At last a new Beer For Dolphins LP! I can't wait to hear what Bryan Beller, Marc Ziegenhagen, Jason Smith. Tricia Williams, Chris Opperman, Evan Francis and Rick Musallam are up to this time!

Hold on a second, it says "Mike Keneally" and Beer For Dolphins on the cover. Who the heck is Mike Keneally? Oh, is that the same guy that Frank Zappa called "the best new guy I ever had in the band?" The guy Robert Fripp calls "severely underrated?" The guy Steve Vai calls "a multifaceted musical giant?" The guy Rolling Stone's David Fricke said has "a flair for hot melodic sabotage?" Oh, this must be the same Mike Keneally that Andy Partridge called "so good he makes you want to spit!"

Yes, THAT Mike Keneally. The Mike Keneally who should be on everyone's short list of guitar gods, but is also an impressive piano player and an inventive tunesmith, and who has a disarming touch on lyrics and is a surprisingly good singer. The Mike Keneally who has done his best work yet on his new album Dancing with his fantastic little band, BFD. The Mike Keneally who is a friendly, unpretentious craftsman and a delight to talk to.

He's also the Mike Keneally who we hail as Cosmik Debris's first three-time interviewee. Enjoy.

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Cosmik: I guess the first question is how many solo albums have you put out now? Dancing is number five I think?

Keneally: I think it's number eight.

Cosmik: Really? I'm way off!

Keneally: Yeah, I always have to count them to be sure. In order there's Hat, Boil That Dust Speck, and are you familiar with an album that I did called The Mistakes? I did that with Henry Kaiser and Andy West. Sometimes I include that in the official list and sometimes I don't. It really isn't a Mike Keneally album, it's a Mistakes album. Anyway there's Half Alive in Hollywood, Sluggo, Nokertompf, Dancing, and these two CD compilations called the Tar Tapes. That's eight total.

Cosmik: Anyway, Dancing, it's a real knockout! When you add in the second CD that comes with it, Dancing with Myself, it's overwhelming. There's so much there! The main CD of Dancing weighed in at 79minutes and 56 seconds, only four seconds shy of the 80-minute limit. I was wondering, did you plan that?

Keneally: We struggled mightily to get it under (80 minutes). Sometimes when you get a CD that's that long, I think the natural assumption is that "Oh they padded it out in order to get a super long CD." But in the case of this album, it was a struggle to get it that short. It had to be edited, stuff had to be left out.

Cosmik: I certainly don't hear any filler, but it's hard to take it all in. My brain kind of focuses in on a single cut or two that leaps out at you. A couple listens later you hear a whole new thing. I found myself starting out at the third cut and then the fifth cut just to get fresh ears on each song. I could be working on this for a couple months and still not chew through all of it. It's great stuff.

Keneally: To me, that's the mark of a good album period, whether it's thirty minutes or eighty...I definitely try to put out albums that people can discover over a long period of time. I wouldn't have made the album any different from what it is. It's exactly the album I wanted it to be. I am 100% pleased with it being just as it is. I was already looking to make the next album a more concise statement and that just makes me feel like, "Oh good I'm having this idea at the right time." (Laughs)

Cosmik: The first standout for me is "We'll Be Right Back." I've never heard you do anything like the heartfelt social commentary in that song. What brought you to write it?

Keneally: These are the sort of thoughts that build up in a person over time. I had never really thought that my music in particular was a place specifically to air those sort of views, because it gets into, for me, gray areas of what is and isn't appropriate. There are people who become so... well, just to give an obvious example...Frank Zappa fans often radically adjust their own ways of thinking based on what Frank thought. And I always thought that was very unhealthy. Not that there is something wrong with taking someone's reasoned point of view and weighing their thoughts and weighing your own thoughts and seeing where some of your own beliefs might be, you know, a little wanting, because of not having thought it through well enough. In the case of "We'll Be Right Back"...(It was early 2000) when I wrote those lyrics. I was on the road with Steve Vai and we were in Europe, an Eastern European country and I was watching the news, CNN. I don't remember what the event was that specifically put me over the edge. I think it was probably a combination of three or four things that were going on in the world. It just struck me how much really bad thinking is going on. People, world leaders and citizens alike, being distracted from the real business of life by things which any reasonable person would have to consider very petty concerns. It made me very upset and I wrote a long song. I actually took out most of the really poisonous stuff in the final version! (Chuckles) It gets to the point where I don't feel I have the right to inflict it in its totality on anyone. But I'm glad that that song is there...it was pretty cathartic and I no longer feel a pressing need to return that. Not that that song is particularly specific on political matters. It can be just viewed as sort of a humanist point of view or a universalist point of view. It's something that I feel I got out of my system and I think it's a good song to have in the repertoire.

One of the things that makes me happiest about the album and about that song as an example is just the way the band sounds on it. That was a song that the band had never even heard up until about three days prior to the recording session. About half of the album was that way, a lot of the material was still be worked on right up until it was just about time to go into the studio. The band sounds wonderful on that song, there's a freshness to it that comes from not having played the song to death.

Cosmik: I really like the instrumental part at the end, but frankly where it first leapt out at me was on the second CD where you did it solo. The "Dancing With Myself" totally took me by surprise what with the lovely piano solo that it starts off with and eventually wending its way to the band on the last couple of tracks. I was saying to myself, "WOW, this is the real essence of Mike!"

Keneally: Well, it was fun to do, especially the piano playing, because I think people are largely familiar with my playing as a guitarist and keyboards are my first instrument. So it was good that have a good chunk of CD real estate there to have fun playing it.

Cosmik: You're the producer of all your albums. They always have a nice full sound and the arrangements are always beautifully done. Has it gotten any easier with the advent of digital production and all?

Keneally: In terms of getting this stuff on to tape I'm still very much in the analog realm. We always put it on analog tape. There's no sequencing going on; all the music is handmade. We only ever enter into the digital realm when we're editing. Even then it's not necessarily to achieve an effect that can't be done humanly, but just to tighten things up, to sequence the album or work on segues, things like that. So I guess I'm relatively old fashioned just because of my standards of what I think sounds good. I believe the quality of music that was being recorded thirty years ago is more pleasing to the ear than the quality of much of the music that's happening today. There's a lot about digital recording, recording in Pro Tools and recording direct to hard drive and that kind of thing, that still strikes my ears as harsh and sterile. Even the best of it - you think of someone like Trent Reznor who's doing incredibly creative work - to me there's still something more pleasing and natural and musical to an album that was recorded by a four piece band in a good quality recording studio in 1971. I guess I am still a little bit bound by that ethic. That doesn't preclude me from doing experiments or developing further in the computer area, but that I always find that what I want to hear and what I want to play is a more natural, musicianly thing.

Cosmik: How do your songs start out? Are you usually working them out on guitar or piano first? Whatever's close by?

Keneally: Yeah, whatever happens, and very frequently the songs start without any instrument around. It's just a snippet of melody that arrives in my head. Whatever instrument is nearby, it could also be a piece of paper or piece of tape that determines how that piece of melody gets developed. More and more these days things just arrive, sometimes with lyrics attached. It will be like a phrase that arrives in my head, like a lyric and a melody. There's no rule as to how a specific song gets developed, but if I'm holding a guitar already a song may well pop out or if I'm playing the keyboards a song may pop out. I'm fortunate; there doesn't seem to be any letup in terms of the amount of songs that are coming out. In fact, I seem to be more prolific as time goes on.

Cosmik: One of the things I always like about your work is, lyrically at least, there's always a lot of whimsy to it. I mean a song like "Potato" (from Sluggo); you can't take a song like that seriously, you have to laugh. How do you feel about artists projecting so much attitude? It's just like "Oh come on you guys, you're not really like that in real life are you?"

Keneally: Well, it depends, some of them are, I think. Especially like the goatee contingent...

Cosmik: The "goatee contingent?"

Keneally: Yeah, if you'll notice every young band has to have at least three of the four members with a goatee! (Laughs) You know there is a lot of anger and it's almost like they haven't yet found a way to... to elevate themselves out of it, so they just bellow in their chains. I think that maybe over time I've gotten a little more conscious of the fact that there need to be some kind of balance in the popular music realm. I've done some dark work over the years. There's definitely a bit of darkness in the Boil That Dust Speck album and the Mistakes album. And sometimes when that's all that's going on inside you, that's what you express. But I'm in a very good place these days and choose to have the feeling of the music, (pauses) I want to give people positive feelings. I definitely want to make people happy.

For some one who, (when) their circumstances are hopeless, they can either choose to listen to music which is similarly hopeless, 'cause misery loves company, or maybe they can have the option of something that shines a little light on another area of life, saying, "Look things aren't that bad. It's really wonderful, come on over." That's really the choice I hope to present.

Cosmik: Somebody like Eminem, okay, well he's got maybe an angry past but now he's made a serious amount of money. Is he still going to sound angry? You betcha. Sometimes it's a cynical nod towards the expectations, the product that appeals to a certain market segment, that's what he'll do again regardless.

Keneally: Yeah, in the case of Eminem or anybody else who makes a lot of money via their anger, I see your point, but just because he makes a lot of money, it isn't necessarily going to make him any happier. In fact I think once you get into that kind of money it really brings on a whole bunch of problems that people who don't have that kind of money can't even imagine. When you get somebody who's obviously disturbed to start with, which I think Marshal Mathers is, he's had a rough life, and he is really voicing a lot of young people's frustration right now. We could definitely have a lengthy discussion on how healthy that is. The thing that troubles me is just that he's really pushing hate. He's selling a lot of hate there and hate is a very comforting thing for a lot of people. If there is any one message above all, and I think the most important message in We'll Be Right Back is that politics is important but it is also bullshit. It's founded on bullshit whereas hate is a constant and so many people find comfort in it and find it so easy to hate large groups of people for no rational reason than other than their father hated them. So they grew up feeling that it was the right thing to do. So much sickness gets instilled in the society by that endless chain. It's really hard to turn back the clock on that kind of thing. People like Eminem, who I respect (for) a lot of the craft that going into his music, it saddens me that it's becoming commercially viable and acceptable to say those kinds of things on a record. Yay First Amendment and all that stuff, but I do think there needs to be a little responsibility.

Cosmik: I tend to agree, but it's not something you can legislate. You just have to hope that people appeal to their better selves. Some people may not have a better self, but you still gotta have faith. Not to travel the political road too much, but how do you feel about Dubya being up there?

Keneally: It's not really something I care to talk about. (Laughs) It's interesting, I definitely have strong opinions on the topic but, you know, everyone has a right to say whatever they want about whatever, but ... I'm only interested in reaching people with the music. I want to make as many people happy as I possibly can by the music. Unfortunately it's really difficult for a lot of people to separate political thought from a person's work. It's a real distraction. Somebody will shut off someone's music based on...you know it's like there are people who refuse to go see a Jane Fonda film. I'm not interested in playing that game. I will willingly shut down a few of my own rights to free speech in order to further what is my greater cause, which is to get my music into as many ears as possible.

Cosmik: So are you guys touring to get your music into more ears?

Keneally: Right now there are plans afoot to go out within the next several months. Once they're finalized they will be announced on the Keneally page, which is www.keneally.com. I'm hopeful that within several weeks we'll have some information to you.

Cosmik: This will be mostly larger clubs in various cities, not the music halls?

Keneally: Exactly. There's nothing I'd like better than to get into small theaters. This is music that people really enjoy being able to hear it well.

Cosmik: I guess you don't need me to tell you you're one of the better-kept secrets in the world of music. Does it bother you that you're not more well known?

Keneally: The thing that doesn't bother me about that is that the music does keep improving and I'm a pretty firm believer in the idea that things will happen when they are supposed to. So I am more than pleased with the progress of events so far. I honestly feel that the music is just coming into its own.

Cosmik: You tend to get grouped a lot with Steve Vai as a master guitarist, but in general I think your music is a lot more accessible. He has a certain density to his music that puts some people off, but I listen to it to be amazed that someone would even attempt musical stunts like that. Your music, although there are many passages where the amazement factor comes into play, just is a lot stronger melodically and with the whimsical lyrics I think it's a lot easier for most people to appreciate.

Keneally: Well thank you very much. Regarding why it hasn't reached a wider audience, it has something to do with the era in which I started making my albums. I came out in 92 and as the 90's went on I kept making albums and getting better and better at what I was attempting to do. Corresponding with that the music business has changed really, really wildly to the point where it's gotten really hard for people who are doing anything different to get heard. I've gotten some token attention from labels on occasion, and when the flush of interest passes, I'm always grateful that I've managed to keep it independent. Especially now with the last two records -- Dancing and Nokertompf -- were done on a label that I co-own with my partner, Scott Chatfield, whose been my business partner a few years. So we've got this label and it's a really good feeling to do this work yourself and be able to say that this is ours and we can do with it what we want. Now it does close off some avenues that the majors have really well in hand when it comes to promotion and distribution and radio play and being able to get the stuff on television or whatever. But it does mean that I have no interference at all when it comes to what I want to put on the albums and the messages that I'm trying to convey. There's no distraction, there's just no interference. I agree with you that it's the kind of music that a lot of people would enjoy if they got a chance to hear it. It's really just a question after a certain point of when fate comes into play. It's really hard for us to get on the radio and if one well placed deejay in an influential market decided that he thought "Live in Japan" would be a bitchin song to put on the radio and started playing it all the time, then another station would pick up on it and the thing spreads. But there's no way you can plan for that, you just kinda have to say, "Well, it would be neat if that happened" and in the meantime I just stay concerned with what my real job is, to make as much music as I can which I think is good.

Cosmik: I like the horns in "Live in Japan," it does have a nice radio kind of feel to it.

Keneally: Or the song right after that, "Ankle Bracelet." There's a couple songs on the album which are certainly more accessible in that regard than other things I've done in the past, like "Potato." Going back to the very first album, Hat, there's songs on there where the production isn't particularly slick but the songs themselves are extremely accessible. I have always loved pop music. The first music I loved was the Beatles, and I still love the Beatles, I'm a huge Todd Rundgren fan, huge XTC fan. I'm a real fan of Stevie Wonder who is an absolute daisy in my book (who can) do beautifully melodic pop songs and have them overflowing with this musical integrity and honesty, melodic harmonic bounty. (Another is) Steely Dan. There is so much beauty that can be compressed into that pop song form. So I'm very into that.

Cosmik: With all the musical product that suffuses everywhere like Britney Spears, true pop masters, people who are able to make works of art that are also intensely popular to millions of people, you have to have so much respect for them.

Keneally: Somewhere along the line the focus in pop music changed from writing to production. That I think is the downfall of most manufactured pop nowadays is that you're barely even listening to a song anymore, you're listening to this object that's so shining and gleaming.

Cosmik: Oh yeah! There isn't a flaw anywhere on it. It's almost not human.

Keneally: Yeah, it's hard to relax and enjoy it as a piece of music. You know, one of the things that is stacked against someone like me is that there's a generation of music listeners that grew up thinking that this is pop music. And it's like listening to a McDonald's burger or a box of Cracker Jacks. It's got that much artistic nutrition in it.

Cosmik: Pure sugar!

Keneally: Yeah and again it's a thing just like any other thing and all things are there to be enjoyed and I'm glad that there are people who get off on that, but I still think, Man, if only, (pauses) maybe I'm nostalgic but I think that if people could be exposed to more really good music that they would see that there is more than what's going on nowadays.

Cosmik: One of the other interesting ditties that you dropped into Dancing was "Poo-Tee-Weet," a little choral that sounds exactly like the vocal signature of Queen on the intro to "Bohemian Rhapsody." How did you get all the members of your band to sound like that?

Keneally: Let's see, who sang on that? It was me and Rick, the other guitar player, and then a couple of friends of mine who always sing backup on my albums, Bob Teddy and Mark Dicerbo. So two of the guys who sing on that aren't actually band members. But there are members of the band that sing, and I try to surround myself with talented people.

Cosmik: It was a nice respite from the rock tracks and then we were off into something else again. You cover a lot of ground on this album.

Keneally: The second to last song, "Friends and Family," if you want to hear some nice multi track singing, you should check out the stuff that my daughter Jesse does on that song. She's six years old and does eight tracks of vocals that are all her. I didn't wiggle them around in the computer or anything. They are all real singing. One of the sad things about technology is that often people will think that "Oh that was obviously tricked with," but I don't do that stuff. There's some really nice multi-track singing from her on that song.

Cosmik: So I take it you're a family man?

Keneally: I am separated from my wife and living with a girl named Sarah who's marvelous and wonderful. But it was an amicable split with my wife and I see my daughter Jesse all the time and she's one of the most amazing people that I've ever met! She's really cool; I'm seeing her later today and I'm really looking forward to it.

Cosmik: I know how you feel! My daughter's eight and... and boy, we're going to lose readers quick if we start trading daddy stories, Aren't we? Let's get back to the album. One of the other standouts for me was "I Was Not Ready For You" and also there was "Kedgeree."

Keneally: "Kedgeree" kind of sounds like a Who song. There's a lot of really wild Keith Moon inspired drumming from Jason Smith on that one. And it's a lengthy one; it's got a long guitar solo. "I Wasn't Ready For You" is more electric piano kind of a ballad song; that one's a real pretty one. Rick plays lead guitar on that one and it's very beautiful playing that he does on that.

Cosmik: It's outstanding. I noticed in the press materials that you had a Robert Fripp quote there. What was your connection with him?

Keneally: In 1997, I think, there was a tour I was on called The G3 Tour, which had Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Kenny Wayne Sheperd, and Robert Fripp was the opening act. He would come out and do soundscapes, which were the sort of ambient-guitar-orchestral improvisational things that he would build with just a guitar and a huge toolbox of effects, and an enormous pedal board that Mike Mangini, the drummer in the Steve Vai band, always referred to as "The Death Star." He had this ridiculous bunch of things and effects and he would make these beautiful Soundscapes. Partway through the tour he invited me to come out and improvise over the soundscapes. In addition to playing in Steve Vai's band I would go out and play with Robert at the beginning of the show. That was absolutely delightful, and a major thrill for me because I'd been listening to King Crimson since I was a very young teenager, and I respect Robert a great deal. I like him a lot as a person and I like his music tremendously. So that was how we hooked up; I'm a major fan of Robert Fripp.

Cosmik: He's such a pioneer. There isn't anybody quite like him. I really love all the stuff he did with Brian Eno twenty-something years ago, and I use that in making my own soundscapes as a deejay in the coffee house here in San Pedro. I'll be mixing in Fripp with Hendrix and Pink Floyd and more modern things like Moby and my current favorite, Delirium.

Keneally: Just last night I played a couple of Hendrix songs cause a friend of mine owns a video archive company that provides material for a new Hendrix DVD that's coming out. He hosted a party here in San Diego last night and I played. My favorite Hendrix album is The Cry Of Love. It's kind of weird because it was a posthumous album, so it's constructed after he died, but it was all mixes that he approved of and I think it's the best of the material that he was working on when he died. I played the first two songs off that album, called "Freedom" and "Drifting." Those songs got deep into me. I enjoyed playing those songs, and every once in awhile it's good to dip back into Hendrix, and it made me want to write some material that could allow me to play in that same kind of style, 'cause I felt really good while I was doing it.

Cosmik: I always liked "Angel" from that album, and "Belly Button Window." I can hear some Hendrix in your work on the last part of "We'll Be Right Back." Anyway I have one last question for you. It's in the form of a hypothetical scenario. Paul Shaffer decides to leave the David Letterman Show after all these years and you are offered his post as bandleader. Do you take the gig?

Keneally: Hmm. It doesn't, ahh (pauses), it doesn't resonate that deep. There was a time when I would have jumped at it. I think maybe as I get a little older and I start to just sort of envision what I feel my role to be, I don't think that's it. If there's any one person that I constantly call up in my mind as a role model for the kind of musician that I would like to be, it's John Coltrane. And I don't really see him doing that. Not that I expect to follow in his footsteps in any specific way, but there's something just very noble and elegant about the way he presented his music and his person and his spirituality and all that. It's very inspirational to me. It's almost like a What Would John Do kind of scenario. I should have a WWJD thing on the back of my car but I'd be talking about Coltrane! (Laughs) I don't know if you've ever seen those What Would Jesus Do bumper stickers that people have. Not to be disrespectful, but John Coltrane is a very influential person to me and I just think he was a really beautiful guy. I think as I get a little older and I'm trying to focus on doing the best work I possibly can, that I'm just going to keep traveling along this path. Maybe I'd do it for a few weeks as an interim guest bandleader until a Sammy Hagar was available.

Cosmik: That's very revealing! I like that. I guess there a corollary question in there, did you watch all the episodes of Jazz on PBS?

Keneally: I wasn't able to watch them all, I was busy a lot of those nights and the way the San Diego station played them. They didn't spread them out as much as I know a lot of the other affiliates did. They kind of front loaded them, and showed the first five episodes all in one week. Plus one of the reasons I don't watch TV anymore is because it's impossible to know what's going to be on when. In between the time the stations give their program information to TV Guide and the time that night actually comes, they've all changes their minds. ... I'll buy the thing. I saw about four episodes and I thought it was a marvelous series but I understand the people who objected to it, the kind of anti-modern jazz bias, the "Marsalis-ization" of the series editorial tone. But I'm the kind of guy who tries to appreciate what something is as opposed to more than what it's not. I thought what was there was so good and so nutritious and so well done and so informative and I thought it was aimed really nicely at the sensibilities of people who knew absolutely nothing about jazz beforehand. I thought it engaged the audience really, really well.

Cosmik: I'm expecting a rebirth of all sorts of jazz because of it. I kept thinking all the way through it, Boy, is this showing these hip-hoppers and rappers how it's done!

Keneally: If there's one thing that it brings home in a big way, you think you've got it rough! There was so much injustice and hardships that these men had to deal with while they were blazing these trails musically. Just talk about the incredible work that they were doing and being shown so little respect at the same time, in fact being downright disrespected and abused in some cases. As late as the late 50's to have Miles Davis beat up by a cop outside of the venue where he was playing, you know, that sucks ass! But that type of stuff was going on back then. Not that it doesn't go on now, but it's sobering; it makes their achievements that much more noble when you see that that was what was going on. In a way it does make you think, what exactly does Eminem have to complain about?

(C) 2001 - Rusty Pipes