MIKE KENEALLY INTERVIEW #2
(Originally aired on August 23, 2012)
The spirit of Frank Zappa permeates Mike Keneally’s recorded oeuvre, and that’s hardly surprising as Keneally toured with Zappa and played on five of his albums. Keneally has also released a dozen solo albums of unique and often experimental music, and he's featured on albums by Beer For Dolphins and The Mistakes. On the 2012 Wing Beat Fantastic, Keneally collaborates with XTC’s Andy Partridge to create a set of quirky, melodic songs that manage to sound catchy while remaining unflinchingly adventurous.
In our exclusive interview, Keneally describes how he and Partridge cowrote the music for Wing Beat Fantastic, and explains his unusual recording process — one that yields richly layered textures of guitars, horns, and eerie background vocals that drift across the album like a sonic version of the Northern Lights.