Mike Types To You

Sep 9 2013

I found this sort of extraordinary: I left my iPhone charger at the hotel in Dallas. Didn’t realize it until we got to Houston. Yoops!

The day after Houston we (the Satriani band) were in Austin for a gig. NOW FOR SOME BACKGROUND: a couple of days beforehand, Kira Small put me in touch with an Austin musician named Steve McAllister, who wondered if I was available for a session when I got into town. There was no soundcheck on the day of the Austin gig, so I had the whole day free until 8:00 pm, and I told Steve “yup. Yup.”

He picks me up at the hotel and I ask him, “hey, you aren’t a Mac guy by any chance are you?” I thought he might know where the nearest Apple Store was so I could get a new phone charger. He reaches into the compartment between the front seats of the car and pulls out his Apple credentials – he works for the company. I do the session, his song is awesome, he pays me AND gives me a new charger. Things really go right sometimes.

To which you respond, “what do I care? What has this got to do with me?” Well, calm your ass down while I explain.

Sep 20

Well, that’s as far as that went!

Oct 3

Man, this is proving very difficult for me to write, as is plain to see, or not see, because I haven’t been writing it for a couple of weeks, and thus, there’s not much to “see.” Let me back up a little here, with an incredibly exhaustive and probably unnecessary look at the history of Mike Types To You:

Well, I have to pee first. I’m in my bunk on the Satch bus right now, between Albany and Portland, ME. I should be sleeping, but I’m typing this instead, which can cause neck ache in a bunk, and pee need.

It’s so freakin’ comfy in this bunk. I love it. I love my bunk.

Oct 5

Holy shit! I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY THIS IS SO HARD FOR ME.

Fresh new Keneally.com webmaster Antal Adriaanse told Scott and I, when we were brainstorming the website reboot a few months ago, that he didn’t think we needed a Mike Types To You section. He was very skeptical that I would get back into doing it, after having abandoned it so long ago during Keneally.com Mk. 1.

(I guess we’re officially referring to it as Mike Types 2 U on the front page. I might still refer to it as Mike Types To You though. The whole texting-culture thing and the way it’s infiltrated written language is a very tempestuous topic for me. So maybe we’re using 2 U as ironic cultural commentary. That’s my story. But I think maybe MTTY looks cooler than MT2U. Shit I’m having all sorts of creative angst about this. Very exciting. [I get too much amusement out of parenthetical asides. I’m such a nerdy writer.] Oh, if you’d like where I left off, here’s the last Mike Types To You I wrote, back in the grand, productive days – this is from July 14, 2003: https://www.keneally.com/archive/types/types0.html)

“Scoff,” I said to webmaster Antal. “Scoff! Just you wait and see how many Mike Types To Yous I do’s! I can’t wait to get started!”

Well, it’s harder than I thought it’d be. Knock me down and teach me a lesson why don’tcha. Teach me a thing or two about something.

I used to be way more forthcoming about stuff back in…

Oct 7

…the 1990s, but nowadays I tend more often to keep stuff to myself. Don’t know why. I share semi-personal things here and there on Facebook and Twitter, but most of a lot time wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwd Wow! I actually fell asleep at the keyboard just then. That’s part of the problem here too: I’m in the fourth month of Satriani touring (after the first two months we had a six-week break, but I worked a lot on the Sluggo! reissue [coming soon] during ithe besr. Sssssssssss It happened again! I might need a nap.

Oct 8

Good morning! I’ll pick this up after breakfast. Boy, am I in a writing mood today. Stand back folks! WORDS a-flyin’! I’ll be right back after this!

(seven hours later)

As I was saying. I tend to keep things to myself more these days.

Oct 9

I’m gonna abruptly shift my tone here:

So I’ve been pretty private, and there are some major things that have happened in my family which I haven’t shared publicly. In the past year we’ve lost both my mom and my sister (they are the Josephine and Bobbi referenced in the artwork to Wing Beat Elastic). I loved them both so much, I miss them both so much. They were incredibly strong, inspirational, beautiful people.

Josephine was my mom. She was fantastic. She supported me and believed in me so strongly. I could feel it all the time. She gave me way, way more than I could ever repay. Her and my dad’s belief in me gave me the confidence to make music my life. Bless you, Mom.

Bobbi was the younger of my two older sisters. She was tough and funny and awesome. She had to tend to me a lot when I was a kid; she used to make me bread and butter when I was too young to wield a knife. She liked to press down on the bread and flatten it, which I didn’t dig. I was a miserable, loudly whining child. One time I complained loudly about her pressing the bread too flat, which caused her to grimace and press down more. I took the bread and butter, walked to the garbage can and trashed it immediately. It really didn’t go over well! So we had our differences, but she would defend me righteously if need be. She beat on this girl a few years older than me (I was probably six at the time), who teased me into coming over for a hug in the rec room and when I did she freaking flipped me upside down and dropped me flat on the ground in some super slick karate move to show off for her friends. I went screaming back to our cabin – the whole family was staying at Baiting Hollow Lodge, a summer resort in New York – and Barbara ran to the rec room and pounded the bitch. It was seriously a wonderful thing she did for me, and at that moment I finally realized how much I truly loved my sister. (Barbara was her given name and what I always called her, and I didn’t find out until just a few years ago that she preferred to be called Bobbi. I had no idea! I had been calling her Barbara all my life. I reprogrammed myself at that point to call her Bobbi, but it wasn’t easy.)

So my mom and Bobbi have moved on. Bless them both, the dear people. I didn’t bring it up on any of the social platforms I hang out and promote myself on – it didn’t feel appropriate. For whatever reasons, I needed to keep it private.

Obviously they were very hard times for my family, and for me, although due to the nature of my work I wasn’t around to deal with it as directly as my siblings were, which is an insanely complicated topic in itself, which causes ginormous guilt feelings in me, which manifest in all sorts of ways that suck.

But, man, I have to very intensely express gratitude to Marty, Fran and Joe, my siblings who are all strong and gentle and smart and funny and amazing. They’ve all supported me in countless ways and I can only bow my head and say thank you, thank you, thank you.

Oct 10

Hi again! So, anyway, I’m going on like this because it feels good to write it all down, and because I think Mike Types To You is a format where I feel comfortable sharing a little more stuff. I think it was a good thing to do back in the 90s, when I was generally in more of a sharing mood. So maybe I’d like to get myself into a little more of a sharing mood. Within reason of course. So I’m gonna start doing this again. Between you and me I’m shooting for one (1) new MT2U per month. It’s a goal. Goals are healthy and enjoyable!

I wrote the following a few days ago on Facebook, right after playing at the Palace Theatre in Albany with Joe and the guys. So that was October 2. Later that night I would lie in my bunk needing to pee and I would write about it for you. That might be an example of something I don’t necessarily NEED to share, but I’m flexing my sharing muscles. I might not always share the right thing. OK now I’ve got “Misunderstanding” by Genesis playing in my head because of that last line scanning similarly to “It’s not like me to say the right thing.” It’s playing in YOUR head now too isn’t it?

Anyroad, Scott Chatfield wanted me to post this on the front page here at Keneally.com when I posted it on Facebook, but I forgot, and it’s not exactly fresh news anymore so I’m posting it here now:

“Tonight was deep – we played the Palace Theatre in Albany, which was the site of the first night of the Zappa tour I did 25 years ago.

It sounded unbelievable onstage. That room’s magical. I realize now how fortunate it was that the first night of the FZ tour, my first full-on professional music gig, was at the Palace. It could have been in some horrendous hell-hole, and been a disaster, but my memories of that Zappa show are all incredibly positive and it was a great first step on this crazy road I’ve been following since.

The whole Satriani band felt something special in the room tonight, it was our favorite show for the last couple of weeks. Great freaking audience, great freaking night.

I’m gonna make a little request of the universe here – sometime before I finally kick the bucket, I would really like to headline this fuckin’ room with my own band. Cool?”

Oct 11

Just finished our show at Massey Hall in Toronto. Great show, great crowd. We were really loose onstage tonight and a lot of cool things happened. I’m grateful that Joe is so open to change, musically – every show is very distinct even though we play the same songs every night. There’s a lot of room to stretch out, and also to do subtle little things in a support part that can have a major impact on the sound. All of us are trying different things every night to keep the music vital. Lately it’s been so tight it’s been scary, and tonight we hit that tight/loose combo that’s always a good thing to achieve. It’s really a killer band. Happiness.

However, I am very, very, very tired! And I think this MTTY (MT2U?) is long enough for people. I will stop writing this now. Thanks for reading. More soon, one hopes!

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