The Official Mike Keneally Website

The Complete Adventures Of The Unrelated Sound Guy

An IndieGogo campaign for “THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF THE UNRELATED SOUND GUY” (a film inspired by five songs from my next album)

Mikko Keinonen is a very wonderful Finnish filmmaker. He hired me last year to play the piece “Mating Dance” for the closing credits music of his film DUUS.

(As it happens, you can watch a video of me playing this very “Mating Dance,” at the very popular video streaming hub YouTube.

A point of potential interest: practicing this piece for a week in order to prepare for this video destroyed my fingers, particularly the area just under the nails to such an extent that I couldn’t even dare dream of playing the guitar for, like, eleven days at least. Was it worth it? HA! 168 entire likes on YouTube [as of this typing] say that it WAS, bucko!) (Although that guy in the comments who says it’s a “really bad Bill Frisell imitation,” yeah I guess that stings a bit. But hey, you know — YooouTube commenters, am I right? AM I RIGHT?)

Read more

The Strandberg Song

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

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.