{"id":450,"date":"2024-08-18T17:53:13","date_gmt":"2024-08-18T21:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.progstock.com\/2024\/?page_id=450"},"modified":"2024-09-07T22:26:58","modified_gmt":"2024-09-08T02:26:58","slug":"mike-keneally","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.progstock.com\/2024\/artists-schedule\/2024-artists\/mike-keneally\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Keneally"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mike
Mike Keneally<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Making a special appearance at ProgStock 2024, Mike Keneally will be joining in at Last Call Live and playing with multiple bands throughout the festival. You just don’t know when he will turn up on stage!<\/p>\n

Let’s see what Wikipedia has to say about Mike Keneally…
\nKeneally started playing music at the age of 7 when he received an electric organ for his birthday. He also received a guitar on his eleventh birthday, and plays bass and drums as well.<\/p>\n

Born on Long Island, New York, he moved to San Diego, California at an early age and has been a fixture on the local music scene there since 1985 when he formed the local cult band Drop Control. Although a well established musician in his own right, Keneally is probably most well known as former Frank Zappa “stunt guitarist” and a Zappa 1988 tour band member on both guitar and keyboards. His ascendency to that position is legendary in certain musician circles, based on Keneally’s command of Zappa’s vast and difficult-to-play repertoire.<\/p>\n

Keneally had called Zappa and said that he was “extremely familiar with all of his material and that he would be ready to play any of it for him given a short amount of preparation time”, as he had already “been listening to Zappa’s music for 16 years”. “On the phone the day before the audition Frank had told me to have ‘What’s New in Baltimore?’ and ‘Sinister Footwear’ ready for the next day’s audition”. On the way to the audition Keneally practiced the aforementioned songs, as well as “Little House I Used to Live in”, and “every single Zappa melody I could think of, kind of as an exercise for my memory” as his brother Marty was driving the car.<\/p>\n

Keneally’s stint in the Zappa touring band was short-lived with the early cancellation of the 1988 tour and Zappa’s death in 1993. Keneally moved on from the elder Zappa’s band to work with the eldest Zappa son,\u00a0Dweezil, on his solo albums and work released as the band Z.<\/p>\n

Keneally has also released 11 albums of solo material since 1992 and has guested or acted as sideman on a wide variety of projects, most notably as part of\u00a0Steve Vai’s touring bands. He has played guitar and\u00a0keyboards\u00a0with Yo Miles!,\u00a0Wadada Leo Smith, Norwegian legends\u00a0Ulver\u00a0and\u00a0Henry Kaiser’s\u00a0Miles Davis\u00a0tribute band as well as recording the 1995 album\u00a0The Mistakes\u00a0with\u00a0Henry Kaiser,\u00a0Prairie Prince, and\u00a0Andy West\u00a0(formerly of\u00a0Dixie Dregs). He has also produced albums for several bands, including\u00a0Chris Opperman’s debut album,\u00a0Oppy Music, Vol. I: Purple, Crayon.<\/p>\n

In 1998 Vai requested that Keneally arrange and perform an album of Vai’s music on acoustic piano. Recorded in 1999, the album was finally released in 2004 as\u00a0Vai Piano Reductions, Vol. 1: Performed by Mike Keneally. According to liner notes, Vai selected the songs, produced the album, and mixed it, releasing it on his own\u00a0Light Without Heat\u00a0label. As of 2008 Keneally has arranged from multi-tracked guitar parts to single-track piano the 12 songs selected by Steve and begun work on a second volume of Vai “Piano Reductions”.<\/p>\n

On May 1, 2007, Keneally’s Exowax label re-released his debut album\u00a0hat.\u00a0and\u00a0Boil That Dust Speck\u00a0as deluxe, remastered double disc versions. A remixed and remastered edition of\u00a0Sluggo!\u00a0followed in 2013. Exowax has obtained Keneally’s entire back catalog from Immune Records. Planned releases included\u00a0Half Alive in Hollywood, as well as the Mike Keneally and Beer for Dolphins 1996 VHS release\u00a0Soap Scum Remover, which will be remixed and remastered for a DVD release, and the Mistakes, his 1995 side project with\u00a0Henry Kaiser\u00a0on guitar and\u00a0Synclavier, bassist\u00a0Andy West\u00a0and drummer\u00a0Prairie Prince, along with a live Mistakes recording that has been held on the side until Keneally was able to re-acquire the rights to the original album.<\/p>\n

On November 28, 2006, Keneally announced that he was hired as National Music Director for\u00a0The Paul Green School of Rock Music.<\/p>\n

He has also toured with\u00a0Dethklok\u00a0as a guitarist and back up vocalist.<\/p>\n

On July 20, 2008, at El Cajon, Calif., Mike played a concert as part of “the most exciting power trio in years,” Keneally \u2022 Minnemann \u2022 Beller (KMB), consisting of Mike, drummer\u00a0Marco Minnemann\u00a0and long-time collaborating bassist\u00a0Bryan Beller. The band undertook a full tour in 2009 and became\u00a0Joe Satriani’s worldwide touring band in 2013.<\/p>\n

In August 2009, Keneally released a video for a new solo track, “Hallmark”, from\u00a0Scambot 1, the first part of a planned three-album series.<\/p>\n

In June 2010, Keneally entered\u00a0Skywalker Sound\u00a0as part of the studio band for Joe Satriani’s new solo project, along with regular Satriani drummer\u00a0Jeff Campitelli\u00a0and bassist\u00a0Allen Whitman\u00a0(of\u00a0San Francisco’s surf\/psychedelic group\u00a0the Mermen). This same lineup was scheduled to tour in October and November 2010 in support of the album; however Keneally was replaced by English keyboardist\u00a0Jem Godfrey\u00a0for two dates on the UK leg of the tour.<\/p>\n

In July 2012, Keneally released Wing Beat Fantastic: Songs written by Mike Keneally & Andy Partridge, a collaborative album consisting primarily of songs co-written with XTC’s Andy Partridge during two writing sessions in 2006 and 2008, and of whose band and work Keneally has been a longtime fan (there is a small section of XTC’s “Mayor of Simpleton” in the song “Day of the Cow 2” from his 1992 debut solo album hat<\/strong>.)<\/p>\n

In August 2014, Keneally participated in the G4 Experience\u2014a week-long guitar camp\u2014with fellow guitarists Satriani,\u00a0Paul Gilbert, and\u00a0Andy Timmons.<\/p>\n

But wait, there’s more! If you made it this far, hop on over to keneally.com<\/a> to see what he’s been up to lately!<\/p>\n

\"Keneally\"
Keneally<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Making a special appearance at ProgStock 2024, Mike Keneally will be joining in at Last Call Live and playing with multiple bands throughout the festival. You just don’t know when he will turn up on stage! Let’s see what Wikipedia has to say about Mike Keneally… Keneally started playing music at the age of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":86,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-450","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.progstock.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.progstock.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.progstock.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.progstock.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.progstock.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.progstock.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":479,"href":"https:\/\/www.progstock.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/450\/revisions\/479"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.progstock.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/86"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.progstock.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}