The Official Mike Keneally Website

Tag: Music

“Pup” EP Now Streaming For The First Time – On Bandcamp

Album, Exowax, News

Today is Bandcamp Friday! We are participating in this now-venerable tradition by releasing, for the first time in a streaming format, the Mike Keneally Band Pup EP from 2004. This was a very private pressing made available at the time only to those who pre-ordered the Dog album.

In addition to three otherwise unavailable live Keneally Band tracks, it contains a long studio take of the song “Li’l.” This freaky instrumental, in a later recording, ended up on Wine And Pickles, but this earlier version is longer, faster and rawer, and also contains the mysterious sounds of the Mattel Optigan that was available for our use at Stanley Recordings. 

There’s also two one-man-band studio recordings, “Sun Flute” and “Party Poopers,” both recorded at Chatfield Manor in the span of time after Wooden Smoke and Dog, and very different from both of those albums. This was during the period when I was just beginning to sink my claws into Pro Tools. They are pretty sturdy examples of bizarre home-recording experimentalism.

All the music pieces are tied together with radio-style announcements and jingles, as this EP also functioned as promo for the then-brand-new Radio Keneally streaming service (no longer with us, and may its light forever shine in our memories). Pup captures the vibe of Radio Keneally in kind of the same way that The Who Sell Out captured the vibe of pirate radio of the ’60s.

Thank you to Chris Opperman for suggesting to Scott Chatfield and I that we make Pup available on Bandcamp, and then put his hard work where his ideas were and uploaded Pup to Bandcamp himself along with all of the supplementary textual material I prepared to accompany it. The hope is to continue uploading recordings from my catalogue to Bandcamp every month until we finally have it all up there. 

For now, this is the first step, and it is here: https://mikekeneallymusic.bandcamp.com/releases

Mike!
"Pup" EP Now Streaming For The First Time - On Bandcamp

The Strandberg Song

News, Video

This particular opportunity flounced in my direction last year…”say, Mike Keneally,” said Strandberg Guitars to me, “can you make us a video promoting our new pickups?” I’ve been playing Strandbergs for a couple of years and getting a huge kick out of them, so I was very pleased to do so, and additionally pleased that the song I made up to highlight the different pickup configurations turned out to be such a peculiar beast. I hope you enjoy this song as much as I enjoyed making a song that I hoped you would enjoy!

Mike Keneally/Marc Bonilla: Ravel’s Prelude from Le Tombeau De Couperin

News, Video

It is hubris, given the history of the world, for me to refer to an indignity perpetrated by a record company upon me as “a wrong.” But still, making this video last year with Marc Bonilla did somehow “right a” very insignificant-in-the-scheme-of-things “wrong” for me, in that Warner Bros. Records forbade Marc Bonilla to record this duet with me on his second album American Matador back in 1992. They wanted Marc to occupy a Satriani/Vai-like guitar-hero spot on the label roster, and they were eager for Marc to play both guitar parts himself, which he did, and did brilliantly.

I must also say that, at that time, it was probably more “right” from a musical standpoint for Marc to play the second part, as I don’t doubt for a second that he executed the part more crisply and accurately than I would have back then. When he asked me in 2020 to finally do the duet he’d asked me to do with him all those years ago, I felt I was ready to finally do it justice. Of course, it still took me about a month solid of practice, to the exclusion of nearly all other human activity. My gratitude to Sarah for enduring weeks of my constant practice of my part over, and over, and over, and over again.

And thank you Marc for asking me to do this! It was fun, nearly impossible, and extremely satisfying.