Keneally makes concise statement with album
9 songs totaling 42 minutes showcase songwriting skills, musical prowess
Guitar and keyboard wizard Mike Keneally has made several dozen albums as a band leader and has been featured on 200 or so more by other artists.
His collaborators have ranged from Frank Zappa and soul singer Solomon Burke to jazz trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, Indian violinist L. Shankar and vocal group the Persuasions.
And until the pandemic shutdown in 2020, Keneally had always recorded his albums in top-notch studios or on concert stages. The shutdown erased those options. Keneally was left to helm his new album, “The Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat,” largely on his own. He did so in a thin-walled condo in Alpine, California, where he lived until recently with his wife, Sarah. (The couple moved a few months ago to a ranch in northeastern Arizona.)
“That was a big learning curve for me to do it at home,” said Keneally, 61, who rose to international prominence when he joined Zappa’s band in 1987.
His new album is slated for released Feb. 24.
“This album went much slower, and I was much more finicky about getting exactly what I wanted,” Keneally noted. “So much of this record took longer to do because it was me, by myself, micro-analyzing everything.”
What results was well worth the extended wait.
From the near-Broadway piano lilt of “Logos,” the jaunty, multivocal opening cut, to the breathtaking intricacies of “The Carousel of Progress” — which
concludes the album with a finely calibrated art-rock flourish — “The Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat” is a multifaceted aural treat. It showcases Keneally’s accomplished songwriting skills and dazzling musical prowess without him showing off.
The New York native is capable of playing just about anything he wants on guitar or keyboards. He is also capable of deftly playing both instruments simultaneously, as he demonstrated during his tenure with Zappa in the 1980s and during his more recent nine-year stint in the band of guitarist Joe Satriani.
But what Keneally does especially well on his new album is to serve the music at hand, be it by playing various instruments or singing multiple vocal parts. The nine songs on “The Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat” make their
points with well-calibrated precision as the album runs just 42 minutes.
“For me, it’s unusually concise,” Keneally said.
“I had a whole other CD completed and thought about maybe putting out a two-CD set. But I thought this one makes a complete album and statement.
“It starts off with fairly straightforward songs, and the last three selections are multisection suites that go to different places. I thought that was an interesting way to structure the album.”
Keneally had written two of the songs on “The Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat” prior to the pandemic. But he completed them after the start of the pandemic and did the bulk of the album in his Alpine condo.
While Keneally has made one-man albums before, his latest release features some musical pals who he invited to remotely create and
record their instrumental parts from home.
They include former Gentle Giant/Barney Kessel drummer Malcolm Mortimore and former Zappa band guitarist Steve Vai, who trades solos with Keneally on the whimsically titled “Celery.”
If he wanted, Keneally could make multiple albums with his many musician friends and still not fit everyone in. Then again, he is a member of at least six different groups, including his own Beer For Dolphins.
They include the Zappa Band, which teams him with other Frank Zappa alums; ProgJect, a progressive-rock supergroup; and the genreblurring quintet the Bird Brain, whose debut EP came out last year.
Keneally is also a key member of the band led by Canadian singer-songwriter Devin Townsend.
And he expects to resume working with Dethklok, a death-metal ensemble created to bring to life a fictional band that was featured on the animated Adult Swim TV series “Metalocalypse.”
Last summer, Keneally toured abroad with his European trio. He also been working on a long-term project with Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Todd Rundgren.
“I’m really grateful for all the opportunities I’ve had and continue to have,” Keneally said.
“I’m open to all of it. If somebody asks me to do something I’m completely unsuited to, I’ll do it. Because if somebody thinks I have something that will benefit their project, I’m always curious why they feel that way. I really enjoy changing things up and playing with disparate artists who are stylistically different from each other.
“It keeps my chops up and keeps me challenged. Those are primary ingredients to ensure my continued survival and growth while learning something new in the process. I would not summarily dismiss any project offered to me. Because one person’s cheese is another person’s souffle.”
The inspiration for the title of Mike Keneally’s new album, “The Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat,” comes from the 1994 book “Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman” by noted West African author Malidoma Patrice Some.
Keneally uses the word “Yielbongura” from Some’s book as a background vocal texture in “The Carousel of Progress.”
Some, who died in December 2021, wrote: “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.”
Keneally only learned of Some’s death after the album art for “The Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat” had been completed.
“If I’d realized this sooner, I would have dedicated this song to him in the liner notes,” Keneally said. “… Gratitude and respect sent out to Malidoma Patrice Some — thank you for the inspiration.”