A few months ago my former musical co-conspirator Greg Kucharo decided to embark on a small venture: book a MyKeneally date at a private venue in Orland (or thereabouts), a diminutive spot on the fringes of HW 32 with a total population barely over 6000, known as Elwood’s Cyberpunk Saloon.
Greg got me into Keneally over a decade ago; I generally enjoy anyone that can musically context switch from playing something like Zappa and the play in a mock-rock outfit like Dethklok. Keneally was not a tough sell to my ears, and he is great on stage. The opportunity to give some small contribution to putting something like this up was also not a tough sell to me.
To quote one description of Keneally:
Long acclaimed as one of the world’s most creative and intense guitar players, Mike Keneally’s talents as a vocalist, songwriter, arranger, producer and multi-instrumentalist …and has built a body of work of remarkable inventiveness and originality.
He has recorded with/performed or produced with Zappa, Kevin Gilbert, Lyle Workman, Kaki King, Solomon Burke, Henry Kaiser…and on and on. Bryan Beller ain’t no slouch either, having been a long established bassist with Keneally as well as his own solo career and session work, and as a columnist in Bass Player.
Greg and his family, myself, Keneally and Beller all stayed in the same hotel in nearby Chico, and Saturday afternoon was spent having lunch at the restaurant attached to the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company at the edge of town. After that, a quick rest stop back at the hotel, then off to Elwood’s to set up.
Elwood’s as a structure is unassuming on the outside and isolated on a sideroad of a sideroad, but the inside it is a whole different animal. It has ’stadium sofa seating’, whole Atari consoles plugged into various TV screens, arcade video games (notably Ms. Pac Man and Zaxxon), a full bar and DJ booth, small library stack, and really resembles something that might be a mix of Bladerunner and Munden’s Bar from Grimjack.
The house next to Elwood’s (the home of the actual owner) provided a supply of home-cooked goodness, with a particularly tasty pulled pork sandwich option.
It was perfect for the event.
Pre-show activity included hauling the gear in, setting up, drinking coffee, and watching Greg get his ego handed to him by Beller playing Rockem Sockem Robots.
The show itself started with keneally on acoustic, ran into a rocked out electric middle section, the glided back into a more chilled mode towards the end. There was no real set list per se; the duo ran through a swath of Keneally material (from the early Beer For Dolphins era on through the most recent bit of awesome, Scambot 1), there was some Zappa (Inca Roads is extremely non-trivial, and was various shades of awesome here), a solo Beller piece that evoked Jaco in ways I found profoundly engaging, and some hilarious cover diversions:
- An impromptu riffing of ELPs Tarkus
- Most of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song, with just a dash of cheekiness
- Upon the mention that Snoop Dogg was playing at the Senator Theater in Chico, Keneally and Beller broke into the Peanuts theme (get it, Snoopy…never mind), with Keneally on guitar and keyboards at the same time. I have video footage, and if they let me post it here, I will later.
- A snippet of XTC’s Mayor of Simpleton (everyone agreed that XTC is quite full of win).
- Beller led a brief sojourn into Rush’s Xanadu, and then a shot of Tom Sawyer.
The casualness of everything made the gig so much more enjoyable. Everything was relaxed, but the performance was beyond solid, as clearly everyone onstage and off was having fun.
After the show, Mike actually joined some of the audience in a brief round of Rock Band. Showing impeccable taste, they opted for Talking Head’s Girlfriend is Better.
For a while after we kept playing records, and I hovered in the DJ both with a few others picking options from the vinyl stacks, staying pretty much in a strictly 80s mood.
The next day we all had breakfast in the hotel restaurant before I fell into a dull haze on the drive back to Berkeley, and then got back into the zeruch-mobile to home base.
Much thanks to Greg for pushing for this and finding the venue, and to Mike and Bryan for being gracious people and performers. It was truly remarkable.