It was a dream come true for San Diego guitarist and keyboardist Mike Keneally when he was hired in 1987 to join the band led by his biggest musical hero, former San Diegan Frank Zappa. Today, 26 years after the legendary Zappa’s death in 1993, that dream has taken on new life — with a very high-tech sheen.

A veteran solo artist and much in-demand sideman, Keneally is now the musical director for “The Bizarre World of Frank Zappa,” a multimedia concert tour that launched in April and is organized by the Zappa Family Trust. The late Zappa appears in various forms in “The Bizarre World” — from holograms to claymation and cartoons — while a virtuoso ensemble of six of his former band members performs selections spanning much of Zappa’s dizzying, four-decade career.

The result is a heartfelt tribute to the only American musician in whose honor statues have been erected in Baltimore, Bad Doberan, Germany and Vilnius, the capital of the former Soviet Republic of Lithuania.

“It’s a pleasure to play this music, under any circumstances, but it is really delightful to reconnect with a lot of the guys I played with over 30 years ago when we were in Frank’s band,” said Keneally, who now resides east of San Diego in Alpine. “We’re so much more experienced now and can bring our best to it.”


Just how much more experienced will be demonstrated Aug. 18 when Keneally performs an all-ages show here at Dizzy’s with four fellow Zappa band alums. They include singer/guitarist Ray White, singer/keyboardist/saxophonist Robert Martin, bassist Scott Thunes and drummer/singer Joe Travers, who has also played in Keneally’s band since 1996. Travers’ day job for the past few decades has been as the “vaultmeister” of Zappa’s extensive audio, film and video archives in Los Angeles. The sixth member of the band, Ed Mann, has other commitments this month.

But the upcoming Dizzy’s concert is not part of “The Bizarre World of Frank Zappa” tour, which — after a summer break — resumes in the fall (and will, Keneally hopes, include a San Diego date). Rather, the Dizzy’s date, which will include two surprise guests, is one of just four non-hologram shows the Zappa band veterans are doing on their own. They also play Aug. 14 and 15 at the Baked Potato in North Hollywood and Aug. 17 at The Whiskey in West Hollywood.

For their “The Bizarre World of Frank Zappa” concerts, Keneally and the band members wear in-ear audio monitor buds and use a click-track to ensure their live performances of Zappa’s deviously intricate music are perfectly in sync — with each other and Zappa, both audio-wise and in whatever visual form he is featured on any given selection.

However, their four non-hologram shows will be click-track-free. And while Keneally relishes the exacting precision required to make “The Bizarre World of Frank Zappa” concerts as seamless as possible, he’s looking forward to cutting loose for four performances that will celebrate Zappa’s work in a more free-spirited manner.


“It will be really fun to play this music for a few nights that will allow us to celebrate this music in a less restrictive way,” said Keneally, who counts fellow guitar greats Joe Satriani and Steve Vai among his many other musical collaborators.

“Because, obviously, when we play with pre-recorded tracks on the Zappa hologram tour, we have to hit our marks and play in a very specific way — except for several chunks where we play in a freewheeling way, and can improvise and mess around with solos, and it becomes a more traditional show. Those portions of the hologram show, where the band can be untethered, were the starting point for these shows in August.”

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Frank Zappa was equally notable as a composer, band leader, talent scout and cultural provocateur. (Frank Deimel / Sony Pictures Classics)

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee

A 1995 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Francis Vincent Zappa was a singular innovator who composed for orchestras, rock bands, jazz ensembles and any other configuration that appealed to him. He recorded 65 albums during his lifetime — including such classics as “We’re Only In It For The Money,” “Hot Rats” and “Freak Out!” — and was as adept incorporating elements of blues, soul and doo-wop as he was reggae, funk and country music.


At least 40 more albums by the remarkably prolific Zappa have been released since his death. Regardless of the stylistic context, his work was instantly recognizable, whether for its genre-leaping twists and turns, intricate melodic, harmonic and rhythmic structures, or alternately droll, barbed and juvenile song lyrics.

“Put yourself in my shoes,” Zappa said in a 1984 San Diego Union interview. “If I wake up and want to write a cowboy song, I can do it; if I get up the next day and want to write an opera, I can do it; if I want to write a heavy metal song the day after that, I can do it. The rock stuff is the simplest, because it only requires eight guys. But in the ‘serious’ music world, where you have to pay for all those members of an orchestra, it requires such massive amounts of money that it’s ridiculous.”

Keneally played a pivotal musical role on the Grammy Award-winning 1993 live tribute album “Zappa’s Universe,” which featured a 26-piece string and wind ensemble. He also played on at least eight Zappa albums, plus six compilations and download-only albums, from 1988’s in-concert opus, “Broadway the Hard Way” (featuring a vocal cameo by Sting), to 2016’s posthumously released “Frank Zappa for President.” And he has been featured with a number of European orchestras at concerts devoted to the music of Zappa, whose fans included former Czech president Vaclav Havel, an ardent anti-Communist activist.

“Frank Zappa was one of the gods of the Czech underground,” Havel said after Zappa’s death. “He was one of the men who shaped the life of the generation which I belong to.”


Matt Groening, the creator of the animated TV series “The Simpsons,” is also a devotee.

“Frank was our Elvis,” Groening told an interviewer in 1992. “There’s a whole generation of people who do funny or weird things who grew up on Zappa’s music.”

Keneally is one of them.

He was only 9 when he became captivated by Zappa’s live 1971 television performance on “The Dick Cavett Show” of the waltz section of “Sofa,” which later appeared on the 1975 album “One Size Fits All.”


Soon after that, Keneally recalled, a friend played him “Help, I’m a Rock,” a heady, three-part suite from “Freak Out!,” the landmark 1966 debut album by Zappa’s band, the Mothers of Invention.

“I heard that and the lights went on, the doors flew open and everything about the universe shifted in that moment. I saw my future,” said Keneally, who soon became “a full-on Zappa obsessive.”

Keneally attended his first two Zappa concerts in San Diego in 1977. He subsequently saw Zappa perform here twice in 1980, twice in 1981 and once in 1984.

Frank Zappa’s sons, Dweezil left, and Ahmet, performed together in the mid-1990s in the band Z. Its lineup included San Diego guitarist, keyboardist and singer Mike Keneally, a veteran of the late Frank Zappa’s final touring band in the 1980s. Ahmet is now overseeing the multi-media “The Bizarre World of Frank Zappa” tour,” for which Keneally is the musical director. (Photo by Gary Friedman/ Los Angeles Times)


‘A dream come true’

In 1987, the then-25-year-old Keneally auditioned in Los Angeles for what turned out to be Zappa’s final touring band. He got the gig, thanks to his impressive skills as a guitarist, keyboardist and singer, combined with his familiarity with nearly every song in Zappa’s voluminous catalog.

The subsequent concert tour took Keneally across the United States and Europe in 1988. His relation with Zappa was just starting.

“It was so exciting,” Keneally recalled, “because after the tour ended, I was privileged to be invited over to Frank’s pretty frequently while he was working on various albums in his home studio. He was also creating new music on his Synclavier (digital synthesizer and sampling station). And part of his process was to watch people’s reactions as he played stuff. So I was part of his test process, with him checking out my reactions.

“So, selfishly, that was as much a dream come true for me as being in the band, just to be there while he was creating new things and playing them for me, to see what I thought. That would have been unthinkable to me as a pre-teen and teen Frank Zappa fan.”


Keneally’s ties to the Zappa family run extend beyond its storied patriarch.

In the early 1990s, he began working with Zappa’s oldest son, fellow guitarist Dweezil. That partnership evolved into the band Z, which also included Dweezil’s brother, vocalist Ahmet, who — following the 2015 death of Frank Zappa’s wife, Gail — assumed a key role in overseeing the Zappa Family Trust.

“About two years ago, while I was in New York on tour, Ahmet asked if I would like to be involved in ‘The Bizarre World of Frank Zappa’,” Keneally recalled. “Ahmet laid out his vision for this and how crazy it it would be be. His enthusiasm and vision were infectious.”

What, exactly, is that vision?


“It’s certainly a celebration of Frank as a composer and conceptualist,” Keneally replied.

“And it entails taking the subject matter of each of these songs by Frank and turning it into a vignette, so that each song is a separate story line. But, in between that, we’re using the technology to do things on stage that have never been seen in this way. A lot of it is based on Frank’s admiration for — and enjoyment of — a lot of classic animation over the years, and using that as a starting point and going from there.

“That was exiting to me, to take some of the Looney Tunes cartoon sensibility and timing, and applying that to a live presentation, using Frank’s music. I would have hated not being part of that!”

In between his “The Bizarre World of Frank Zappa” tour legs, Keneally is now contributing musical ideas to an orchestral work that Todd Rundgren will perform in Europe next year. Coming up late this year is a tour with Devin Townshend, whose upcoming new album Keneally produced and plays on. A new band, which has been in the works since 2015, is also in the offing.


And, if all goes according to plan, after this year’s “The Bizarre World of Frank Zappa” tour concludes, another “Bizarre” tour with different music by Zappa will follow in 2020.

“I can’t think of anyone who’s covered as much ground as Frank did, musically, while being completely naturally about it,” Keneally said. “He wanted to create and hear so many different things, and he was so capable. It wasn’t: ‘I’m going to try my hand at this’ — if he was doing something, he did it really, really well ...

“And, once he got your attention, there was so much great musical content Frank created that you could go on endless deep dives. You can just go deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole.”

Zappa at Dizzy’s: A celebration of the music of Frank Zappa

When: 8 p.m. Aug. 18


Where: Dizzy’s, Arias Hall (behind the Musician’s Association building), 1717 Morena Boulevard, Bay Park

Tickets: $25

Phone: (858) 270-7467

Online: brownpapertickets.com