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THE KENEALLIST: Mike Keneally’s acoustic masterpiece Wooden Smoke comes to Bandcamp Friday!

October 2, 2025 Mike Keneally Album, Exowax, Live, News, The Keneallist

Happy autumn! What better time than now to introduce to our Bandcamp catalogue that most autumnal of Keneally releases, Wooden Smoke?

Once again Bandcamp Friday is upon us (the day when Bandcamp takes no cut of proceeds, it all goes to the artists and labels), and it’s our pleasure to bring Wooden Smoke to our ever-swelling Bandcamp roster.

WOODEN SMOKE
COMES TO BANDCAMP
THIS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3!

This link to Wooden Smoke goes live at 11:59 p.m. PDT TONIGHT, October 2!

In the meantime, you can click here for a bunch more MK titles…

This acoustic album, by far the mellowest and most willfully soul-soothing of my releases, was originally released in 2002, and proved to be a balm for me personally during a hectic time in my life. We at Exowax were heartened and humbled to learn, at the time of release, that it also provided therapeutic value for some people in the wake of the horrific events in September of the previous year. Perhaps it could provide some similar service for you now?

If you avail yourself of the Bandcamp version of Wooden Smoke, you will find that it has been enhanced with five additional tracks.

Four of these are special new mixes from the multi-tracks that I did for my Patreon subscribers earlier this year, including an improvisation done by me on two pianos and Rick Musallam on one acoustic guitar, music that’s never been released before in any form – other than to my Patreon folks (which, if you’re not one, I am frequently uploading unreleased material there, so you might like to check it out here).

The fifth bonus track is “Wooden Chips,” the edit-collage created by Scott Chatfield as an audio link for keneally.com, back when we made the album originally available. Scott would always make such a collage back when we announced a new album, and they are true time capsules of early ‘00s web-based content.

Your download of Wooden Smoke also comes with a digital booklet and a batch of oddly compelling bonus photos (there’s one at the end of this Keneallist), reviews, and ephemera. As always, we thank you for your support!

MIKE KENEALLY & BEER FOR DOLPHINS
OCTOBER 2025 TOUR of the EAST COAST and the MIDWEST of the USA!

The MK/BFD tour is seriously right around the corner, holy cow!

We just had a couple of fantastic nights at the Baked Potato in LA, and we are feeling entirely prepared to bring the craziness to the East Coast and Midwest in a couple of weeks. It was great fun to once again have Bryan Beller in the ranks – the rhythm-section relationship he and Joe Travers share (they’ve been playing together since the early ‘90s when they were Berklee students together) is unparalleled, as is their comprehension of my music, and they provide the most amazing foundation for the marvelous Rick Musallam and myself to do our respective things.

We’ll be playing in Rutherford NJ, NYC, Annville PA, Cleveland, Fort Wayne, and Chicago from October 12-18. A mere six gigs, but a lot to bite off financially for our hard-driving little band of buckaroos, so please come if you can, and haul a bunch of your friends to the gigs with you. I promise you’ll have a great time.

Opening for us will be the truly superb Dave Bainbridge & Sally Minnear. They wowed me with their set at ProgStock last year. They will perform as a duo on their own set, and for the last half-hour of our set they will also act as honorary Beers For Dolphin, allowing us to play several of my more intricate compositions that rarely if ever get an airing live.

And starting off each evening will be my uber-talented buddy Matt Dorsey, kicking off the festivities with a solo set (and he just might be wandering onto the stage during my set as well).

We start with an October 12 appearance at the ProgStock Festival in Rutherford, NJ – festival passes available here.

October 14 finds us at The Cutting Room in the well-known metropolis of New York City

A venue and city which are new to us, The Allen Theater in Annville, PA, plays host to our shenanigans on October 15. I have now seen some footage of the interior of this place and it looks fantastic – we’d love to have a good crowd at this gig!

Fun times of no small velocity await us all on October 16 at the Beachland Tavern in beloved Cleveland.

I eagerly anticipate returning to play at the Sweetwater performance venue in Fort Wayne on October 17 – I played there with ProgJect a couple of years ago and had a fantastic time.

We conclude this whirlwind trip by returning to visit our good pals at Reggies in Chicago on October 18.

I really don’t manage to get my band out of California very often, and I’d love to do it more often, and some good attendance at these gigs will make it far more likely that that can happen. Please come join us if you can!

THANK YOU!

You are an extraordinary person and I thank you profusely for your attention and kindness and support!

Love,

Wooden Smoke goes live at 11:59 p.m. PDT TONIGHT, October 2!

Hey! Check out the rest of Mike Keneally’s mind-blowing creations at Bandcamp!

THE KENEALLIST: Keneally & Minnemann’s ‘Evidence of Humanity’ coming to Bandcamp Friday!

September 2, 2025 Mike Keneally Album, Exowax, Live, News, The Keneallist

Lo! Bandcamp Friday is upon us once again, like a melting slice of gouda sits upon a thing of Impossible Meat!

There are two things to tell you of in this regard, both of a duo-oriented nature:

THE EPIC MIKE & MARCO COLLABORATION
COMES TO BANDCAMP
THIS FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5!

EVIDENCE OF HUMANITY/ELEMENTS OF A MANATEE
by Mike Keneally and Marco Minnemann

This link to Evidence of Humanity/Elements of a Manatee goes live at 11:59 p.m. PDT Thursday night, September 4!

In the meantime, feel warmly invited to head here now for a digital ton of Mike Keneally titles…

This is the Bandcamp debut of our 2010 release, which was a CD/DVD set in its physical incarnation. This Bandcamp version features the audio portion of Elements of a Manatee (get it??), the live duo performance which was featured on the DVD. (There was ONE overdub actually…more about that below.)

Evidence of Humanity was part of a wide-ranging conceptual project of Marco’s called Normalizer 2. For this ambitious project Marco began by recording himself playing a rather stunning, 51-minute long drum improvisation. He then distributed this drum solo far and wee to a number of his favorite musician pals, including Trey Gunn, Alex Machacek, Phi Yaan-Zek, and John Czajkowski among numerous others. Each one of us anointed pals then proceeded to compose and record our own unique tracks on top of the same drum performance, which we then released on our own unique, separate albums. Evidence of Humanity was my contribution to this unusual and super-fun concept.

I recorded my tracks for this album at the same time that I was working on Scambot 1, after a self-imposed recording break of several years. Marco’s wildly inspiring drum track brought all sorts of things out of me. John Czajkowski very generously offered his studio and engineering talents to me for this album, and for several months I toggled between his studio in the south part of San Diego and Chatfield Manor in the north part, alternately laying down tracks for both albums. To my mind they are brethren releases, and if you want a complete picture of my head at that time, you’d do well to familiarize yourself with both releases.

Evidence is a really wild instrumental album (except for some humming and yelling in a couple of spots, and one discreet chuckle on the track “Bad Friday”), with me playing a variety of instruments and exploring every stylistic avenue I could access.

Since it was so much fun collaborating with Marco in such an unusual way on this album, we thought we would do some old-fashioned real-time collaborating as well, so we got together in Marco’s rehearsal space to do some improvising, with me playing both guitar and keyboard. This resulted in another album-length hunk of music. I then took those live duet recordings to Chatfield Manor and overdubbed an improvised bass part over the whole thing, pretty much in real time (I think I stopped and started once or twice), and dubbed this new instrumental event Elements of a Manatee.

This Bandcamp release features both Evidence and Elements, yoked to one another for all eternity.

The original DVD featured a filmed 84-minute conversation with Marco and I, recorded in the car on the way to the Salton Sea where we took the photos for the album package. For this new Bandcamp version, we thought you might like to have the audio from the chat, but it was pretty full of road noise, so Scott Chatfield has kindly run the audio through a fancy modern road-noise-removing filter, so that you can listen to the interview in your own moving car without having to suffer through two times the road noise! The Bandcamp download package is additionally kitted out with all of the original booklet, tray and disc art, as well as a sizable batch of previously-unpublished photos shot on location at the strange yet wonderful Bombay Beach, CA.

As I hasten to remind you every time we do this, Bandcamp Friday is the day when the Bandcamp platform outright refuses to lay their mitts on even a penny of the income generated – all of it goes to the artists/labels, so if you choose to download this new release this Friday, well dang we’d be that much grateful. Thank you for considering such an act!

FRIDAY by Mike Keneally and Marcelo Radulovich

The fifth installment in the days-of-the-week instrumental album series by myself and Marcelo finally reaches the pinnacle that Bandcamp Friday was made for! As Rebecca Black once repeatedly intoned, it’s FRIDAY! It’s FRIDAY!

This collaboration with Marcelo continues to delight and inspire me. Whereas Evidence above dallies unapologetically with unfettered virtuosic displays, Friday (like all of our work) lives in a place of truly surreal atmospheric insularity, much more about sound in itself than it is about technique. It is a strange, otherworldly world we’ve been creating, and we welcome you into it with open arms.

I can’t speak highly enough of Marcelo’s engineering/mixing skills. He really has a special ability to create amazing new places for your ears to inhabit, and I’m grateful that he had the idea for us to begin collaborating in this way. This is our seventh album to be released within 2 years (Monday through Friday are all instrumental releases, and BASK and BASK 2 are vocal albums. There’s an 11-minute single called PM Remix in our oeuvre as well).

ALL of this stuff is highly worth lending your attention to, and all of it can be found here. Saturday, Sunday and BASK 3 are all currently underway. This long-form musical concept has become a treasured part of my life. Thank you Marcelo.

THE GIGS WHAT ARE A-COMIN’:

PROGJECT at PROGPOWER USA in ATLANTA on SEPTEMBER 5

The night of our show is sold out, according to their website, but I’m telling you about it anyway just in case anything changes or the website is lying to me! That website by the way is here.

MK/BFD at the BAKED POTATO on SEPTEMBER 24/25

Our first shows with Bryan Beller on bass in a long time!! At the marvelous Baked Potato in equally marvelous Los Angeles!! Snatch up your tickets here.

MIKE KENEALLY & BEER FOR DOLPHINS
OCTOBER 2025 TOUR of the EAST COAST and the MIDWEST of the USA!

I’m cutting and pasting what I wrote in the last Keneallist about this tour because it’s all still great:

Truly we are gonna do some playing outside of California for a change!!

Beer For Dolphins (me, Bryan Beller, Rick Musallam and Joe Travers) will be doing what we do in New Jersey, NYC, Annville PA, Cleveland, Fort Wayne, and Chicago from October 12-18. A mere six gigs, but a lot to bite off financially for our hard-driving little band of buckaroos, so please come if you can and haul a bunch of your friends to the gigs with you. Force ‘em if you have to.

Opening for us will be the marvelous Dave Bainbridge & Sally Minnear. They wowed me with their set at ProgStock last year. They will perform as a duo on their own set, but for a chunk of our set they will also act as honorary Beers For Dolphin, allowing us to play several of my more intricate compositions that rarely if ever get an airing live.

And starting off each evening will be my uber-talented buddy Matt Dorsey kicking off the festivities with a solo set.

We start with an October 12 appearance at the ProgStock Festival in Rutherford, NJ – festival passes available here.

October 14 finds us at The Cutting Room in the well-known metropolis of NEW YORK CITY

A venue and city which are new to us, The Allen Theater in Annville, PA, plays host to our shenanigans on October 15.

Fun times of no small velocity await us all on October 16 at the Beachland Tavern in beloved Cleveland.

I eagerly anticipate returning to play at the Sweetwater performance venue in Fort Wayne on October 17 – I played there with ProgJect a couple of years ago and had a fantastic time.

We conclude this whirlwind trip (didja notice these last five shows are five in a row? Bambambambambam) by returning to visit our good pals at Reggies in Chicago on October 18.

We really hope you can make it to a show, I can barely tell you how much I hope this!

GOODBYE, I SAY!!

Hoop-de-da!!

Love!

Yeah!

Evidence of Humanity/Elements of a Manatee goes live at 11:59 p.m. PDT Thursday night, September 4!

But right now you can check out the rest of Mike Keneally’s mind-blowing creations, including Volumes 1 and 2, at Bandcamp!

THE KENEALLIST: Mike’s Boil That Dust Speck Deluxe Edition comes to Bandcamp Friday!

May 2, 2025 Mike Keneally Album, Exowax, Live, News, The Keneallist

Hope you’re well! Happy Bandcamp Friday again!

Mike Keneally’s Boil That Dust Speck (Deluxe Bandcamp Edition) COMING TO BANDCAMP FRIDAY TOMORROW, May 2!

This time ‘round we’re as pleased as rum punch to offer Boil That Dust Speck (Deluxe Bandcamp Edition), an expanded version of my second album from 1994, featuring 20 bonus tracks totaling approx. 65 minutes of extra music – well over two hours of music in total!

This link to Boil That Dust Speck (Deluxe Bandcamp Edition) goes live at 11:59 p.m. PDT this tonight, May 1!

You can also go here now bunches more Mike Keneally musics…

These bonus tracks were originally released as part of the DVD that accompanied the special edition of Dust Speck in 2007, but this is their first-ever exclusively-audio release – we here at Exowax understand that a DVD is not always the most convenient way to enjoy audio, especially while you’re busy dusting the veranda, shredding old receipts etc. We hope that you enjoy the convenience of this format.

These bonus tracks comprise unreleased material (including a 25-minute session reuniting my 1980s-era band Drop Control), alternate mixes, extended mixes, alternate vocal performances, and a radically different mix of the song “Vent.” It’s a bumper crop of unique stuff which provides a unique peek (that’s fun to say!) at the making of this complex album – I find it to be highly illuminating and I hope you do as well. Please enjoy!

(If a reminder be required, Bandcamp Friday is a special day on which the Bandcamp platform foregoes their cut of proceeds, all of which goes to artists/labels – an important day on the calendar for independent artists, who make increasingly less from the sale of their music as time marches boldly forward. We’re happy to encourage you to explore Bandcamp thoroughly on this day and check out the catalogs of multiple artists – see what’s going on out there.)

LOADS O’ GIGS, GIGS A-PLENTY:

DEVIN TOWNSEND NORTH AMERICAN TOUR STARTING IMMEDIATELY

May 2 kicks off a Devin Townsend North American tour featuring his live quartet, a band which I’m very grateful to be a member of. Devin just this week announced that this will be his last tour for the foreseeable future, as he prepares to take a long and well-deserved sabbatical from the road.

Please come out and join us, if you can, for this very special tour – we are busting out some rarely-played tunes and rehearsals this week have been tremendous. Ticket links are at Devin’s website here.

Also, there’s one month remaining for you to access the archived live-stream of the performance of Devin’s The Moththat happened in late March, featuring us in the band, plus orchestra and choir – about 135 musicians onstage. It was phenomenally powerful to be a part of this show, and IMHO a rousing artistic success. The quality of the stream is shockingly good too – please check it out here.

JUNE 22 KENEALLY GIG IN SAN DIEGO at THE HOLDING COMPANY

I’m doing a show at The Holding Company in San Diego on Sunday, June 22, playing a bunch of my stuff with Bryan Beller, Rick Musallam and drummer Nathan Raney. This will be my first time playing with Nathan (Joe Travers was unavailable for this gig but don’t worry, he’s still my dude). Nathan is playing with his own band as one of the openers for this gig (he put the show together and asked me to do it) and when it turned out Joe wasn’t available, Nathan said he’d play on my set too. He’s a damn fine drummer and I said sure, let’s go for it.

It’s a Sunday and things kick off early (the first opener, Maedhira, will hit the stage around 1:30 or 2 in the afternoon). It’s gonna be a fun, blasting gig – come see it if you’re around! Tickets be here.

PROGJECT WEST COAST RUN IN JULY

WEST COAST TOUR WITH PROGJECT JULY 10-19

ProgJect haven’t gigged in a while and it’s time! Come join us for this run of gigs encompassing the geographic region between Escondido and Vancouver. I’m eager to dig into these classic tunes again. Tickets can be boughten here. (We’re planning more shows for later this year, as well as our long-delayed European debut for 2026.)

MIKE KENEALLY AND BEER FOR DOLPHINS HEADLINING PROGSTOCK IN OCTOBER

An expanded version of MK/BFD will headline one of the evenings at ProgStock in Rutherford, NJ in October. In addition to me, Beller, Musallam and Travers, our lineup will be supplemented by the wonderfully talented Dave Bainbridge and Sally Minnear, allowing for the performance of certain tunes that either haven’t been played in ages, or never been played at all. I’m terribly excited about this and will have more to say about it later, but for now please visit progstock.com/2025 for tickets and more info about the festival.

Work is underway to secure further gigs on the east coast around this festival appearance – more on that later, as more becomes real.

I’M PLAYING WITH EDDIE JOBSON/UK REVISITED ON CRUISE TO THE EDGE IN 2026

Yeah! This is pretty huge for me – I’ve never played with Eddie before, and the first UK album in particular was immensely important for me in the ‘70s – I freaking love that album and it means a lot for me to play this music with the man who was so pivotal in its creation.

I think that Eddie was a keyboard trailblazer in a lot of ways – beyond just his technical virtuosity, which was and is gob-smacking, I think the atmospheres he creates sonically are so evocative and influential, and I’m humbled to have been tapped to cover the guitar parts for this Cruise to the Edge appearance. (I haven’t appeared on the cruise since playing there in 2022 with The Zappa Band and Jakko Jakszyk, and I really loved it, so I’m very happy to be returning.) Tickets and info here.

LOVE!

Hope you’re good! My mental state/sanity level fluctuates from day to day – today it’s really good and I hope yours is too. Love to you!!

This link to Boil That Dust Speck (Deluxe Bandcamp Edition) goes live at 11:59 p.m. PDT tonight, May 1!

But wait, there’s more! Check out the rest of Mike Keneally’s mind-blowing creations at Bandcamp right now!

Tag: Mike Keneally