Sluggo! Archives - The Official Mike Keneally Website

THE KENEALLIST: Next up this Bandcamp Friday – Sluggo!

October 5, 2023 Mike Keneally Album, Exowax, Live, News, The Keneallist

“Happy Bandcamp Friday yet again, yet again! Happy Bandcamp Friday yet again!”

(I still remember that old singalong tune from sixth grade camp, which was, strangely enough, many decades before Bandcamp existed.)

This beautiful world is not a fantasy!! For THIS is the month we finally add Sluggo! to the roster of titles on our rapidly swelling Bandcamp page!

This is the 2013 remix of Sluggo!, superbly executed by Mike Harris, and is fortified by two vitamin-packed bonus tracks from the Sluggo! era, “Bob Dylan’s Nose” and “Craney.”

Is it my best ever album? Probably maybe!

(For a completely outlandishly Slugtastic listening/viewing experience, I mustn’t neglect to mention that the physical four-disc Sluggo! 2-CD/1 DVD-A/1 DVD-V special edition set is still available here, in case it doesn’t live in your home yet.)

As a reminder, Bandcamp Friday is the day that Bandcamp surrenders every drop of its dollar percentage to the artists on the service.

It is a remarkable show of support for musicians, and I’m grateful that they’ve been doing this – thank you so much, Bandcamp – and we hope that it is able to continue the practice into the next year, even after its recent sale to Mephistopholean Industries, Inc.

LIVE DATES!

Four shows remain on this ProgJect tour I’m currently on, which has been so much damn fun I can’t even tell you. It means a lot to be able to play this amazing music with these guys for crazy prog fans across the US. Next year we’ll be spanning more of the globe – more news on that will come to you as it’s finalized.

The remaining ProgJect shows for this month are all in California, and they are here:

The Grand Ritz in Escondido – Friday Oct 6. Come celebrate Bandcamp Friday with us!

The Mint in Los Angeles – Saturday Oct 7. I used to play the Mint frequently in the late ‘90s with BFD and I’m excited to return.

The Lafayette Town Hall Theatre – Sunday Oct 8. This is our San Francisco-area gig, in a room I’ve never been in before, and I’m very intrigued to play there.

And the final gig of the tour at The Grape in Ventura – Monday Oct 9. Lots of my friends have played this room but this will be my first time there and I’m eager to see what the hubbub’s about, bub.

I’m doing three nights at the Baked Potato with Joe Travers’ One Shot Deal band in late October, playing the ever-glistening music of Frank Zappa, and featuring the dulcet magnificence of Pete Griffin! Jamie Kime! Billy Hulting! Scheila Gonzalez! Ben Thomas! These people aren’t screwing around.

I’m playing on the complete sets, every song. Three nights, two sets a night:

Wednesday Oct. 25, 8pm and 10pm

Thursday Oct. 26, 8pm and 10pm

Friday Oct. 27, 8pm and 10pm

My final gigs of this year (I INSIST ON SPENDING THE LAST MONTH AND A HALF OF 2023 SITTING UNMOVABLY IN ONE LOCATION AT HOME) will be with Devin Townsend in Australia in November.

These dates mark the end of this year’s Lightwork tour cycle with Dev. It’s been completely fantastic – the Feb/March Europe and UK dates, the summer North America dates with Dream Theater and Animals As Leaders, the one-off ArcTanGent Festival in August – it’s all been so dang fun and wonderful.

There won’t be any Devin touring for quite some time after these November dates, and who’s to say if I’ll even be in the band next time he decides to do it (by which I only mean that I respect and support Devin’s choice to head in whatever direction he wants to at any time…I am grateful to report, though, that I’ll be going to his studio early next year to contribute musically, in whatever way I can, to his upcoming 2025 orchestral/theatrical extravaganza – about which, much, much more later).

All of this is to say that I’ll really be relishing these upcoming dates in Australia with Devin, Darby and James, and if you’re in the neighborhood it would be amazing if you could come by:

Fremantle, Nov. 8

Melbourne, Nov. 10

Sydney, Nov. 11 (which is apparently sold out, but you just never know with concert tickets these days – for all I know three rows of seats might become available on show day or something so just to be on the safe side):

Brisbane, Nov. 12

MONDAY by KENEALLY/RADULOVICH NOW WIDELY STREAMING

The new collab between me and Marcelo Radulovich, Monday, can now also be found at these links:

Amazon

Apple Music

Spotify

And on Marcelo’s Titicacaman website

Get ready for our upcoming second album, coming sooner than makes any sense.

SO…

I’ve done more touring this year than I’ve done in a very, very long time, and it’s definitely been something. I’m feeling every mile I’ve traveled for sure, but mainly I’m feeling grateful and fired up and ready to keep doing this for a long long time.

Next year will see a lot more live ProgJect, and I want to do as much live Beer For Dolphins as is possible, as well as aiming towards the live debut of The Bird Brain. I hope to see you out there, somewhere, sometime soon!

Love,

Six Seconds of Sluggo!

March 4, 2014 Mr Exowax News, The Keneallist

#SIXSECONDSOFSLUGGO

Hello fellows and ladypeople! It is I! Mike.

In our general exultation about the Sluggo! special edition, and our fascination with all microcosmic aspects of music, we’ve come up with a means of celebrating some of the tiny but juicy fragments to be found on the album. We have our own favorite small moments on the album, and we’d love to see and hear yours.

Using the free Vine app, we invite you to shoot a video using your favorite six seconds of Sluggo! as your background music (singing or playing along is great also).

Upload the video to Vine and share it to Twitter or Facebook with the hashtag #sixsecondsofsluggo.

I’ll be keeping an eye on all posts with this hashtag, and I’ll be retweeting or reposting the ones I really get a kick out of. The ones I super-dig will be “favorited” on Twitter.

A few “rules”:

1. I don’t need to say this, but please no appalling, threatening, racist, sexist, hateful or otherwise offputting-to-the-majority-of-humans entries. Thank you.

2. If you don’t use the hashtag #sixsecondsofsluggo, we have no way of finding your video, so please use the hashtag!

3. Please submit as many videos as you like.

4. I may retweet/repost as many videos as I like.

5. No one, human or animal, shall be harmed in the making of your films. Use of magic or science to turn living dogs into cardboard dogs or vice versa is strictly prohibited.

We’ve taken the liberty of shooting a few examples…head over to Twitter now, search for the hashtag #sixsecondsofsluggo and have a look! This will be fun, right?

New Year’s News from Mike

February 2, 2014 Mr Exowax Live, News, The Keneallist

Mike Keneally with Ed Palermo Big Band and Napoleon Murphy Brock

Hey your eyes are pointed at words I wrote!

I hope you’re having a splendid 2014. So far this year I’ve been mostly sequestered away working on Scambot 2, although I did guest with Joe Travers and Friends at the Potato one night, which was beyond beyond, and I had a scintillating detour to The Iridium in NYC for a couple of nights with the Ed Palermo Big Band and Napoleon Murphy Brock – intensely fun and severely musical.

And did I mention how much I loved playing those four shows with Bryan, Joe and Rick in December? I adore those goofballs, the shows were great and I want to thank everyone who came to see us. It was necessary for me to get out and play some songs from You Must Be This Tall live for the first time, and it was also great to bust out tunes from the recently reissued Sluggo!.

Speaking of which: the response to the Sluggo! reissue has been crazy. I definitely felt we were taking a risk remixing one of my albums for the first time – the “messing with peoples’ memories” angle is definitely something that has to be considered. And I’ve heard too many remixes of albums where it was considered some form of victory for it merely to not sound way worse than the original. We were shooting for way more with Sluggo! We worked for a long time on the stereo and surround remixes (as long as it’s taken me to make some albums from scratch) and we took the process very seriously. After it was done I was utterly convinced that we had improved the sound of the record hugely, and with all the supplementary audio and video material we gathered for the new edition I was certain that we’d created a really nice package – now we had to see what everyone else thought of it all.

So it’s been gratifying that every bit of feedback we’ve gotten, and every comment we’ve seen online, supports our belief that the remix is a genuine improvement. I seriously haven’t seen a single negative comment, which is stunning. The response to the surround mix has also justified the time and hard work spent on it, and people are enjoying the vast quantity of archival video and bonus audio contained in the deluxe package. I couldn’t be more happy about it all.

Here’s a couple of responses which give the flavor – a review from “Jeff” on the alt.music.mike-keneally newsgroup– a brief excerpt:

“I thought Wing Beat Fantastic and You Must Be This Tall were new milestones for MK as far as mix quality and clarity, but the new mix of Sluggo! might just surpass them. Clearly a huge amount of work into this remix, and it shows. Rediscovering an old friend in this very new light is a special treat.”

And this review on the Something Else Reviews website.

There are still a good batch of Super Deluxe Editions available, but they’re going pretty dang quick. That’s the signed numbered edition of 1000, which comes with the additional CD Live At Mama Kin in its own digipak. This is a burning Beer For Dolphins gig from 1998, and it also features superb audio quality.

If you’ve already gotten the new Sluggo! I am very grateful and I hope you’re enjoying the heck out of it. If you haven’t, treat yourself – I promise you’ll dig it. If you don’t, I’ll do one of these three things:

A. Watch the movie 1941 1,941 consecutive times
B. Let you hit me on the big toe with a spoon
C. Eat a bag of Fritos which has been underwater for a week

Speaking of underwater, I’ve been obsessed with the show Sea Hunt lately. It is absolutely fantastic. More about that, perhaps, in the next exciting installment of THE KENEALLIST!

Love,
Mike

Listen to “Sluggomatic,” A Brief Tour of Mike Keneally’s Sluggo!Order Sluggo! today at The Mike Keneally Store. You’ll get the stereo download NOW, and your multi-disc Sluggo! package will ship right away.

Sluggo! is available in four formats:

1) Sluggo! Deluxe (1-CD/2-DVD package) $34

Contains:

Same-day download of the 2013 Stereo Mix of Sluggo! in mp3 or FLAC
CD with 2013 Stereo Mix of Sluggo! plus 2 bonus tracks
DVD-A with PCM 16/48 Stereo, DTS 24/48 5.1 Digital Surround, MLP 24/96 Lossless Stereo & MLP 24/96 Lossless 5.1 Surround
DVD with over two hours of unreleased stereo live and studio video material, a commentary track by Mike, the original 1997 stereo mix, more bonus audio tracks, shots of the original tracking sheets and more
Digipak & 20-page booklet with all original artwork plus new liner notes

2) Sluggo! SuperDeluxe (2-CD/2-DVD package), $49
Signed, numbered edition of 1000

Contains all items in Sluggo! Deluxe above, PLUS:

Live At Mama Kin, a CD of Mike Keneally & Beer for Dolphins performing live in Boston on August 15, 1998 (newly mixed by Mike Keneally and Mike Harris)
Hand-numbered and signed by Mike Keneally

3) Sluggo! 2013 Stereo Mix download in mp3 or FLAC, $10

4) Sluggo! Original Stereo Mix download in mp3 or FLAC, $10

Order today at The Mike Keneally Store. You’ll get the stereo download NOW, and your multi-disc Sluggo! package will ship right away.