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SOME DELICIOUS WINE AND PICKLES FOR BANDCAMP FRIDAY

Wine And Pickles goes on sale this Bandcamp Friday, September 4! And you won’t believe all the other tasty MK treats that you can enjoy right now at Bandcamp?

Here comes BANDCAMP FRIDAY again, and this time it’s Wine and Pickles, the newest welcomeee to our Bandcamp album catalogue. Now, I really like this album. It happened accidentally, over the course of a number of years: it consists of songs recorded for other albums but not released on those albums (in particular, some substantial songs from the Dog and Dancing sessions, including “Li’l,” “Lonely Man,” “Never Ever Wrong” and “Feelin’ Strangely”), alternate and/or unedited versions of a few previously released things, and a number of unusual tunes created for different reasons: TV soundtracks, orchestral demos, studio experimentation, a Cuneiform Records acoustic guitar compilation, the song “Inhale” that I wrote and recorded with Lyle Workman…a whole bunch of things that originated across various projects, but once I set them in this running order I thought they had a nice cohesion to them as an album. I thought of it as the surprise album I didn’t know I was making for all those years. It doesn’t get discussed much – maybe it doesn’t feel like it’s part of the core oeuvre (did I spell that right?) – but I do think it’s a nifty album in its own right.

And maybe you have not heard it! Friday would be a great time to get acquainted with it at Bandcamp. As you undoubtedly know by now, on Bandcamp Friday all proceeds from downloads go to the artists and their labels; Bandcamp itself takes no cut.

For this Bandcamp edition of Wine and Pickles we wanted to find something unreleased to supplement it. The album ends with the song “The Endings of Things” from the Dancing sessions, and I remembered that there was an unused alternate take of that song. I went back to the Dancing multitracks and soon realized why we had to record a second take of “Endings”: the arrangement was for me on acoustic guitar and vocal, Bryan Beller on bass, Jason Smith on drums and Marc Ziegenhagen on grand piano (all of whom you’ll hear on the second take version that closes Wine and Pickles proper), but on this first take, the piano track somehow didn’t make it to tape, and the drum track bizarrely gets cut off and goes silent partway through the take. My first thought was “oh well, guess I can’t use it,” but then I thought about what I still had before me – essentially, a duet acoustic performance of the song by me and Bryan Beller. So I mixed it that way, just me and Bryan in audio verité, and I’ll tell ya, I think it’s just nifty.

Hereupon, the entirely nifty tracks of Wine and Pickles, the Bandcamp edition:

1. 2CTV (from Court TV sessions, 1999)
2. Feelin’ Strangely (from Dog sessions, 2003)
3. Li’l (Signature Sound version) (from Dog sessions, 2003)
4. Backwards Deb (2nd person) (from Dancing sessions, 2000)
5. Bubble Creek (from Dog sessions, 2003)
6. Never Ever Wrong (from Dog sessions, 2003)
7. Unused Hum (from Nonkertompf sessions, 1998)
8. I Heard About What You Said (from Court TV sessions, 1999)
9. Inhale (with Lyle Workman) (from Tabula Rasa, 2000)
10. 4S (demo for orchestral piece, 2005-2006)
11. Skull Bubbles (uncut) (from Dancing sessions, 2000)
12. Stop For Flashing Red Light, Part One (solo recording, 2004)
13. Lonely Man (studio) (from Dancing sessions, 2000)
14. Selfish Otter (uncut) (from Dancing sessions, 2000)
15. A Concise Piano Statement (from Wooden Smoke sessions, 2001)
16. AeroDef (solo recording, 2002)
17. Kevorkian 3 (from Court TV sessions, 1999)
18. Thou Shalt Not Kill (from 156 Strings, 2002)
19. Paloma (alternate version) (from Wooden Smoke sessions, 2001)
20. Kevorkian 17 (from Court TV sessions, 1999)
21. The Endings of Things (from Dancing sessions, 2000)
    
    bonus track:
22. The Endings of Things, first take (previously unreleased, Keneally/Beller duo mix) (from Dancing sessions, 2000)

Check out our entire Bandcamp catalog if you can, there’s a lot of nice stuff there. I and the rest of the Exowax brain trust (Scott Chatfield and Chris Opperman) thank you for your continued good energy and your deeply appreciated support!

MIKE KENEALLY & BEER FOR DOLPHINS –
CALIFORNIA TOUR in SEPTEMBER

O my word, it is very much time to do a series of gigs with BFD and blow some roofs off. Rooves?

Me
Bryan Beller
Rick Musallam
Joe Travers 

with the magnificent Travis Larson opening – DANG I can’t wait…

I’m bringing five brand new tunes to the rehearsals, we will try our dangdest to get them up and running for the gigs. Gotta write some lyrics. Several golden oldies that haven’t been played in an awfully long time are on the master list as well. My vivre is very joie-ful right now, I am seriously abuzz about these shows.

Venues! Locations! Dates! Tickets! Here:

THE DIP in REDDING, CA  
Tuesday, Sep. 8 

BISCUITS AND BLUES in SAN FRANCISCO, CA  
Wednesday, Sep. 9

ALVAS SHOWROOM in SAN PEDRO, CA  
Friday, Sep. 11
Saturday, Sep. 12 

THE BORNEMANN in SAN MARCOS, CA
Saturday, Sep. 19

 THE BAKED POTATO in LOS ANGELES, CA
Tuesday/Wednesday, Sep. 22/23
Two sets each night, 8 and 10pm
Both indoor seating and Patio “Live Video Concert” seating are available.
Tickets to both nights are available here.
Just scroll down ‘til you get to September 22 and 23.

See you at one or more of these nine gigs, Califolks! I’ll have original drawings for auction at the merch table, and the return of the new MK/BFD T-shirts we introduced at last year’s east coast gigs.

Be! We will!

BANNED FROM UTOPIA – EUROPEAN TOUR SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER

Earlier this year, Jamie from Banned From Utopia got in touch to ask if I’d be willing to try and fill the gap in the band left by our dear brother Robert Martin’s present inability to perform due to medical reasons. Humbly I said I’d do my best. Couple weeks ago I did my first gigs as a member of Banned From Utopia at the Baked Potato. It was powerful, joyful, very intense, and the crowd response was off the charts.

Let me say first and foremost that all of my performances with this band go out into the world accompanied by my fierce respect and love for Robert Martin and I will do my best to make up for the enormous gap his absence leaves on the stage.  (I can’t sing even remotely like him but I’m playing a lot of keyboards, and doing whatever I can manage vocally.)

And also let me say that it means so much to me to be playing Zappa music with not only the treasure/force of nature that is Ray White, and the blazingly amazing Jamie Kime (who absolutely destroyed at the Potato gigs), but also it’s such a gift to be able to play with both Scott Thunes and Chad Wackerman at the same time – 38 years ago, at the end of the ‘88 Zappa tour, I believed that there was no way that this would ever be happening in this particular lifetime. But life does what life does and this is where we now find ourselves, and I can only shake my head in amazement and gratitude. The vibe in the band is fantastic. We are all pals and everyone’s playing beautifully.

There are too many shows on this European tour for this old dude to go hunting down all the ticket links. Check out the tour poster and see what shows you can make; I know you’ll find the tickets online, I believe in you. This web page may be of some help. I also hear that tickets purchased for the originally planned 2025 dates remain valid for the corresponding 2026 shows. This is gonna be a celebration, please come join us if you can.

MIKE KENEALLY REPORT with DAVE CURETON
UK/NETHERLANDS TOUR NOVEMBER/DECEMBER

End of November through the beginning of December I’m going to do some shows in the UK and the Netherlands Decorate your glamorious (yes I made up a word which combines glamorous and glorious! Try and stop me!) holiday season, oh ye denizens of the UK and the NL, with a minty fresh concert by me and the Report (Jaan Wessman and Schroeder), alongside the immensely fiery Dave Cureton (from IO Earth) and his solo band!

The idea for this tour was birthed backstage at ProgStock last year, either right before or right after I sat in with IO Earth, when Dave and his delightful manager Wendy Hagenbeek proposed it to me. I remember exactly where I was standing and the direction I was facing when they asked. My response was yes, and it still is.

I had an amazing time playing with Jaan and Schroeder in Freiburg a  few weeks ago – I love those guys so much – and the only sad part was that it was only one show wedged in between other obligations, but it completely whetted my appetite for these upcoming shows. We will play out 2026 in appropriate fashion – join us, woan chew?

NIGHT & DAY CAFE in Manchester, UK Nov. 30
THE FLAPPER in Birmingham, UK Dec. 1
DE BOERDERIJ in Zoetermeer, NL Dec. 3
CACAOFABRIEK in Helmond, NL Dec. 4
SIDNEY & MATILDA in Sheffield, UK Dec. 7
THE 1865 in Southampton, UK Dec. 8
TRADING BOUNDARIES in Fletching, UK Dec. 9

***

THAT’S ENOUGH

Yes! 

I love you and I thank you,

Wine And Pickles goes on sale this Bandcamp Friday, September 4! And you won’t believe all the other tasty MK treats that you can enjoy right now at Bandcamp?…

Sign up for The Keneallist

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 ticket links:

• Nov 30 – Manchester – Night and Day 
• Dec 1 – Birmingham – The Flapper
• 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

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.

***

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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