Mike Keneally & Beer For Dolphins Archives - Page 2 of 4

THE KENEALLIST: This Bandcamp Friday, Mike presents Tar Tapes Vol. 2!

November 30, 2023 Mike Keneally Album, Exowax, Live, News, The Keneallist

Hello, greetings, welcome and hi!

The Tar Tapes Vol. 2 comes to Bandcamp

Bandcamp Friday continues afoot, by which I mean apace!

Let me start again!

Bandcamp Friday continues apace!, and for December we are completing the Tar Tapes difecta with the appearance of The Tar Tapes Vol. 2 (we put up Vol. 1 last month, in case that slipped by your transom).

Vol. 2 was compiled in 1998, and was designed to reflect my then-current state of mind, using only music mostly recorded in the 1980s, which was an interesting exercise for me. In addition to home 4-track recordings, there are also live and studio recordings with my band Drop Control, and computer experiments done at Scott Chatfield’s house in the very early ‘90s. Apart from the original versions of “Fencing” and “Always Man” (which pre-date the hat. versions by a couple of years), all the songs are unique to this release.

1. Strange Impulse (1989)
2. Recognize (1986)
3. Meat Under Analysis (1982)
4. Anybody’s Brain (1984)
5. Molehead (1991)
6. Old Homes (1983)
7. Guns (1985)
8. Economy (1984)
9. Fencing (original version) (1989)
10. Always Man (original version) (1990)
11. Things Seem Important (1982)
12. Mystery Eyes (1986)
13. Where Are You (1984)
14. Bazbo (1991)
15. Bazbo the Flea (1991)
16. The Wreckage Was Large (1989)
17. Building Bigger Lies (1983)

It’s a substantial collection! I stand firmly behind all of these songs, with my hands on their little song shoulders!

The Tar Tapes Vol. 2 spans a gaping stylistic range, from me at my most accessible and pop-oriented, to more abstract/complex occurrences, and a myriad of way-stations in between. “Strange Impulse” (atmospheric pop) and “The Wreckage Was Large” (a Crimsonian look at the career of El Debarge) have both made their way into live setlists sporadically over the years, so you may have heard them at a show or two.

But this is a collection of “song” songs that, for whatever reason, mostly didn’t get a further airing later on, and maybe they shoulda. These are good songs, y’know? Maybe I’ll bust out a live version of “Economy” or “Old Homes” on the road with BFD next year (yes I AM trying to book road dates for BFD next year, wish us luck!).

Persons as varied as John Dean, Abbie Hoffman and Mariah Carey are all united in having never listened to this album, ever. You can break this chain! The Tar Tapes Vol. 2 will be available this Friday on Bandcamp, that’s what I’m trying to say!

And this Friday’s the day artists (just like me) get 100% of every penny you choose to spend!

Bask in the 2nd Mike Keneally/Marcelo Radulovich release

Marcelo is my dear pal who worked with me in 2001 on Wooden Smoke, and in September of this year we put out the ethereal instrumental collection Monday.

Our new release Bask starts off in a similarly ambient vein with the instrumental piece “Wake Up Dragon,” before heading off into a massively varied collection of vocal tunes, featuring Marcelo’s amazing voice, playing and production skills, and a whole bunch of me on guitars, keyboards and bass (and some sangin’. I sing lead on the tune “Quarry”).

A lot of it is super-eclectic studio funk, with amazing rhythms constructed by Marcelo, unusual harmonic structures coming out of me, and entire universes of kaleidoscopic sound flying by – Marcelo is an absolute whiz at creating otherworldly atmospheres and marrying them to body-shaking grooves, and then putting his highly compelling, textured voice on top of it all.

I really love Bask and I hope you’ll give it a go over at Bandcamp – you’ll find it, along with our Monday release and a vast treasure trove of other Marcelo projects, at the Titicacaman Records page at Bandcamp right darn here.

Just a reminder, as we plummet boldly forward into this joyous holiday season…

The Scambot Holiday Special (featuring the beloved standard “Holiday Face”) also awaits your kind attentions at Bandcamp. It’s now time to make this winsomely compelling tale of a medieval father and son making their way through a vast array of things on a quest of some sort (highly influenced by the Firesign Theatre and “Greggery Peccary”) a cornerstone of your family’s yearly holiday tradition!

Sit together around whatever modern equivalent of a Victrola you’ve got, share a warm toddy, and thrill together as the legendary owl of holiday hope makes its yearly trek once again. There’s also a sick guitar solo. And all for five bucks! Look, it’s right here.

MK & Beer For Dolphins at the Baked Potato Jan. 18/19

The quartet configuration of MK/BFD (me, Rick Musallam, Pete Griffin and Joe Travers) will do its thing for the first time in a whole entire year. Two nights in a row, two sets per night. Pete is learning a bunch of tunes he hasn’t played before, so we’ll be changing things up significantly over the four sets.

After this last year of me playing other peoples’ music with Devin Townsend, ProgJect and One Shot Deal (granted, all music I freaking love to pieces) I am absolutely, legally all a-quiver to play my own tunes again. I suspect that these two nights will unapologetically rage.

Here, look, look at the screenshot from the Baked Potato Calendar page and see how they use the special Finnish spelling of my name (“Keneaaly”) in the listing. This is a SURE-FIRE GUARANTEE OF A GOOD TIME. You may visit this calendar page yourself, scroll down until you get to mid-January and choose the set or sets which work best for your lifestyle.

I believe I speak for all four of us, even though I haven’t officially checked with the other guys about this yet, when I say that we’d be very happy to see you at these gigs!

Our great bud Syd Schwartz invites you to Jazz & Coffee

The mighty Syd, whose byline some of you prog-heads might recognize from having the written the superb liner notes to the brand new The Yes Album Super Deluxe Edition, has been utilizing two of his specific attributes – his glorious command of the English language, and his deep and abiding adoration of jazz – in a series of album-specific posts on Instagram for quite some time now (you’ll find him here).

Syd’s love-letters to jazz and other musics make you hear the music as you read them, and his texts are always informative, generously appointed and hugely enjoyable to read. Not since the writings of Paul Williams (the one who started Crawdaddy magazine, not the other one [who’s also great btw]) have I felt such true love for music from a writer’s writings. I invite you to immerse yourself in Syd’s world, and visit his new Substack.

Thank you everyone! Happy holidays!

THE KENEALLIST: Bandcamp Friday For April – Live At Mama Kin

April 6, 2023 Mike Keneally Album, Exowax, News

Hey, thou —

This is just a quick message to let you know that our Bandcamp Friday release for tomorrow, April 7 is Live at Mama Kin – Boston, MA – August 15, 1998.

Never previously available for download or streaming, this title has only been purchasable, until now, as part of the Sluggo! SuperDeluxe package. For those of you who remain adorers of physical, tangible music delivery objects, and who haven’t yet experienced the joys of Live at Mama Kin, this option still exists here.

(Bandcamp Friday, I hasten to tell you even though I’m certain you know this already, is that special first Friday of the month when the Bandcamp service waives all of its own fees and every bit of income generated goes to the artist/independent label. A very good day to browse the work of the many multitudes of artists who make their work available via Bandcamp.)

Live at Mama Kin finds the quartet BFD of the era (me, Bryan Beller, Marc Ziegenhagen and Jason Harrison Smith) in serious fighting trim – almost literally fighting as we found ourselves in near-fisticuffs with unhappy locals when we parked our truck to unload our gear that afternoon – ah, Boston!

It features our covers of “Immigrant Song” and “Inca Roads,” as well as the rarely played originals “Tug,” “Vent” and “Pencil Music,” an opening improv here entitled “BSSOC,” and a heaping helping of additional live faves. The vintage 1998 recordings were given a shiny new mix in 2013 by Mike Harris and myself. It is a wonderful-sounding document of a ferocious show.

One hopes you’ll choose to give it a listen, and by “one” I mean me! Revel in the now quarter-century old (good lord) sounds of MK/BFD!

Good luck!

P.S. We’d still love to know what MK vinyl you’d like to own!

Well-worn vinyl LPs from your imaginary collection. — *Above is currently non-existent Keneally vinyl that may turn actual, with your input!*

So we’re toying with the idea of issuing an “it’s about time!” LP version of an MK album or two. And we’re asking you what Top 3 albums you’d most like to hear on vinyl. If you’re so inclined, please respond by replying to this email or emailing us at hello@keneally.com.

If you’ve already shared your wishes, thank you! Many of you are very passionate about your choices, and we find your responses super encouraging. By the way, the most requested title so far is… oops, sorry, out of space!

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

April 3, 2023 Mike Keneally Album, Live, MTTY, News, Press, 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: 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?

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,