Boston, 1985 – A black ’69 hearse rumbles to a stop outside Chet’s Last Call, hardscrabble club in downtown Boston. 4 rock ‘n roll thin punks spill out onto the sidewalk. A club owner growls, “Where’d you get your start?” 3 punks spit back, “The garage.” The fourth punk confides, “The library”.
New Orleans, 1989 - A VW bus coasts to a stop outside Tipitina’s, the music beacon of New Orleans. A rock ‘n roll thin musician slides out of the cab. No one asks where he got his start, he whispers it anyway, “The library.”
Keven Brennan is the son of Notre Dame Professors and discovered music in libraries. Sequestered between book stacks he devoured record collections, drawn especially to the melting pot of Caribbean rhythm, funk and soul he heard in recordings from New Orleans. It was there that his career was born. After studying classical saxophone at the New England Conservatory and realizing it wasn’t for him, he gained experience with deranged punk-rockabilly bands like The Wandells, Dwarves, and Royal Pimps. Eventually the punk scene’s ‘screw-it’ attitude wore thin and in 1989 he went west.
In Hollywood Keven played rock ‘n roll sax, frequented a recording engineering program, and found love with a singer/songwriter named Robin. In 1995 he cut his first album, aptly titled “Beatnik Gumbo”, and spent 2 years touring and observing a frustrating lack of dedication and vision in the music industry. He then became the change he wanted to see by combining his musical ingenuity and recording prowess to launch what is now a successful indie label, f.Boo Music.
4 solo albums and over 80 other projects later (including albums and music for film, television, internet and audio books), in 2006 Keven’s love for New Orleans and it’s music came full circle when he recorded Mardis Gras icon Big Chief Monk Boudreaux. That same year he was invited to join Monk on sax at the New Orleans Jazz Fest and has played the Jazz Fest every year since. Now, in 2010 Keven is producing his second album for the Big Chief to be released on indie label f.Boo Music.
Keven’s career, company, and life have always been illuminated, and at no time has that been more apparent than on his 5th album, Stand in the Light. Retro and futuristic, beatnik and boogie, Stand in the Light fuses musical genres and echoes life’s symbiotic contradictions. Produced by Keven and backed by the avant-jazz group Kneebody, Stand in the Light is defiantly original, yet owes much to the diverse urban landscape of Los Angeles. Perhaps, Keven explains it best when he says:
“My day might begin producing show tunes and end jamming with an international improv ensemble. And sometimes in the middle of the night, I paint while listening to conspiracy theories.”
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