My friends at the Potato

Jacki and I made it to The Baked Potato to see the Mike Keneally Band. I think it had been about 5 years since I had last seen Mike's band play. Of course Bryan Beller was on bass as always. For this incarnation included Rick Musallam on guitar and Nick D'Virgilio on drums. We arrived a little after 7pm. Once the band finished sound check doors opened and the group came outside. Mike made the observation that his name was misspelled and was "Kenealy" with one "L" instead of "Keneally" with 2 "L"s. Bryan made the comment that Mike has to first earn the 2nd "L" before he can use it. This got a laugh from a few of us outside.

They played two full sets the first starting at 9:30 and the second around 11:30. I think in total we heard about 2 1/2 hours of live music.

One of the nights highlights was when the came out for the second set. Mike moved to bass, Bryan to drums and Nick front and center on guitars and vocals. They proceeded to play Hash Pipe, by Weezer, in its entirety. Completely unexpected.



They played quite a few tunes from Dancing, my favorite Keneally album, including Live in Japan, Ankle Bracelet, Ragged Ass, and We'll Be Right Back.

After the first set we went out back talked with Chris Opperman and bought a Dog shirt and a Nonkertomph cd. This was the only Keneally cd in print that they had for sale that I didn't already have a copy of. Jacki got Bryan Bellar's cd and got a picture with Bryan below. At the end of the night Jacki got a picture of Mike and I.

I mentioned to Mike that we were the ones that took him to Salt Lick in Austin Texas many years ago with Jacki's brother. Someone in Mike's camp made a comment that he had recently talked about that place. If you look close, a hat he bought when he was with us made it onto the cover of the Wooden Smoke special edition disc. Pretty cool that he remembered the experience, although not necessarily us.

It was a fun night, good music, good food and a good night out on the town in Los Angeles.