When it comes to creative bandwidth, Mike Keneally is gifted with a big, fat, speed-of-light connection to the universe's main server. His mutant avant-rock adventures incorporate
monster chops (as a keyboardist and guitarist!); a deliriously febrile imagination; and a gleefully subversive sense of humor on par with his former
mentor, Frank Zappa, under whose auspices Keneally routinely wrestled the impossible as touring "stunt guitarist" from 1987-1988.
Seduced as a kid by the Beatles, Hendrix, Jeff Beck and the bold intricacies of progressive rock, Keneally keenly absorbed it all and ascended to
similar virtuosic musical heights. True to prog-rock's form, his acrobatic keyboard and guitar runs (sometimes simultaneously) blended ferocious
technique with an absurd facility for odd time signatures. But his esoteric humor and good-natured vibe innoculated him against the overearnestness
and pretensions that sometimes saddled the prog-rock genre.
Following his tenure with Zappa and in-between stints with Dweezil Zappa, Keneally donned the bandleader cap in '91 for the performing tribute
program, Zappa's Universe, a rock-band-with-orchestra project that later scored a Grammy. He recorded a couple of solo albums, which spawned
his live touring band, Beer for Dolphins, which in turned yielded both live and studio CDs (in the photo at the top of this page, Taylor-wielding Keneally is flanked by BFD bassist Bryan Beller, holding his Taylor AB-1 bass). On the '97 G3 tour, Keneally played second guitar
and keyboards in Steve Vai's band, and wove live improvisational guitar into Robert Fripp's pre-concert ambient "soundscapes". He appears on
the new Steve Vai release, The Ultra Zone, and recently completed a solo piano album of Steve Vai compositions to be included in a forthcoming
10-CD Vai box set.
Other projects of '99 have included extensive scoring for Court TV; a tour with Steve Vai; writing the next BFD album; and a seemingly bottomless
list of other "stuff". (Don't you feel lazy?). One of the newest blips on his creative dateline is the CD, Nonkertompf, Keneally's seventh solo
effort and first all-instrumental outing, which features himself on every instrument.
Contrasted against the self-described "snappy" sounds of BFD's last album, Sluggo!, Keneally conceived Nonkertompf as a "moody", "dark" and
"mysterious" ("but not foreboding!") stream-of-consciousness odyssey, informally dubbed as a "friendly enigma". The album's 35 fleeting "chapters"
are, Keneally says, the most personal and compositional work he's done to date; yet also boast considerable piano improvisation.
"I feel music more deeply than I did two years ago," he said in a recent interview. "I occupy every note I play more intently than before."
Keneally's lucid excursions ooze with intoxicating weirdness, from one layered tangent to another, as he diverts the listener through his fecund
imagination, covering the whole map, from stark piano melodies to a Hendrix indulgence to "fully orchestrated fantasias". His staggering
originality is not for toe-tappers or commercial radio programmers, but his ever-expanding legions of ardent followers (Kenealliacs) never cease
to be rabidly inspired by his sonic scenery.
