backrub, Mike |
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Keneally & Vai on the air in Holland
GRONINGEN, NETHERLANDS, October 23, 2010: During his weekend performing solo Vai piano pieces at the Steve Vai Festival, Mike (right) and Steve (center) recorded a radio program for Radio 6's Co de Kloet (left) in front of a live audience at the Oosterport. (Wicked shirt, Co!). Co, a relentless supporter of both Mike and Steve, was the catalyst behind the festival and the broadcast. The radio show will air on Radio 6 at 11 p.m. on December 6 and 13, 2010. (Photo by Paul Berkholst) |
A bunch of guitarists and Mike's not one of them!
AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS, October 29, 2010: Legendary slide virtuoso Sonny Landreth and UK blues guitarist Davy Knowles joined the Joe Satriani band for a heated encore of "Going Down" at the Heineken Music Hall. Acknowledging the crowd after the extended workout are (l. to r.) Mike (playing keyboards on this tour), Joe Satriani, drummer Jeff Campitelli, Landreth, Knowles and bassist Allen Whitman. (Photo by Paul Berkholst) |
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Mike Keneally was someone Marco hoped would dig the idea. In the throes of recording his intense and complex Scambot 1 opus, Mike leapt at Marco's offer-- the creation of Evidence of Humanity would be a joyous, freewheeling counterpoint to his meticulous work on Scambot. "A fun ride," Mike would recall. (Of course, Marco recorded his own fantastic version, too, available at marcominnemann.com.) The ecstatic result is two of the world's foremost musicians improvising together, but not at the same time. It's a record unlike any other that Mike has recorded (but probably closest to Nonkertompf, his indefinable, mostly instrumental 1999 solo extravaganza). Evidence of Humanity seems to have a life of its own, mutating and maturing with each listen. Accompanying the Evidence of Humanity CD is a DVD containing a tasty reimagining of the original concept. This time, Mike and Marco got together in real time and vaulted into the ether for another 52-minute musical improvisation, a feat that was videotaped for your pleasure. The DVD also includes an insightful conversation between the two kindred musical spirits, shot in the back seat of a car hurtling toward the cover shoot in the Southern California desert's dilapidated Salton Sea. |
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Evidence of Humanity's songs:
Evidence of Humanity DVD's selections:
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Elements of a Manatee audio
When Mike and Marco Minnemann collaborated on Evidence of Humanity, Mike composed and played on top of Marco's prerecorded drum solo. But it raised the question, what would happen if Mike and Marco improvised together in real time? So they met at Marco's secret storage locker/rehearsal studio hideaway and let 'er rip. The startling result (augmented by some overdubbed Keneally bass flourishes) appeared on the DVD that accompanies the EOH CD. So by popular demand, the audio portion of Elements of a Manatee is now exclusively available here at MooseMart as a very high-quality, reasonably priced download. Six bucks, dude! Songs on the Elements of a Manatee download are:
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Evidence of Humanity DVD Excerpt
Guitarist/keyboardist Mike Keneally and notorious drummer Marco Minnemann improvise twice together on the new Exowax CD/DVD Evidence of Humanity. The CD contains the amazing result of Mike composing over Marco's pre-recorded 52-minute "Normalizer 2" drum solo, and the DVD features them coming back for more, this time in real time. Here's a short clip from the DVD's live improv session (entitled Elements of A Manatee) in Marco's lair. (Elements of A Manatee directed by Dave Foster) |
Evidence of Humanity Interview DVD Excerpt
The Evidence of Humanity DVD also includes an insightful conversation between these two astounding musicians. Here's a short clip from that discussion, from the back seat of a car hurtling toward the California desert's dilapidated Salton Sea. |
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Mike's European Road Report I write to you now from sun-dappled Rome, Italy, in the midst of week 5 of the six-week European leg of the Satriani tour. Six weeks is a long time. You could build most of an entire post office in six weeks. The shows have been wonderful, and steadily getting more so, and the band is tremendous and adventurous, and the audiences excitable and evidently satisfied. Our bassist Allen Whitman has been filing blog entries from the road - centered primarily around our Russian jaunt - over at the widely respected and feared boingboing.net. Here is his world within that world: http://boingboing.net/author/allen-whitman. I've been filing regular reports via my Facebook and Twitter accounts, and diligent fans with ready cams have been posting their videographic accounts of Satriani performances to YouTube (as well as my detour to Groningen to play my Vai piano arrangements at the Vai Festival, which naturally coincided with Robert Fripp coming to visit a Satriani show at which I was not present…here is Robert's account of that event. I missed you too, pal. And props once more to Jem Godfrey who more than ably subbed for me on the two Satch shows I had to miss.But the Groningen Vai festival was glorious, and after months of practicing and preparing for my performances therein, a massive relief to have finally pulled off. Many YouTube links exist of my performances, check them out if you like or wait until I get into the studio next year, with optimized arrangements informed by the lessons learned from debuting these arrangements live. Steve also premiered some stunning new work for guitar, vocal and orchestra. And Satriani's decision to expand his band and his sound is paying off with amazing reviews, tickets sold and responsive audiences. It's a freaking creative time. Response has also been wildly encouraging for Evidence of Humanity, my recent collaboration with Marco Minnemann. The album comes packaged with a DVD featuring a further near-hour of music, a live improvisation with Marco called "Elements of a Manatee." If you've decided you've no further room for physical media in your life, or if you just enjoy downloading things, the audio from this improv is now available for a laughable six bucks from us. This recording features the first guitar playing I'd done for nearly a month, following an intensive period spent recording Joe's Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards In the early part of the tour I did a live webcast from my hotel room in...uh...was it London? Next week I'll be doing it again, except this time in from the backstage area of our gig in Porto, Portugal. Tune in and see how road-weathered I've become in the intervening weeks! I'll do what I can to rope in as many other members of our jolly touring party as possible. This will be taking place this Sunday, November 21 at 7pm, Portugese time. Once again, if you register at Ustream you'll be able to type questions to me and whomever else might be around, even though it's not always easy for me to keep up. We will, as always, do our best: The Mike Keneally Show No. 2 I would like to close out in rare fashion and post several of the photos I've taken during the tour, but find that iPhoto refuses to import the photos in my phone at the moment for reasons I am too distracted and techophobic to look into at the moment (also lobby call is in a half hour and I still need to shower). So trust me when I say, these photos are the bomb! You would have loved them. [Editor's note: Hey, we smuggled them out of Mike's iPhone, disguised as text messages, during his 12-hour bus ride to Lyon ! So here they are!]:
Whitney Houston and I will ALWAYS love you. Never forget that. See you in Porto! Mike Here's the Mike Keneally video chat show from London last October 20: |
Keneally Concert Calendar
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Like the Bat Signal, The Keneallist is only used for super serious email emanating directly from MK Central to you. We're talking stuff like album release info, live performance updates, discounts on MK merchandise and such. Your secret info will be held dearly by us and not shared with anybody mean without your prior permission. To join The Keneallist, please click here. |
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(also very much available for purchase at the moment). The resultant guitar playing was thus filled with unexpected melodies and bizarre adventure, which I think helped result in an unusually nutritious jam. Check and see what you think!