“We change things up from night to night so that people get some different stuff but we're covering music from across the catalogue. We're doing stuff from earlier records all the way up to the later records and a cross section of both vocal and instrumental materials. So, if you're into the really insane, ridiculously complex instrumental compositions or if you're into the more straight ahead rocking vocal songs; you'll definitely get both. We just play hard; we really bring a lot to the songs; we're not kidding around.”
Mike Keneally made a childhood dream come true when he "Boldly" took a chance and reached out to musical great Frank Zappa in the decade of decadence better known as the 1980s. Little did Mike know, that his almost life-long "Obsession" with the man who many called a "Genius," would lead to him joining Zappa's band and since late 2018 hitting the road with the blessing of the Zappa family in; The Zappa Band.
“I was very young," he said as he relayed his early and current journey that was and is the music of Frank Zappa. "The first time I encountered him was probably when I was eight years old and there was a record store in my neighborhood that I really loved going to; this is 1970 so it was still like basically recovering from the 60s and it was definitely a hippie record store with posters in the back and all this stuff. I would always go back and look at this poster of Frank and there was something about it that was in equal parts terrifying and fascinating because that's just the way he looked and even the way his name looked. I thought; what is up with this guy? Then not long after that, The Mothers of Invention were on the Dick Cavett Show and my dad let me stay up late to watch it because I was so curious now as to what these guys sounded like and what they were really all about. They played the song “Sofa,” which is this really pretty waltz; it's 3/4 time with a lovely melody and it was important for me; it was an important, "Can't judge a book by its cover" lesson for me. I just figured that these grimy looking guys were gonna play the ugliest music you can imagine and it ended up being this really pretty song. Then the real-life changing thing was a few months after that, the kid across the street who was a couple of years older than me and who I thought knew all of the secrets of the universe because he was an older kid said, “Hey, you're a weird dude, I've got a song that you need to hear. I think you're really gonna like this.” I went over to his house and he played “Help, I'm a Rock” from “Freak Out!” and that was the song that changed the course of my life; literally. I became absolutely fascinated; I thought it was the best thing I ever heard and that I had finally found music that was truly made for me. I was a huge Beatles fan when I was growing up but I never entertained the notion that anything that The Beatles were doing was meant for me specifically. They were obviously a phenomenon that was designed for the entire world but when I heard “Help, I'm a Rock,” I really honestly felt like it connected to me in that intimate way and I really felt like that song was meant for me. I obsessed over Frank for the next 16 years and then I managed to secure an audition. So, from a very young age I was playing music and as I was growing up and getting into my teenage years and older, one of the things that I would do just to hone my chops was learn Zappa songs. I would teach myself his stuff off of the records; it was inspiring to me and it really sharpened me up. I mean, if you're gonna take the time to try and teach yourself how to play “The Black Page,” it's gonna have an impact. This was primarily my idea of a good time but I also knew that it was an important discipline, it was like exercise; you know? It was really helping me a lot and I just kept teaching myself Zappa stuff casually on and off for fun. Then I called up his office one day and asked for a job (laughs) and he said, “Yeah? Come on over here and audition” and I was able to finally apply all this stuff that I had taught myself. The main thing that I think I was able to offer him is, because I was such a huge fan, I had his music playing in my head nonstop. So, he was able to just name a song and even if I hadn't played it before I could just push the button on the Zappa jukebox in my head and play along with that. He found that to be a useful attribute and I felt really fortunate to be there. I remember one time, he said, “I'd really like to play, “Who Needs the Peace Corps?” which is a song from 1968; “I haven't played that song in like 20 years” and then he turned around and just looked at me and waited for me to start playing it and from my recollection of that song, we were able to piece together and arrange it for a twelve-piece band because we had a five-piece horn section in that group. He was able to, from time to time, just do that. He called me “The Walking Encyclopedia” because he was able to go to the well and occasionally just pull out a song that he hadn't played in a long time. I was really grateful that I could contribute to that because I always loved it when Frank played older tunes. It was neat when he would pull out some unexpected old songs and that was just great. I'm so grateful because the week that I called and I talked to a guy at his business office; they used to have this hotline called the 818 Pumpkin and if you called at night after business hours there would be a tape recording on their outgoing answering machine. I called and it said, “For those of you who have heard the rumors; they're true. Frank is in rehearsal with a new band.” This was late ‘87 and he had sworn after the 1984 tour, which they had lost a bunch of money on because he would spend an incredible amount of money on rehearsal before the tour began and he paid the band well, pretty well according to mid 80s economics and so he was losing cash hand over fist; he decided he didn't want to do that anymore. Then a couple of years later he got bored of sitting at home writing music on the Synclavier; his computer musical instrument. He decided that he wanted to hang out with musicians again and I got a little bold and called the business office during business hours and offered my services. I'm just lucky that the guy who answered the phone believed me when I said that I played guitar, keyboards and I sing and that I've taught myself to play a whole bunch of Frank’s music and that I listen to it constantly, I'm familiar with all of it and I don't know if Frank is looking for anybody but here I am. Frank called me up himself the next day and said, “You really can play all of my music?” I said, well, I can play a lot of it and I'm familiar with all of it. He said, “Do you know how many songs that is?” I said, yeah, they're all in the next room and he said, “I don't believe you. Get your ass over here and prove it!” I'm very lucky, very, very lucky and then I subsequently found out that it was a guitarist and vocalist who had just left and I think Frank had a keyboardist that had just recently been in rehearsal and he was gone too. So, all of a sudden, Frank was in need of precisely the positions that I was offering myself for except that I was one guy claiming he could do all of this stuff. Frank was like, “OK, if this is true this could answer a lot of questions for me,” but I needed to go up there and prove it first. I know that I just got lucky with the timing; I'm sure of that.”
There is a lesson to be learned here; it never hurts to ask and because he asked, Keneally became and is still a part of the Zappa legacy to this day but the story of The Zappa Band is one where music and technology meet at a crossroad.
“The band was formed for a tour that happened in early 2019 but actually, we started putting the pieces together like mid 2018 and it was kind of the brainchild of Ahmet Zappa who conceived this tour called “The Bizarre World of Frank Zappa” and it was known as the hologram tour but in practice it was a lot more than that. The visual replication of Frank was a portion of the event; about five songs included his image but the rest of the time there was just animation flying all over the stage. Frank was represented in a lot of different ways and then for a portion of the evening, we were just playing without any visual accompaniment at all. So, we started to get our chops together as a band and then we did that tour and it was a very expensive and technologically complex tour to mount; it is not the kind of thing that just easily gets off the ground anytime you feel like playing and us in the band felt like playing more so we talked to Ahmet about it and he said, “If you wanna play; go for it." We started doing shows at The Baked Potato which is a jazz club in Los Angeles and Ahmet came out to see us there and he thought that the show had a real energy to it and a real validity to it. So, we were very happy about that but we thought; what will we be called? Ahmet said, “You're The Zappa Band” and we couldn't think of a better name than that and as a result of having done the other tour, we just kind of became the officially sanctioned, Zappa Trust approved band. Four of us played in Frank's band and Joe our drummer, his day gig is working in the tape vault finding unreleased Frank Zappa music to put out on all of these archival box sets that have been coming out for the last few years; which are all fantastic. Jamie our other guitar player, I've played with him in Dweezil’s band, Zappa Plays Zappa and I produced his solo album. Joe, our drummer, also plays drums in my band so we have all of these connections where we're related in a lot of different ways and it's just the more we play, the more we kind of become more of a real band. A few years back we were out on the road opening for King Crimson and that really kind of helped cement us as a touring group.”
Keneally is surely correct when he says the word "Hologram" strikes a discord with many. Hardcore fans of an artist are torn as to what a hologram show may hold for them; is it going to be realistic and a great tribute or will it be some half-hearted attempt to essentially exploit the deceased? Mike explains what it was like being joined on stage by his former boss and friend.
“That was really cool," he said with reverence, "It actually ended up being very moving because first of all, from where we were standing on stage, we weren't able to actually interact with the hologram so that aspect of it, that visual aspect of it didn't really reach us on stage but the audio aspect did. We were playing along with unreleased recordings of Frank singing and talking and playing the guitar so, several times a night we were accompanying these long improvised Zappa guitar solos and even though obviously it's captured digitally and the solos aren't changing from night to night; the nature of the way Frank played is always so extemporaneous and fresh and literally every time we backed up these solos it felt like we were backing up Frank improvising and that really brought me back to 30 years previously when we were on stage doing exactly that and at no point in the 30 years since that tour had I felt quite that sensation. So, that was intense and then to talk to friends of mine who came out to the show; people I trust, people whose taste I know is really good and they were absolutely flabbergasted and unexpectedly moved by the show gave me the desire to mount that tour again. So, if you get a chance to check it out you really should because it goes far beyond what anybody might have envisioned. A lot of people are horrified by the word hologram but the reality of that tour was that it went far beyond anyone's visual expectations and it covers a lot of ground and was really something. I hope there's an opportunity for more people to check it out because it is powerful but in the meantime, it's also really cool for us to be able to play smaller venues where the stage could not support what's required to do that tour. That tour can only play on large stages that can handle all of the technical that's required to make it all happen because there's a whole bunch of screens, there's a whole bunch of visuals that are covering the entirety of the stage. So, it's a very specialized form of entertainment but sometimes you just want to be a band in a club and just like shred; you know? (laughs)”
Buoyed by the success of that experience, the band decided, as was stated earlier, to keep going and bringing Zappa's legacy to his unique fan base; Mike explains what it' like to be part of such a project.
“I was in Frank’s band in ‘88 with Robert Martin and Scott Thunes and Jamie Kime the guitar player who I've played with and I also produced his solo album a few years ago; Joe Travers the drummer, plays drums in my band, Beer For Dolphins. So, the only guy in the band that I had never played with before was Ray White and it was fantastic to finally be able to play with him; his energy, his voice just remains so phenomenal and his guitar playing is beautiful and the more we play together, the more we discover in the music and the more we can bring to it. The way we communicate with one another musically on stage develops from night to night and to some degree we were able to do that when we opened for King Crimson but it was also challenging because we were given a 45-minute opening slot which we could not exceed by one minute. We had to keep it down to 45 minutes and the safest way to make sure we didn't run over was to play the same set night after night that we had timed out to the nanosecond which was great because it meant that we were able to slay the audience every night because we knew the music really well but it also meant that there was less of the opportunity for the kind of experimentalism and improvisation and spontaneous stuff that really ought to happen at a concert of Zappa music. So, that was great for getting our chops together for our last tour and was great for band communication and different things happening every night because we were able to change the set list every night which is really important because a lot of people, especially on the East Coast where there seems to be a larger concentration of Zappa freaks for some reason; a lot of people like to come to multiple shows specifically because they want to see how things change up from night to night. So, since we know more music than we're able to play in a two-hour show, we were able to change things up and people got to hear different songs if they came to different shows. We also felt free to really change things up even within the same song because there are certain songs like “Big Swifty” and “Be-Bop Tango” and “Pound For A Brown” and some other songs where there's just a lot of room for genuine improvisation and not just soloing over the group but for some spontaneous, new, unusual things; that can happen every day. Obviously, Frank was very much about that as much as he was into the very disciplined, organized, complex composed stuff; he was also very interested in what can happen improvisational on stage when you have a bunch of people sharing a moment that will never happen again; you know? He wanted to create moments on stage that would never be repeated and we would like to do the same thing.”
“There have been bands in this country and in other countries that just are really passionate about Frank's music. I think it has a lot to offer a certain type of musician but it's not like everywhere you look that there's a band playing this stuff. There are people out there that no one even suspects who are really into what Frank did and the thing about it is, that most people, if they're into what Frank did; they're really into what Frank did and they're heavily devoted.”
To see what The Zappa Band is all about, please go to https://www.facebook.com/TheZappaBand and to discover more about Mike Keneally, please visit https://www.keneally.com/2021/06/11/zappa/.
That's it for this week! Please continue to support live and original music and until next week....ROCK ON!
