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