Mike Keneally is one of those guys who can play anything. You know the type. He got a gig with Frank Zappa
because he could play Zappa’s entire repertoire. He perfectly
mirrored Steve Vai’s licks while performing with his fellow
Zappa alumnus (not to mention recording an album of piano
arrangements of Vai’s tunes). Robert Fripp routinely asked
Keneally to join him onstage during a G3 tour to increase the
scope of his soundscapes. And lately the chameleonic guitarist
has been using a Randy Rhoads model Jackson to pulverize
audiences alongside Brendon Small in the cartoon-based death
metal juggernaut Dethklok.
Unlike many jack-of-all-trades-type
players, however, Keneally is also the master
of his personal aesthetic universe— and
the songs on his latest album, Scambot
[Exowax], follow the exploits of his own
cartoon character. “The origin of Scambot
was actually a meaningless little comic
strip that I doodled in a sketchbook back
in 2001,” explains Keneally. “There was
something about that character that resonated,
and for years it stayed in the back
of my mind. So after I’d completed two
major recording projects in 2004, I allowed
myself the indulgence of returning to it
to see how I might develop the concept—
and it turned into this behemoth!”
Following on the heels of Dog (“my
idea of a hard rock album”) and The Universe
Will Provide (a large-scale composition
featuring the Metropole Orchestra),
Scambot presents a stylistic joyride
through jazzy Zappa-esque romps, quirky
pop ballads, heavy riff rockers, Flo &
Eddie-like vocal abstractions, Funkadelicapproved
grooves, Beatle-ish acoustic
outings, and a lengthy Fripp-meets-
Stravinsky composition—“Gita”—that is
arguably Keneally’s masterpiece. (Scambot
includes a 21-page booklet containing
the written story, and the Special Edition
includes a second CD with 13
additional tunes.)
The ever-prolific Keneally is already
15 songs into Scambot 2 and has begun
arranging music for Vai Piano Reductions
Vol. 2. In his spare time he composed
and recorded 51 minutes of music for
drummer Marco Minnemann’s Normalizer
2 project, as well as producing and
mixing debut albums for Dane Runyan
(Looking Below) and former GP senior
editor Matt Resnicoff (The History of
Now).
What was the origin of Scambot?
The story evolved over a long period
of time, though I always intended it to
be a musical experience first and foremost,
and the plot line was essentially
a device to get me to continue creating
new music. One aspect of the project
would inspire another, be it lines of dialogue
or plot contrivances that would
inspire me to write a certain kind of
music, or vice versa. Once I realized this
was going to be my next album, I had
a vision of what the music was going
to be, and even though it is a fairly
unusual album, it was originally
going to be a lot more
unusual in the sense that I
was going to do it all
myself—one guy with a
computer plumbing the
depths of his psyche type
stuff. But I had several other
projects underway, including
an acoustic album with
[bassist and longtime collaborator]
Bryan Beller, and
I wound up bringing all of
that music under the Scambot
umbrella as well.
“Gita” is a remarkable composition.
How did that piece
come about?
“Gita” is an example of a
piece that wasn’t initially
conceived as part of the
Scambot concept, but made
perfect sense to fold into it.
The composition was originally
commissioned for a
Dutch ensemble called the
Zap String Quartet, and
though they enjoyed the piece they didn’t want to play the whole 12-
minute thing. They wanted to do a shorter
version that would give them some opportunity
to improvise, so we did an abridged
version, but I still liked the whole thing and
decided to orchestrate it with a lot of guitars
instead of strings. Rather than scoring it out,
I wrote it in the computer by playing sampled
strings manually on a Korg Karma—
some of which wound up on the final
track—and developed it from there. Marco
Minnemann also played a crucial role in the
piece. He approached the drums more as
an orchestral percussion section than as a
drum kit.
You got lots of great tones on the album. Were
you mostly using the green Strat or the brown
Charvel?
I used the Strat a little but I mostly used
the Charvel that I had custom built to my
specs a few years ago and have been playing
regularly. The guitar is made of koa wood,
which appeals to me aesthetically and tonally,
and the humbuckers give it a beefy midrange,
but also a nice high-end scream and lots of
sustain. Played through my Rivera Quiana
amp with a lot of gain, I can get some pretty
glorious tones and lengthy sustain. It’s also
the first guitar I’ve ever had with a dependable
whammy bar that I could really go to
town on and still be reasonably in tune when
it came back up. That’s something that I’ve
had a lot of fun being indulgent with. I also
used the new Taylor electrics that came out
a couple years ago, especially for the longsustained
lines on “Gita.” There’s a lot of
nice tonal variety in those instruments and
they’re fun to play.
So the Rivera Quiana was your main amp?
Yes, for just about everything. We set it
up in the bathroom next to the little room
that Mike Harris and I were working in. I
also used a T-Rex Dr. Swamp Dual Distortion
pedal to supplement my amp distortion,
which I like a lot—but mostly it was just the
sound of a guitar into an amp, because I
wanted the long, distorted sustain, but I also
wanted roominess.
To get roominess you set your amp up in the
bathroom?
Yes, a lot of the ambience was achieved
by putting the microphones in different portions
of the bathroom to get different
combinations of tones. Typically we would
have a Shure SM58 positioned a few inches
from the speaker, and a condenser positioned
anywhere from a foot to six feet away,
depending on the effect we were looking for.
We also did a lot of post-production EQ to
get everything to fit together and to leave
enough room for the other instruments.
Because the record is really intense and there
is so much information, it was important to
make it as comfortable to listen to as possible.
I wanted the sound to draw people in.
There are a number of synth-like guitar sounds
throughout the album. How did you get those?
That’s the Soundblox Multiwave Distortion
pedal. It produces very peculiar and unconventional distortion sounds, and
depending on how you set the controls you
can get multiple octaves and weird phasecancellation
effects that result in overtones
popping out like crazy. We used it as an outboard
effect, running the already recorded
guitar tracks out to it and recording the
processed sound onto a separate track, then
blending them in various ways. In some
cases, I manipulated the controls in real time
as the track was playing through the pedal.
You get a lot of great textures. Are any of them
the result of using your fingers as opposed to a
pick?
The majority of the electric playing was
done with a pick, but some of the lines on
“Gita,” for example, could only be articulated
the way I wanted to hear them by using my
fingers. There’s a nice expressiveness and
delicacy you get with a highly distorted electric
guitar by just touching the strings lightly
with your fingers, even though the actual
tone is super saturated. Other than that, if
something sounds like it was played with my
fingers it probably was. When I did use a pick
it was either a Fender Medium or a Dunlop
Jazz III, though I’m currently using the Dunlop
Ultex 1.0mm picks that Brendon turned
me onto during the last Dethklok tour.
What do you get from playing with Dethklok?
Brendon and I met online and became
friends after discovering that we were fans
of each other’s work. Then, when it became
obvious that Dethklok needed to become a
live entity he asked Bryan Beller and me if
we wanted to do it, and we thought it would
be totally fun. Besides providing me with
the opportunity to apply myself to another
musical discipline—one that’s done wonders
for my speed-picking technique and
endurance because it’s a very demanding gig
musically—the vibe of the shows is exhilarating.
The kids are so passionate and just
give themselves to the moment so completely
that it’s an amazing thing to be a part of.
What was the single most inspirational thing
that you took away from your association with
Frank Zappa?
It would be the fact that there is nothing
to fear. There’s no music arbiter saying that
it isn’t okay to put this on top of that or attempt
this harmonic movement or see how it sounds
to cut directly from this to that. Frank’s fearlessness
was incredibly inspiring to me. Also,
during rehearsals, although he was a commanding
bandleader and completely in control,
we would be laughing our ass off the entire
time. It was a joyful thing. That made me realize
that the construction of music—even when
it needs to be rehearsed over and over again—
because it’s so detailed and difficult to
execute, should never be undertaken in a
drudge mindset. Every once in a while maybe
you could share a moment like, “Geez, this is
really tough,” but with a smile so it doesn’t
feel like work. And then continually remember
to revel in the joy that we get to do this
in the first place, because it is a privilege. I
try to never lose sight of that.