Mike Keneally - Tomorrow
Underrated musician who played for Frank Zappa in 1988.
This video was sponsored by the Moydolf Dada Art which is a pretentious art collective who fight against tyranny and censorship.
Video dedicated to JiJi King.
"I’m Mike Keneally, writing things about myself. What’s happening with you? You good?
Here are a few words about my life in music. I appreciate you reading them, if in fact you do:
I started playing keyboard when I was seven, when my parents gave me a Magnus chord organ for Christmas. It was like a box of magic to me. For my eleventh birthday I got a guitar and that was a whole different beast, and one that I loved just as much. I played both of them obsessively.
I loved The Beatles obsessively starting when I was five years old, and over time that love extended to Frank Zappa, ELP, Alice Cooper, The Rolling Stones, Steely Dan, Todd Rundgren, Stevie Wonder, Yes, The Beach Boys, Henry Cow, Joni Mitchell, Gentle Giant, Sly Stone, The Residents, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Steve Reich, XTC, Radiohead and a million other incredible artists. They Might Be Giants too. Beefheart obviously. Thelonious Monk, sheesh. Laurie Anderson too. Crimson! Tull! Let’s talk Thomas Dolby and Leonard Bernstein for a second! All of those influences and countless others have found their way into my music; music which, I hope, doesn’t really sound like any of it, ultimately.
I was a weird kid, and I slowly learned to adapt in different circumstances, except when I didn’t. To the extent that I did, this came in handy when I was 25 years old, in late 1987, and got hired to play guitar and keyboard with Frank Zappa, my ultimate musical hero when I was growing up. It was also my first real professional gig as a musician, and it came with a lot of hard and fast learning. It was mind-blowing in every way, literally a dream come true, but also more than that. I feel the repercussions every day.
It took me a while to recover after the Zappa tour, and decide on a next step, but as the 90s got underway I eventually got a solo career going (while also working with Frank’s sons in the group Z, and then playing in Steve Vai’s band for six years. Both extremely fun and educational experiences). Some friends of mine (Jeff and Suzanne Forrest, and thank you to them!) in San Diego started a label, and I signed with Immune Records and did eight audio or video projects with them from 1992 to 1998 – this was when I did hat., Boil That Dust Speck and Sluggo! as well as other titles. Then my pal Scott Chatfield (thank you to him as well!) and I formed Exowax Recordings in 1999, and starting with the instrumental one-man-band album Nonkertompf we unleashed another thirty or so Keneally releases over the next two decades, including regular albums, EPs, limited editions with DVDs or bonus albums, etc. All are available at store.keneally.com.
I started playing live with my own bands a lot in the late 90s, translating intricate studio compositions into live templates, improvising a lot and doing a lot of crazy things onstage, not quite settling into a jam band scene, or a fusion scene, or an alternative scene, or a prog scene, or a composed jazz scene but (I guess?) combining something of all of that, without ever attempting to do anything specific genre-wise at all; I just keep making music that I enjoy hearing. Add in the energy we get from the many varied and wonderful music-lovers we’ve played for around the world, and it’s all been an extraordinary thing for me to be a part of. I’m endlessly grateful to all the musicians who’ve played my music through they years, and to all the people who’ve enjoyed it.
Sometime around 2000 I started occasionally seeing brown triangles, giving me musical instruction according to some arcane outer-planetary notational system. This would happen, sometimes, when I was playing guitar onstage with my eyes closed. After a couple of years, it stopped. I think it helped my playing for good, and I enjoyed it a lot.
In 2006 I started writing songs with Andy Partridge, former leader of XTC and songwriting hero of mine. Six years later in 2012, I put out an album called Wing Beat Fantastic: Songs Written By Mike Keneally & Andy Partridge. Working with Andy was another fairly unbelievable dream come true for me, similar to working with Zappa in terms of the impact they’ve have had on my life.
This album and other recent albums of mine have been recorded at Scott Chatfield’s studio Chatfield Manor, with ace engineer Mike Harris a constant co-conspirator. Every moment it’s possible for me to be working on music here, I do my best to take it. I love making albums. It’s an addiction.
Other recent-ish releases include the mostly instrumental You Must Be This Tall; Scambot 1 (part one of an epic ongoing saga); Evidence of Humanity with drummer Marco Minnemann; and a live DVD/CD set of the Mike Keneally Band"
