Local blues musician Steve Keenan noted he is excited to have new music “In My Hands,” as he just released his long awaited second album.
It has been over 10 years since he released his debut album with his band Fat Baby Jake.
He started recording “ In My Hands” almost exactly a year ago in local musician Paul Kype’s s home studio.
“It’s been over 12 years since my last EP with Fat Baby Jake, Keenan said, noting he revisited and created new arrangements for three older songs “Something New,” “Whiskey Drinking Blues” and “Lucky One,” for the CD.
While it has been a a long time since Keenan released his own album, he has been far from idle, playing his own shows and performing with local musicians Paul Kype and recording on local artists’ CDs including Allan Roy Wilson, Greg Gomola and Papa King.
Band mate Gary Drayton added keyboards to the new arrangements as well as the seven other new songs on the CD.
“ There are a couple of country songs on it and there are some really pretty ballads on it too,” Kennan continued.
“Lucky One’ is an older song that I wrote about being thankful and ‘In My Hands is a newer song I wrote for my daughter about how life changes and about how my daughters have been such a huge benefit to my life,” Keenan continued, noting he enjoyed working on the CD in Paul Kype’s Bearfoot Studio.
Kype adds extra lead guitar to “ Whiskey drinking blues" and Kyle Harmon adds percussion to “Lucky One” and “ Gambler’s Hand.”
Keenan touches on a variety of musical styles throughout the CD. There’s country on “Country Buzz” and “Gambler’s Hand,” and “I Don’t Need A Million.” He gets a little funky on “Doin’ Fine”
His voice is reminiscent of Rory Gallagher on slower songs like “Lucky One” and “ In My Hands.” His guitar playing has that Stevie Ray Vaughan Stratocaster bite and he plays fiddle on “Country Buzz.”
“ I think the music will be really special to a lot of different people,” he said.
“It’s an unusual record. We recorded probably 50 or 60 per cent of it while we were socially distancing, before everything shut down. We had already recorded the bed tracks over a couple days, ” he said , adding after that, the musicians came in separately to record their parts with Kype after the shut down.
“It’s really good. But I wasn’t sure if I was going to sit on it because there are no places to have a CD release party, but I wanted to get the music out to people,” he said.
“ Paul did an excellent job. He put a lot of love into it. We all did,” he said.
The CD is available on all the regular streaming platforms, Spotify, apple Music and Youtube while physical copies can be obtained at several local businesses including Savers Convenience Store, Sideline Motorcycles and Honker’s Pub where Keenan and his band premiered a few of the songs in between Covid health restriction measures back in November. It will also be available at Street Legal Records.
