{"id":11728,"date":"2023-03-18T14:05:11","date_gmt":"2023-03-18T05:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.museonmuse.jp\/?p=11728"},"modified":"2023-03-18T14:05:11","modified_gmt":"2023-03-18T05:05:11","slug":"vol-132-mike-keneally-march-2023-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.museonmuse.jp\/?p=11728","title":{"rendered":"Vol.132 Mike Keneally \/ March 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike Keneally <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
\nPhoto by Martin Mann<\/span><\/p>\n

The multi-instrumentalist Mike Keneally is known as the guitarist for the late Frank Zappa band, his solo works, contribution for legends like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Devin Townsend and numerous others.
\nThere are quite few multi role players who can sing, play guitar, keyboards, write and produce songs. But not many have exceptional skills to play for legendary artists like Frank Zappa band. Steve Vai and Joe Satriani. Mike also is a true magician about composing supreme melodies and took listeners to his own musical planet.
\nMike recently released his brand new album \u201cThe Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat\u201d. The album consists of 9 songs and lasts only 42minutes so it is not the most lengthy album he has ever done but they are not average guitar songs, there are full of ideas, characters and pure musical niceness.
\nWe had a chat with Mike Kenearlly himself about his brand new piece \u201cThe Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Interview \/ Text\u00a0 Mamoru Moriyama
\nTranslation\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hiroshi Takakura<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nPhoto by Frank Wesp<\/span><\/p>\n

Muse On Muse : After the few chaotic years of pandemic, live music is back on the game and our situation is getting back to normal. You have released brand new album \u201cThe Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat\u201d which is the first time in 7years after the last album \u201cSCAMBOT 2\u201d. How are you feeling now?<\/span>
\nMike Keneally : I\u2019m very happy indeed to finally get this album out! For several years after Scambot 2 I was happy not to think about making an album or even about writing songs, but then around 2018 I started writing new songs and thinking about putting out a new release. I didn\u2019t expect it would take so many years to get an album finished and released, and now that it\u2019s out I\u2019m extremely grateful.<\/p>\n

MM : Artists seemed to focus on more writing\/production works because they could not do live-shows during pandemic. How was your case?<\/span>
\nMK :\u00a0I was coming to terms with learning how to work my new home studio – for many years I\u2019ve depended on other recording engineers to make my music happen, but during lockdown I had to learn to do it myself, and it was a lengthy process. But I was able to do a lot of writing and recording of new music, including a lot of music that will be on the next album that comes out, as well as recording and production for other artists\u2019 albums – in addition to my own music I also worked on albums for MFTJ, the Android Trio, Pawlie, and Steve McAllister, as well as special projects for Bear McCreary, and one-off tracks for several other artists, so it was a productive time.<\/p>\n

MM : Please tell us about the name of the album \u201cThe Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat\u201d<\/span>
\nMK : At one point towards the end of the last song on the album, \u201cThe Carousel of Progress,\u201d the word \u201cYielbongura\u201d is sung as a background vocal texture. The word is found in the following quote by author\/workshop leader Malidoma Patrice Som\u00e9: “In the culture of my people, the Dagara, we have no word for the supernatural. The closest we come to this concept is Yielbongura, ‘the thing that knowledge can’t eat.’ This word suggests that the life and power of certain things depend upon their resistance to the kind of categorizing knowledge that human beings apply to everything. In Western reality, there is a clear split between the spiritual and the material, between religious life and secular life. This concept is alien to the Dagara. For us, as for many indigenous cultures, the supernatural is part of our everyday lives. ” [This quote is from Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman.]
\nI found this quote inspiring, and that\u2019s where the album title came from. After the album art was completed, I learned that Som\u00e9 passed away in December 2021. If I\u2019d realized this sooner, I would have dedicated \u201cThe Carousel of Progress” to him in the liner notes.<\/p>\n

MM : The album consists of 9 songs and is 42 minutes long, which is not the longest album. But all tracks have your taste and mood, and musical spirit which strongly lure us into the Mike Keneally world.<\/span>
\nMK : I did want it to have the feel of an adventure through different feelings and scenarios, without taking an enormous amount of time to complete the journey. People are very busy and distracted nowadays, so I think it\u2019s good that the first album I\u2019ve put out for such a long time is relatively easy for people to digest in one listen. Having said that, my next album is probably going to be about 80 minutes or longer – sometimes I can\u2019t help myself.<\/p>\n

MM : The album starts with \u201cLogos\u201d which has gorgeous vocal harmony and piano woven with the vox.<\/span>
\nMK : That was recorded prior to the pandemic. I sat down at the piano in Scott Chatfield\u2019s house (he runs my record label Exowax) with the goal of writing some music quickly, and that piano part came out within a few minutes. Once I decided I wanted to put lyrics to it, I went looking through a large stack of lyrics I\u2019d written over the years which were never used for one reason or another, and I found the words to \u201cLogos\u201d in that stack – I\u2019d actually forgotten that I\u2019d written them. I thought that the lyrics might suit that music, but I didn\u2019t know what the melody was going to be, so I asked the engineer Mike Harris to record me singing and I\u2019d see what came out. I didn\u2019t expect either that melody, or especially that strange sounding voice, to come out of me at that moment, but apparently it was what the song wanted to happen. Then I thought it would be worthwhile to add additional voices, and I just started layering the vocals. The parts came together very quickly, it was a gratifying session.<\/p>\n

MM : “Both Sides Of The Street” and “Mercury In Second Grade” are really good vocal songs which contains your own vibe and unique structure.<\/span>
\nMK : \u201cBoth Sides of the Street\u201d actually was a song I heard in a dream I had during lockdown; through the years I\u2019ve had a number of songs on my album which were dreamed songs, but they\u2019ve tended to be short, peculiar songs like \u201cApple Pie\u201d from hat., or \u201cI Guess I\u2019ll Peanut\u201d from Sluggo! I guess \u201cGood Morning Sometime\u201d (another dreamed song) from the Boil That Dust Speck album was more of a conventional tune, and \u201cBoth Sides of the Street\u201d is more in that tradition of an actual, somewhat standard pop\/rock tune that I dreamed and did my best to remember once I woke up.The dream was: I was onstage with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. I was one of their road crew, and at one point everyone onstage was sitting on the floor, except for the drummer, the bass player and me. I was holding somebody\u2019s guitar – I wasn\u2019t a member of the band, I was a roadie, but somehow at the end of the gig I was up there playing this song, although I was faced away from the audience and towards the drummer the whole time I was playing it. The crowd went nuts when the song was over though. I woke up from the dream and got out of bed in the middle of the night, snuck quietly downstairs so as not to wake my wife, and played the guitar part into my phone. After I got some more sleep, I got onto Pro Tools and made the basic track for the version on the album.<\/p>\n

\u201cMercury on Second Grade\u201d was recorded around the time of \u201cLogos,\u201d with Mike Harris engineering. I\u2019d thought initially that I was just going to keep it as a very stripped-down acoustic recording – when I made the track with Mike it was pretty much just a single acoustic guitar, a bass track, and a vocal. Once I was home in quarantine though, I decided to expand the arrangement and added the additional instrumentation. I asked my friend Eric Slick, who was miles away locked down at his own home, to record drums for this song (as well as for another song that\u2019s not finished yet and will be on the next album). When I received his drum track and heard it for the first time, I laughed with glee – he lifted the song into a completely new realm with his choices, I couldn\u2019t have been happier with it.I guess this song sort of recalls my album Wooden Smoke or maybe Wing Beat Fantastic in that it\u2019s based on acoustic guitar. Lyrically it\u2019s pretty much me doing some old-guy-type complaining about people spending too much time on their phones (as though I don\u2019t do the same exact thing).<\/p>\n

MM : The heavy hard guitar riff on the intro of \u201cCelery\u201d reminded me of Steve Vai then actual Vai himself is on guitar solos from 2.33 and 3.32! This is a brilliant guitar instrumental, and fans wanted top notch guitar collaboration like this from you and Vai.<\/span>
\nMK : I\u2019d had the bones of that song hanging around since 2015, but didn\u2019t start to finalize it until 2020, when I put together my quarantine home-recording rig. While I was working on my guitar tracks for it, I just got the sense that I needed Steve on there to kick it up to a higher level. I sent him a rough mix of what I\u2019d done so far and asked him if he would record two solos on the song, and he sent them back to me almost instantly – he instinctively knew exactly what the song needed, I think. What was nice is that he sent me one track of his unaffected guitar, and a separate track of FX, so if you listen to his ending solo especially, you can hear the reverb on the guitar track getting louder and quieter – I had a lot of fun in the mix changing the level of the reverb, and I think that combination of his amazing playing and the changing FX levels gave the ending part of that song a dramatic character unlike anything else in the album. That in itself felt like a nice collaboration. I\u2019m so grateful that Steve gave so much of his own artistry to that song; I\u2019m honored and humbled to have him on the album, and it feels like a wonderful signpost in our ongoing journey together.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span>
\nPhoto by Martin Mann<\/span><\/p>\n

MM : The combination of the beautiful arpeggio and vocal melody, and aggressive improvisation of the guitar and piano are extraordinary on “Spigot (Draw The Pirate)”.<\/span>
\nMK : Thank you, I\u2019m glad you like it so much. The music for \u201cSpigot\u201d and \u201cCelery\u201d were both composed very quickly in 2015, immediately in advance of me going to Indiana to record with Nick D\u2019Virgilio and Pete Griffin at a recording workshop for engineering students. Nick used to be the drummer for the Mike Keneally Band in the early 2000s (he plays on the album Dog), and he invited me to write a couple of new songs and take part in this workshop. <\/p>\n

It was great to play my music with Nick again after so long, and I had just done a bunch of recording with Pete for Scambot 2, so we had a tidy little power trio for that session. After I flew back home I didn\u2019t listen to the results of that session for four years, and in the meantime I\u2019d completely forgotten how the two songs went. In 2019, around the time I was working on \u201cMercury in Second Grade\u201d and \u201cLogos,\u201d I finally got curious to hear \u201cSpigot\u201d and \u201cCelery\u201d again, and was real gratified to find that I liked them a lot and wanted to finish working on them. I recorded the lead vocal for \u201cSpigot\u201d in 2019 at Chatfield Manor with Mike Harris engineering, then finished the whole thing up with more overdubs at home in quarantine. I was happy to pay tribute in the lyric to Charles M. Schulz, one of the most influential artists in my lifetime – I love his Peanuts comic strips so much, especially the period from the late \u201850s to the mid \u201870s. I honestly think it\u2019s one of the most significant American artistic achievements ever. The back-and-forth guitar and piano were recorded at Sweetwater during the initial session – I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve ever done back-and-forth solos like that in a song on one of my albums before. It was sort of like the kind of thing I\u2019ll do live sometimes when I\u2019m feeling playful, going back and forth between the instruments, but I hadn\u2019t explored that in the studio so much, and for this song it just felt like it was time to finally go there.<\/p>\n

MM : \u201cAck\u201d has Jazz\/Fusion kind of beauty and hardcore madness simultaneously.<\/span>
\nMK : It\u2019s the oldest track on the album by a long shot, recorded in the Netherlands in 2006 with members of the Metropole Orkest but not released until now. It was part of an experimental session which was masterminded by Co de Kloet, who is a producer for Dutch public radio (he\u2019s the one who commissioned my orchestral piece The Universe Will Provide in 2003). He put me into a studio with the musicians and told me I had to write two songs on the spot. The first one was \u201cChee\u201d which ended up on Scambot 1, and \u201cAck\u201d was the second one. Definitely an interesting challenge to compose something worthwhile on the spot with everyone watching and waiting, and really it\u2019s the brilliance of the Metropole members (and Bryan Beller who was guesting on bass) that make this song take off – they took my quickly composed material and really made it come to life. It was a very rewarding little moment in my life and I\u2019m glad I got two such good recordings out of it.<\/p>\n

MM : \u201cLana\u201d is aggressive, yet unique tune and it stands out from the album.<\/span>
\nMK : This one came about as a result of the beautiful Framus guitar that Devin Townsend gave me in late 2019 when I began touring with him. It\u2019s tuned to an open C chord – from bottom to top it\u2019s C G C G C E – and just about everything you play on it automatically sounds great. I was using it at home during lockdown for some recordings I was doing for composer Bear McCreary, and while I was working on Bear\u2019s music, the main riff for \u201cLana\u201d popped out of me, so I quickly shut down Bear\u2019s Pro Tools session, opened a new one and recorded about a half-hour of guitar experimenting with this new riff and variations on it. Then I edited together the best portions of that experimentation, and that turned into the basic form for \u201cLana.\u201d But then I decided to insert that much quieter section, with the quirky harmony vocals, a short way into the song – it didn\u2019t interest me so much just to have a heavy riffing song all the way through, I wanted that quick left turn. And then I had fun recording a bunch of crazy harmonized guitar parts with my Strandberg guitar. I\u2019ve seen some people refer to them as Brian May-type orchestral guitar parts, but I don\u2019t know if I ever heard Brian May do anything quite this psychotic sounding – his harmonized stuff is more beautiful and symphonic, mine is a bit more demented. I didn\u2019t record the song to a click track, so the tempo is all over the place, and my friend Ted Morton did a heroic job recording drums to it in his home studio. Not an easy task at all!<\/p>\n

MM : The multilayered vocal harmonies are breathtaking on \u201cBig Hit Song\u201d. Its music video is also released.<\/span>
\nMK : That was the first song I wrote after about three years away from writing songs. I really enjoyed taking the break from songwriting once Scambot 2 was done, and focusing for a while on working on other peoples\u2019 projects and tours, but in late 2018 I found myself sitting on my bedroom floor knocking out the main guitar chord progression for \u201cBig Hit Song\u201d and I thought, well, guess I\u2019m writing songs again. I reached a certain point in the song and felt like I needed that left turn again, and I remembered a chord progression I\u2019d written on keyboard a few months previously (without necessarily thinking it was going to be part of anything, it just tumbled out one day). That keyboard progression ended up being the representation of \u201cBilly\u2019s big hit song\u201d in the song\u2019s plot line. Of course it\u2019s the least commercial part of the song, which is part of the irony of the thing, but it somehow felt like it belonged in there. Mikko Keinonen\u2019s video for \u201cBig Hit Song\u201d makes me so happy, it absolutely captures the essence of how the song feels to me. In total, Mikko has made videos for five of the songs on the album, and together they comprise the short film called The Complete Adventures of the Unrelated Sound Guy, which as of February 24 can be viewed in its entirety at https:\/\/www.unrelatedsoundguy.com\/<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Tobias Ralph is the drummer on this one and he knocked it out of the park, as they say. There\u2019s beautiful, subtle little drum stuff all over this song.<\/p>\n

MM : “The Carousel Of Progress” starts with comfortable melody, beautiful harmonies and Pop atmosphere, but it changes into unique and dynamic structure.<\/span>
\nMK : This was the first thing I wrote in lockdown, after getting my home recording rig up and running. (The first album I recorded in lockdown was MFTJ\u2019s My Mom\u2019s Getting A Horse, but my contribution to that album was primarily improvisational – \u201cCarousel of Progress\u201d was the first fully composed quarantine song that I did.) This song was almost like a puzzle to be solved, and it really provided me a focus I very much needed while still finding my way forward psychologically in quarantine. It was truly a strange time and having this complex piece to work on every day was necessary food for my brain and heart. It took me many months to complete. My wife Sarah was a huge help to me on this one, she was able to hear the big picture on this song whenever I\u2019d get bogged down in details – she actually gave me incredible feedback on the whole album and strengthened it immeasurably. And it meant so much to me to have Malcolm Mortimore play drums on this song – his work on the Gentle Giant album Three Friends from 1972 is seriously some of my favorite drumming ever, I mean just listen to what he does on \u201cSchooldays\u201d on that album, it is absolutely masterful. To have him on my album is profoundly moving for me.<\/p>\n

MM : Please tell us about your gears. What guitars, amps, effectors, and pedals did you use for this album?<\/span>
\nMK : As mentioned before, I used my Framus and Strandberg guitars, and my trusty green Clapton Strat was also called into service. I have two Taylor acoustic guitars that I used. Several tunes were done with my Rivera Quiana amplifier, but all the stuff I recorded at home used Fractal Axe FX III and Universal Audio plug-ins instead of using a physical amp. Pretty much all the effects heard were Universal Audio plug-ins rather than pedals.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nPhoto by Marc Mennigmann<\/span><\/p>\n

MM : You played not only guitar for this project, but also bass, keyboard and vocal. I guess it takes numerous times to keep yourself as a multi-instrumentalist. What is your thought about that?<\/span>
\nMK : Organ was my first instrument at age seven, so I had four years on keyboard before I ever tried to play a guitar. I really appreciate being able to jump from one instrument to another, it helps me to keep my own songs interesting to me and allows me to quickly add a lot of color to the arrangements when I\u2019m recording. I just love varied orchestration, and take a lot of pleasure layering different keyboard sounds and guitar tones – I want every song to have a distinct personality sonically. And I just love playing bass, it\u2019s a whole different vibe from guitar. Some of the bass on this album is the fretless bass which was played for years by my dear friend, the late Doug Lunn (the original bassist in Beer For Dolphins). The fretless work at the beginning of \u201cThe Carousel of Progress\u201d is me playing Doug\u2019s bass, and when I play his instrument it\u2019s like I can feel his presence coming through me.<\/p>\n

MM : You are also a great composer. What is your usual procedure to write\/produce songs?<\/span>
\nMK : Thank you! I feel very fortunate that very often there are little bits of new music running through my head. I frequently will sing or play those little snatches of melody into my phone and refer to them for later use. I approach making music as though I\u2019m simply a listener rather than a composer – I\u2019m one of those who believe that music is a stream moving through life, and all of us who play music are just trying to grab ahold of a little portion of that stream. So when I\u2019m making a new song, I\u2019ll start with whatever little musical fragment has occurred to me, maybe grabbing one of my phone voice memos as a starting point. I\u2019ll record that little fragment, then I\u2019ll sit back and listen to it and imagine: what do I want to hear next? It\u2019s as if I\u2019m about to place a needle on a record – what sounds do I want to emerge from that record when I put the needle down? I let that sound play out in my head, figure out how to play that sound, and record it. Songwriting\/recording to me is just a process of doing that over and over again until the song is complete.<\/p>\n

MM : You must have seen how Frank Zappa worked on production\/writing. What was your good memory of working with him?<\/span>
\nMK : I loved how he practically used us, the members of his band, as though we were manuscript paper in human form – all the new songs on the 1988 tour were written by him on the spot during rehearsals. He would play a passage on the guitar, or sing to us, and we would learn that passage, then he\u2019d move on to the next passage. It was hugely inspirational to me how he\u2019d create an entire arrangement over the course of several hours with us, how creative he was and how patient he was with the process, but still very productive and efficient, getting a lot done in a short amount of time – and it was a huge band, with five horn players, so there was a lot of work to be done, but he was very methodical in his approach. And it was just a lot of fun, we were laughing our heads off while the work was getting done – that might have been the most inspirational aspect of all, that this wasn\u2019t painful, difficult work, but joyous, vibrant work. I knew that I wanted to be that kind of bandleader. When everyone in the band are enjoying the process, it affects the work for the better.<\/p>\n

MM : Please tell us about your upcoming plans.<\/span>
\nMK : As I\u2019m writing this, I\u2019m at the very beginning of an eight-week European tour with Devin Townsend. I was touring with Devin in March 2020 when COVID caused all touring bands to cancel their travels and fly home immediately, so I\u2019m extremely glad to finally be back on the road with Devin, whose music I love a great deal. It\u2019s so hard to believe it\u2019s three years since COVID sent us home – what a strange time it\u2019s been! I will also be touring later this year with the band ProgJect, playing progressive rock classics from the \u201870s, and I am currently looking to book some dates this year with my own band Mike Keneally & Beer For Dolphins, so that I can continue bringing the music from my new album and my older albums to concert audiences. We did a short tour in January in Southern California and it whetted my appetite to do more. I also play in The Zappa Band (featuring other musicians who played in Frank\u2019s bands), and late last year the band The Bird Brain, of whom I\u2019m a member, released our first EP, and I\u2019d love to do shows to promote that – basically I\u2019m in too many bands, but they\u2019re all so different and I love them all and I want to somehow magically make time stand still so I can play with all of them. I also have a European trio called The Mike Keneally Report, we headlined at the Zappanale festival in Bad Doberan, Germany last year, and I really want to play more with them. Meanwhile, while I was recording The Thing That Knowledge Can\u2019t Eat over the last couple of years, I made a lot of additional music that will be on my next album, and I look forward to having the time to complete that album – it will be significantly more instrumental in nature than Knowledge is, and a bit more peculiar as well, but it\u2019s been so long since I had time to work on it that I\u2019m not exactly sure how it\u2019s going to turn out when it\u2019s finished – but I\u2019m extremely curious to find out! I really love making albums!<\/p>\n

MM : Please tell us a message to your fans.<\/span>
\nMK : I\u2019m extremely grateful for any fans in Japan who\u2019ve been interested in my work over the years. I have fond memories of a live performance in Nagoya from over twenty years ago, and it\u2019s been way too long since I performed my own music in Japan – I dearly hope I\u2019m able to bring my music there again before too long.<\/p>\n

Mike Keneally official website\u3000https:\/\/www.keneally.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n