WOODEN SMOKE

An album of lighter, mostly acoustic music from Mike Keneally? It sounds boring, doesn't it? Wrong!

This album is as good as any (mostly) acoustic I've heard. Keneally has a way of making just about any type of music echo his zany sense of humor, and Zappa-like sense of composition. It's a perfect album for listening to out on the back porch on a lazy summer night. Or just about any time for that matter.

If you can find a copy, look for the special edition version of the CD (unfortunately, it's not available at Keneally's web site these days). It has eighteen more track of Keneallified acousticment, all in a similar style of the standard version.

When I first visited this album several years ago I commented that when I hit maturity I will return to this album. Well, it hasn't happened yet apparently. If you don't know who Mike Keneally is, he is the guitarist Frank Zappa chose to replace Steve Vai as his stunt guitarist in the late eighties. Enough said right there. Mike has created many studio albums over the years that usually contain a lot of variety and humour. I mean he would have fit right in with Zappa and his band.

"Wooden Smoke" though from 2001is a different animal in the Keneally discography. Still a lot of tracks but not the variety this time around. Apparently a lot of these tracks were composed with Mike sitting on his living room floor with his acoustic guitar. And while this isn't completely an unplugged album, it's close. Even the humour is scaled back here a lot. Hence the maturity reference earlier. This comes across as folky, singer/songwriter material for the most part.

Some meaningful lyrics like on "Father's Day" and we do still get some poppy tunes. Light beats, strummed and picked acoustic and vocals often stand out. Piano leads the way on a couple of tracks like "Haugseth" and "Pantomime". "2001' is too poppy with harmonies adding to that and my least favourite. The most adventerous pieces are "Dee 'N' A" and "Thanksgiving". Sure you could say this is Keneally's most intimate record.

For a music fan like myself who detests unplugged albums, I knew this would be a challenge. I like that it's more uniform sounding sure, but prefer it was uniform in a different style. Like the followup "Dog" for example where we get some consistent energy, and Mike brought in Nick D'Virgilio on drums for that one.