MIKE KENEALLY UPDATE

Mike Keneally says:

Infinite varieties of thought-provoking greetings to the lot of you!

It's you!

I will speak to you of upcoming gigs, yes, and of things on the internet which may delight and astound you. I will then close with three paragraphs outlining my immediate past and possible future.

Here we go!

I'll be appearing at WesFest 5 at the Roxy in Hollywood on Feb. 28 (with the Guitar Therapy Band for a tune during the All-Stars segment, and I'll be appearing with John Montagna also). But check this out: headlining this year is Tal Wilkenfeld (with a band including Vinnie Colaiuta, Oz Noy and John Beasley. I KNOW, it's crazy). You have to come. This benefits the Wes Wehmiller Scholarship Program at Berklee College of Music -- details like mad are at http://weswehmiller.net/wesfest5.

Couple more Keneally Band gigs with the Guitar Therapy lineup (which is me, Rick, Bryan and Joe, in case it slipped your mind) are coming up: one on March 12 at The Loft on the campus of UCSD (really looking forward to this. I think UCSD is a superb place and it's been way too long since I played there. If you're a student, know that the first 50 students to show UCSD IDs will get in free! Damn!). Then we bring trouble once more to the Baked Potato the following evening, March 13. Please, please, I implore you, attend, attend, if you can. (Yes, non-So Cal residents, we hear your pleas. Yes, we're working on it. Announcements soon, we hope.)

Oh -- Matt Resnicoff and I will be joining Rick Musallam at his gig at the Baked Potato on March 10. Rick has been hosting a lot of interesting shows at the BP lately!

And also: Bryan and I are sneaking back to Northern California for another secret MyKeneally gig in late March. It's always nice to book more than one gig for a trip like that, so if you want to have us do something around there around then, write to us at mykeneally@keneally.com. We are all ears. We enjoy unique circumstances. We like adventure. We're Beatrice.

Life on the interweb: there's a good interview with me at the website iTalkGuitar.com -- here's a link. There's a lot of cool interviews and features at this site, well worth the few seconds it takes to register. Thanks David Mead for the good questions.

I'm also the guest on the February 20 broadcast of the KMUW radio program "Strange Currency," out of Wichita, KS. (They named Scambot 1 the best album of 2009, so you know they've got it together.) I already did this interview actually and it was hugely fun. Host Jedd Beaudoin and I talked for a long time about the origins of Scambot, plus stuff about Zappa, Vai and Dethklok, and I also talked about Radiohead, Rundgren and Joni Mitchell songs I like. All this was discussed while I was either being driven to NAMM, or walking from my hotel to NAMM, so it's got a real "You Are There" quality to it I bet. "Strange Currency" airs Saturdays at 2am, 10am and 9pm CST on KMUW's HD2 (for those few of you not in Wichita, the link to listen online is on the upper right hand corner of this page:
http://www.kmuw.org/index.php/programs/strange_currency) and at 8pm CST on 89.1 KMUW, Wichita Public Radio.

And now, the final three paragraphs.

This past month: I played at the Baked Potato twice (the gig with Brendon, Gene and Rick was too much fun), played with Bryan and Marco at NAMM, sat in with Umphrey's McGee at the House of Blues in SD (those last two were on the same day), did a Cream tribute gig with the OHM guys at Alva's, did 2 Northern California My Keneally gigs with Beller, spent a week finishing up unbelievable-sounding mixes for Matt Resnicoff's debut album The History of Now, did a secret gig playing keys on Woodstock-era classic rock tunes in a barn near Fallbrook, CA, continued work on arranging Steve Vai's song "Oooo" for Vai Piano Reductions Vol. 2, went to some parties, did some drawings, had some pie.

Soon: Working on Dane Runyon's album Looking Below, more Vai piano work, work on Scambot 2 (I currently have anywhere from 15 to 20 songs in various states of completion for it, and am going to be writing more for it soon, using an amazing baritone guitar a good friend just hooked me up with), working out the release of my collaboration with Marco Minnemann Normalizer 2: Evidence of Humanity, furthering my ongoing studio collaboration with members Umphrey's McGee and my songwriting collaboration with Andy Partridge, playing live when and where possible, at least one secret project (probably three), the Scambot online comic, finishing this Keneallist, and not so much pie.

Right this second though, Priority One is "Oooo." Something about making these Vai piano albums... it's incredibly challenging for me. I have to stand up and stretch a lot. Steve gave me some valuable notes on my first pass at an arrangement for this track, and I'm incorporating those notes, as well as fine-tuning and embellishing other things here and there. It sounds good, it's just so freaking hard to do. And someday I'd like to re-learn my arrangements from the first Vai piano album (I haven't played them since I recorded them, over ten years ago) and also be able to play all the arrangements I'm about to do for the second one, so I could perform them all in a concert setting if need be. Oh lord. Oh my goodness. I'm fanning myself like Scarlett freaking O'Hara just thinking about it. But anyway. Back to work. Thanks for reading. Love you.
The end!

Mike!