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THE KENEALLIST: Scambot 2 & Inkling on Bandcamp Friday!

The Keneallist

Hi! I very much hope you’re well!

And now –

SCAMBOT 2/INKLING ON BANDCAMP THIS FRIDAY, AUGUST 4

Scambot 2 & Inkling

This coming Friday is the first Bandcamp Friday for a few months, and we’ll be expanding our Bandcamp catalog with the addition of (tympani roll……..) the Scambot 2 and Inkling albums from 2016! Well I guess I already said that in the headline, so I probably didn’t need the tympani.

This will be the first time that the album Inkling has been available for streaming online anywhere ever ever! Both albums also include the usual exhaustive booklets and liner notes.

These titles will now join our old pals Scambot 1Songs & Stories Inspired by Scambot 1, and the Scambot Holiday Special in our Bandcamp inventory of exciting Scambot-oriented material.

As it happens, and if you’re feeling particularly Scambotty, I recently did a deep think-slash-talk about the entire Scambot saga with my bud Chris Siebold for his YouTube channel, and you can see it right dang here if you’ve a mind to.

As you may recall, Bandcamp Friday is the day when Bandcamp doesn’t take a percentage of income from downloads and all the proceeds go to artists/labels. We at Exowax Recordings appreciate Bandcamp doing this (and you for choosing to buy this Friday)!

DREAMSONIC HAS ENDED AND THE PROGJECT TOUR IS ABOUT TO BEGIN

THE PROGJECT TOUR

The Dreamsonic 2023 tour of North America ended a few nights ago (I played in Devin Townsend’s band on this tour, we were the middle act between Animals As Leaders and Dream Theater).

It’s not easy to express what a powerful experience it was for me, both musically onstage every night and also as a member of a traveling community. It was heavy in unexpected ways and the bond that formed among all the bands and crews was strong. And it was just amazing fun. I want to express extreme gratitude to everyone who was a part of it, came to a show, or helped to make the whole thing happen.

(I had a mailing list at the merch table during Dreamsonic and as a result, this is the first Keneallist a number of you will have ever received. Welcome, and thank you for signing up!)

I got to spend two entire days at home and I loved those days a lot. Now I’m sitting on Joe Travers’ couch in LA and today was the first day of rehearsal (or at least the first one I was able to attend) of the new lineup of ProgJect, and I’m really thrilled to report that we’ve got something special to offer at these upcoming shows. We’re playing in the USA starting in a few days and stretching into October a ways.

New dates are being negotiated, but this here is the tour schedule as it currently sits, twirls its computer chair around and reaches for a Cheeto.

ProgJect for the upcoming tour consists of Jonathan Mover, Ryo Okumoto, Marc Bonilla and our new bassist, the most eminent and wonderful Ric Fierabracci. I showed up at rehearsal today expecting it to sound good, but man it went way beyond good, this band is sounding just ridiculous. Mover says things are looking good for us to make it to Europe in 2024, which is exciting news.

Meanwhile, I didn’t think it would be possible for me to be as jazzed as I am to be going immediately out on the road, after having just spent seven weeks touring, but the vibe of the band has filled me with a legitmate glee to get out and play this classic progressive music for people. Hope you can make it out, you US residents you!

BUT THERE IS YET MORE DEVIN TO COME

If you have looken at the ProgJect tour itinerary of which I have just spaken, you’ll note a gap of some girth between Aug. 13 and 24. That gap exists because I have to leave the ProgJect tour for that moment, fly over to the UK, and play with Devin Townsend at the ArcTanGent Festival in Bristol.

Devin Townsend @ the ArcTanGent Festival

The festival takes place Aug. 16-19 at the idyllic Fernhill Farm; we’re headlining on Saturday the 19th. is very highly regarded (it’s won awards and is warmly spoken of by festival cognoscenti) and my senses are abuzz with anticipation to perform there. Look here’s the lineup, and all the other information you need is at that site too. 

When I’m done there I get on another plane and get back to the rest of the ProgJect dates in the US. I’m a ramblin’ guy!

And then in November we’ve got four Devin dates in Australia. Been a number of years since my last visit to Australia (I was with Satriani at that time) and I’ve loved it there since first visiting it with Steve Vai in the ‘90s. Here are ticket links for the Australian dates as well as ArcTanGent.

A BOUQUET OF LINKS

Quickly now, because I need to sleep!:

1 There was a good piece with me in the June 2023 issue of Vintage Guitar magazine.

Vintage Guitar magazine

At this page there’s a short video of me playing some of “Celery” to promote the article, and this here’s a link to a pdf of the article.

2   I played on Steve McAllister’s beautiful new album I Hope You Are Okay. Here is a wonderful review of it, and here is where to get it. Dave Gregory plays on it too and it is marvelous, intelligent pop music.

3 I played on Mats Oberg’s stunning new release Visa från Inneröra. I appear on his delightful composition “Dream Loops.” Mats’ genius is of course on full display and his writing and playing is just as awe-inspiring as ever. It’s a privilege to be on his new album, which you can sure find here

4  Jeez, speaking of privileges: Anthony Garone asked me if I would join him in interviewing Derek Shulman, Kerry Minnear, Gary Green and John Weathers of Gentle Giant, on the occasion of the release of Steven Wilson’s remix of the glorious Interview album. There really aren’t words to capture how eagerly I accepted that invitation.

Gentle Giant

What a true honor, and what a truly spectacular band to whom I’ll always be grateful, and you can watch our discussion here.

5  The immensely charming Hammond Chamberlain has interviewed me once again for his excellent Beyond the Playlist podcast.

6  Listen to this podcast also! It’s an interview I did alongside the legendary Art Tripp while at 2022’s Zappanale, supplemented by a lot of really good music.

7  I did an interview with the boxing website The Ringside Report! I’ve never boxed but they must know that I’m a boxer at heart. Read the interview, during which we discuss nothing about boxing, here. It’s actually a really good little interview, I dug the questions.

8  And final! A review of The Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat from good Pete Pardo at Sea of Tranquility.

The Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat 

AND NOW TO BED

Actually, first I’m gonna post a couple of phone videos I took during the Dreamsonic tour to my Patreon page, and THEN to bed. Either way, good night!

Love,

Mike!
Scambot 2 & Inkling
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THE KENEALLIST: A whole lotta Dog for Bandcamp Friday!

Good day to you!

This Friday is Bandcamp Friday (the one day per month when Bandcamp doesn’t take a cut of any income, it all goes to artists/labels), and the title we are adding to our Bandcamp library this month is 2004’s Dog.

This particular title has never been available for streaming on that demon streaming platform we all know so well – despite our repeated attempts to get it on there, along with a few other missing titles – so for those of you who’ve been desperate to stream Dog, it shall be now streamable for you on Bandcamp.

But there’s more!

Caution! The links to the  Dog (Deluxe Bandcamp Edition) won’t work until the clock strikes midnight (PDT) tonight, ushering in Bandcamp Friday (and Cinco de Mayo!).

Goodness gracious, there’s more! This is not your standard Dog! This is Dog (Deluxe Bandcamp Edition), which has been fortified with 34 additional tracks. THIRTY-FOUR. A bunch of these tracks are audio from the DVD that came with the Dog Special Edition CD/DVD set (a limited edition which is now out of print). Six of the tracks are from a live show at Victor’s in San Diego, and six were played live in the living room of Chatfield Manor.

There is also documentary audio, from the Dog studio sessions, of me doing a vocal on the blistering, unreleased 18-second-long punk-metal workout “Lizard Tongue” (while the rest of the band cracks up in the control room). There are demos of Dog material, including full-band early versions recorded at a studio in Santa Monica, and a recording of “Splane” made in a hotel room during a Taylor Guitars clinic tour. There’s DVD menu music, and a 2 and ½ minute edit-collage of Dog songs that featured on keneally.com at the time of the album’s release.

Finally there’s a lengthy interview, featuring Claudia Russell of San Diego’s Jazz 88.3 FM asking me a bunch of excellent and very specific questions about the songs on the album. Re-listening to that interview today gave me a very enlightening perspective on my mindset at the time – in retrospect I’ve come to think of Dog as a dark album, thickly colored by my feelings in the aftermath of the 2003 Baghdad invasion, but in listening to myself talking about it all at the time, I realize there was a lot more lightness in my intentions.

Enough of this dimestore psychology! My point here is, there is much exciting bonus listening for you in this Dog (Deluxe Bandcamp Edition).

Taking a break from the Dog sessions outside Jeff Forrest’s Doubletime Recording Studio on December 7, 2003 are (l. to r) Nick D’Virgilio, me, Bryan Beller and Rick Musallam.
Taking a break from the Dog sessions outside Jeff Forrest’s Doubletime Recording Studio on December 7, 2003 are (l. to r) Nick D’Virgilio, me, Bryan Beller and Rick Musallam.

For those who download the album, you’ll also receive two separate additional downloads containing all the original album artwork, plus a plethora of era-specific promo graphics to enhance your enjoyment. And all the lyrics will be on the Bandcamp page (even the original album didn’t have those!), so this will be a truly deluxe event for Dog lovers. We hope you enjoy the living heck out of it! Woof!

SAN DIEGO MUSIC AWARDS – LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD!

SAN DIEGO MUSIC AWARDS – LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD!

On April 25 I was privileged to receive the Country Dick Montana Lifetime Achievement Award at the San Diego Music Awards. It was an extremely humbling experience. You can see it for yourself right here if you’re inclined. That’s the livestream of the entire awards ceremony, nearly three and a half hours worth, which was held at the very lovely Humphrey’s by the Bay in San Diego. At around the 1:53 mark you’ll see Brendon Small’s speech inducting me, then a short film about me and then my acceptance speech.

I was legit overwhelmed but I managed to find things to say. Around the 2:33 mark you’ll find the two songs I played with Larry Grano and Rick Nash, “Hallmark” and “Rosemary Girl.” Many friends and loved ones were at the event and it was a very special freakin’ night for me. My genuine thanks to Kevin Hellman and the San Diego Music Awards for this extremely significant honor, and thanks to Scott Chatfield for taking the photos which decorate this section of the Keneallist (I thank him for much else besides that in my acceptance speech!).

ME GUESTING WITH ONE SHOT DEAL AT ALVAS SHOWROOM ON MAY 12

A little while back, Joe Travers started a Zappa cover unit called One Shot Deal, populated with amazing musicians that he used to play with in ZPZ – Ben Thomas, Scheila Gonzales, Jamie Kime, Pete Griffin and Billy Hulting.

I think Joe might have named it One Shot Deal because he wasn’t sure if they were going to play more than once, but they’ve continued gigging and audiences have been ecstatic. I’ve been excited to finally see them, but instead of sitting in the audience for this gig on May 12 I’m going to have to watch them from my place onstage, because I’m going to play the entire show with them as their special guest.

This is happening at Alvas Showroom in San Pedro, and I just went to their website to share the ticket link with you here, but now I see on the website that the show is sold out. Well then! If you’ve already got a ticket, see you there!

DREAMSONIC 2023 – NORTH AMERICA TOUR WITH DEVIN TOWNSEND, DREAM THEATER AND ANIMALS AS LEADERS

DREAMSONIC 2023 – NORTH AMERICA TOUR WITH DEVIN TOWNSEND, DREAM THEATER AND ANIMALS AS LEADERS

I still feel like I’m recovering from the European Devin Townsend tour, which was really just amazing, and soon enough I’ll be getting back on the bus for the next round of shows, as the middle band of three bands on the DREAMSONIC 2023 tour. Animals As Leaders start off the evening, then us, and finally Dream Theater. Epic nights of music will be ensuing. I’m immensely happy to be a part of it.

This is the inaugural run for this annual Dreamsonic event which Dream Theater has dreamed up and it’s just a dream for me to be a part of it. I promise to never write anything like that last sentence again! Anyway if you’re a North American I hope you can make it to one of these shows. Here’s ticket links to every dang show on the tour. It’s going to be bigger than really huge.

SOME MORE PRESS FOR THE THING THAT KNOWLEDGE CAN’T EAT

I remain very grateful for the amount of coverage the new album continues to receive!

The Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat - Mike Keneally

SIGNING OFF

See you all soon and thank you again and always! Oh and I’ve also been working on a whole big bunch of new music lately (by myself and with others). So there’s that! More of which later!

All right, now have yourself a fine meal and pat yourself on the back, you did great today.

Love,

Mike!
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THE KENEALLIST: Tales from a tasty tour, with just a hint of vinyl

The Keneallist

Mike Types to You from the road

March 28, 2023

Salutations from over here!

We are nearing the end of the Devin Townsend European Lightworks tour – as I type (in the dressing room in Stuttgart on March 25, the walls unexpectedly decorated with Beatles Anthology artwork, two stones’ throws away from Mercedes Benz HQ) there are 9 shows remaining of a 32-gig run.

The Keneallist: Beatles artwork I did not expect to see on the dressing room wall in Stuttgart.
Beatles artwork I did not expect to see on the dressing room wall in Stuttgart.
The Keneallist: Some flags fluttering outside Mercedes Benz headquarters
Some flags fluttering outside Mercedes Benz headquarters

It’s been remarkable. I really love this quartet and over the last few nights we appear to have kicked ourselves upwards to a higher level of communication and precision. Really satisfying. Unfortunately, in tandem with this playerly ascension, Dev has been dealing with respiratory ailments that have really taken a toll on his singin’ throat – if only the realities of scheduling could allow us to just say to everyone with tickets to the show, hey let’s all meet here a week from now and do all this then.

But he’s been powering through like the show-must-go-on sorta guy he is. And even last night in Brussels, which was probably the height of his throat issues, he still hit some performance peaks that were absolutely astonishing to me. He operates at a level that’s pretty well beyond belief.

The Keneallist:
An intriguingly-named eating establishment near the Stuttgart venue.
The Keneallist: The weather in Stuttgart was wonderful. I walked for a long time.
The weather in Stuttgart was wonderful. I walked for a long time.

But what about Keneally albums on vinyl, you say?

Well-worn vinyl LPs from your imaginary collection.
Well-worn vinyl LPs from your imaginary collection.

Funny you should mention it, ‘cuz Scott Chatfield and Chris Opperman and I were talking about this two nights ago. NONE of my albums are on vinyl, and there’s an obvious feeling amongst us that it’s high time we remedied that.

But we’re all like, what do we start with? Do we go with The Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat since it’s new? Or do we go with one of the old “classics”? Do we go with something that requires two discs to get all the music on (a la Sluggo! or Dancing), or something that would fit neatly on one slab (like the new one, or Wing Beat, or Wooden Smoke)?

And then Scott was all like, we should ask the Keneallist readers what they think, and Oppy and I were all like, yeah!

So that’s what I’m-a doin’ now, asking YOU what album you’d most like to see us print up on vinyl. Or maybe a top 3, and then we can do some MATH over here and see which albums are the most coveted on wax. Please respond to us by replying to this email or emailing us at hello@keneally.com and let us know what you think about this – thank you!

Paris in the springtime

The Keneallist: The front of L’Olympia. Really awesome.
The front of L’Olympia. Really awesome.

NOW it’s March 26, and we just played a show to a really wonderful audience in Paris, at the legendary L’Olympia. I listened to some of that live Jeff Buckley album recorded there to get in the mood.

It really is a beautiful venue and the audience knocked us all out, including a very young girl (I’m thinking she was around nine) who Dev invited up onto the stage to select her choice from the multiple stuffed octopi festooning Darby Todd’s drum kit, and who then sat peacefully in front of the barrier with hearing protection on, happily clutching her new octopus while a series of crowdsurfing dudes spilled over her into the pit between barrier and stage (fear not, the security force were sure that no dudes landed on top of her – at the point that it seemed like the frequency/velocity of dudes was becoming unmanageable, she was relocated to a safer vantage point, further down the barrier.

She was totally chill about the whole thing and her guardians kept an eye on her the whole time. All of this was very interesting to witness from the stage perspective, believe you me).

The Keneallist: Part of the lobby at L’Olympia. I was going for Kubrickian symmetry; missed it by that much.
Part of the lobby at L’Olympia. I was going for Kubrickian symmetry; missed it by that much.
The Keneallist: Our front-of-house engineer Chris Edrich, and lighting man Mike St. Jean, during our gig. Photo by our merch woman Laia Miguel Lloret.
Our front-of-house engineer Chris Edrich, and lighting man Mike St. Jean, during our gig. Photo by our merch woman Laia Miguel Lloret.
The Keneallist: Paris is kinda freaking amazing-looking.
Paris is kinda freaking amazing-looking.
The Keneallist: A freaking amazing-looking opera house in Paris.
A freaking amazing-looking opera house in Paris.
The Keneallist: These are chairs displayed in a window in a very posh shop in Paris. I think they cost €80,000,000 apiece.
These are chairs displayed in a window in a very posh shop in Paris. I think they cost €80,000,000 apiece.
The Keneallist: This is a fragment of a bus inside the lobby of another posh shop in Paris. It costs elevendy zillion Euros.
This is a fragment of a bus inside the lobby of another posh shop in Paris. It costs elevendy zillion Euros.

And those TTTKCE reviews keep a-rollin’ in…

There’s been a cluster of nice new The Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat press coverage since the last Keneallist…

  • Actually, we did quote this review from Dmitry M. Epstein in the last Keneallist, but it’s such a special review to me I kinda want to highlight it again. It starts: “Prog polymath fathoms the frontiers of his fantasies and pushes their envelope to enforce a breach into the great unknown.” And it ends just as majestically, and in between hits some insights about my stuff that I really appreciate. Dude can write.
     
  • This is a sweet track-by-track overview from Gary Hill at Music Street Journal.
     
  • A really lovely piece by Greg Cummins at DPRP, including the first time, to my knowledge, that my music has been compared to a song by Mountain (and I totally get where he’s coming from with that, actually!).

    (Note: we ferried to the UK yesterday, and now it’s March 28 and I’m backstage at Bexhill-on-Sea, on a drizzly, windy day by the seaside. Seagulls hover outside the window. Its the sort of place where if you listen carefully you can hear “Bungalow” by XTC emanating from the crevasses on the beach. Back to the press parade…)
     
  • A well-timed review, considering I was just in Paris, is this one in the beautiful French language from Alain Bourguignon.

    At the bottom of this review is a very considerately-placed Google Translate Link that will make life easier for English-language specialists, and I’d specifically like to highlight this translation of the section about “The Carousel of Progress”:

    “After a simple, accessible beginning, the thing turns unexpectedly and completely moves away from the introductory plot. The instrumentalists let go completely, the lines move away, intersect, everything becomes sinuous, tortuous, surreal…One would think that our master builder did not come out intact! Then things calm down, find a clearer direction, return to the introductory melodic line. Awesome!”

    How delightful!
     
  • We finish up with a very good interview conducted by my long-time friend, and a very faithful supporter of my music for years now, Jedd Beaudoin, who found the best quote from our interview to title his piece, “Not so much boiled as cut in half.”
     

BFD passes the audition

Two days ago I received a set of mixes from Kip Stork (expert audio engineer and utterly sweet guy) comprising a MK/BFD show at a club called The Siren in Morro Bay, CA, from January 16 of this year. This was one show of a run of five nights featuring a heretofore untested BFD quartet lineup consisting of myself, Rick Musallam, Pete Griffin and Joe Travers.

The audio evidence suggests that the band is a very good one! I’ve just uploaded five of the tracks to Patreon.com/MikeKeneally over the last couple of days, and will very likely upload more during the coming week, so if this intrigues you you might like to check it on out. Thanks to Kip for a fantastic mix, and for the surprising and sudden delivery of same!

Mere minutes to showtime

Y’all are awesome. Thanks for reading all of this if you did. I listened to a bunch of Peter Gabriel today, which I haven’t done for a very long time, including loads of tracks I’ve never heard before and which were great fun to discover – when’s the last time YOU listened to songs from OVO? Anyway, listening to Peter Gabriel songs is a pretty nice way to while away some hours in a dressing room in Bexhill-on-Sea when the weather is dissuading you from actually being near the sea yourself.

Devin’s voice sounded amazing at soundcheck today, I think he’s going to be in full voice for tonight’s show which begins 59 minutes from the moment of this typing. And with that, I leave you for now.

Thank you Dan, if your name is Dan! If it’s not, thank you too!

Love,

Mike

P.S. Three more sights I drank in on my journey

The Keneallist: Our hotel for the day off yesterday was in Eastbourne. This dude was nearby.
Our hotel for the day off yesterday was in Eastbourne. This dude was nearby.
The Keneallist: A pier in Eastbourne. Perhaps the pier in Eastbourne. The only one I saw, anyway.
A pier in Eastbourne. Perhaps the pier in Eastbourne. The only one I saw, anyway.
The Keneallist: A beer in Eastbourne. Most definitely not the only beer in Eastbourne.
Most definitely not the only beer in Eastbourne.
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