Brian Keefe’s shift from band life to a deeply personal acoustic path has reshaped his creative identity. In this interview, he reflects on discipline, recovery, and rediscovering his true artistic voice.
Having a band background where I’ve played with many other very talented musicians, I’ve found over those years that few of them have had the drive and work ethic that I seem to have. This isn’t good or bad; it just seems to be. However, it was always frustrating to me whenever I wanted to rehearse and tighten things up for upcoming shows just to find that people simply wouldn’t show up. No call. No text. Just no show. It showed me that, while some of us take this seriously, others are only in it for fun. Unfortunately, you never know this up front and only find out later. This would always cause a revolving door in band personnel, and I finally concluded it simply wasn’t worth the effort any longer.
So, I decided to have a go of it as a solo acoustic artist (and as half of an acoustic duet). I played a lot of live gigs in all kinds of venues until I contracted COVID around the end of January 2021. This was the initial strain and I spent 65 days in the hospital with pneumonia. Early on, my left lung collapsed with a tension pneumothorax and that took a long time to heal. 30 days until I got a negative COVID test, but the other 35 days was waiting for the lung to heal.
The last live gig I played prior to contracting COVID was at Ri Ra Irish Pub at the Mandalay Bay Casino in Las Vegas in December 2020. It was a great night and a LOT of fun. Ri Ra was one of my favorite places to perform.
I think being sick that badly really made me more aware of my own mortality. Not that I’m afraid of that or anything. It just made me realize that I had all these songs I had written but never recorded. So, since then I’ve been working on getting them recorded.
My first initial recordings took place over a 2-year period (2022-2023) and were, I think, kind of a feeling out of the Pro Tools DAW and its workings. I took 2024 and recorded only a handful of cover tunes, getting to know Pro Tools and the associated plugins a lot better. I started recording originals again this year by re-recording 8 of my previous songs and recording 2 new songs. Knowing more about the software, plugins, mixing and mastering now, I think, is helping me get better end results. It’s taken a while, but my final recordings are turning out considerably better.
The two could not be more different. When recording, processes are much more focused and methodical. When recording, every mistake is enhanced because when you play it, you don’t just notice it once, you hear it again and again. So, studio work is meticulous and time consuming. Especially when doing everything as real audio and actually playing the instruments. You can “punch” into recordings with a DAW bouncing multiple tracks and stitching them back together where needed. However, recording used to be an analog process and any mistake would require re-recording an entire track. So, while it’s not as difficult as it once was, it’s still harder than recording with Midi or AI.
On the other hand, when playing live performances, it’s more in-the-moment. The performances don’t need to be perfect because you play straight through any mistakes. Half the time venues are filled with people vaguely paying attention or, in the case of bars/pubs/taverns, people are drinking and having a great time. You are the entertainment, and live performances are a one-time event. You play the show and then it’s over. Mistakes are quickly forgotten, if even noticed. Most people don’t care about mistakes made when playing live. It’s expected. Forgetting the lyrics, bumbling a chord or a few notes – no big deal. So long as everyone is enjoying themselves, the performance is worth every moment for both the performer(s) AND the audience.
You would not believe how much a song can change from the time you wrote it until you settle on a final product. I’ll give you an example. My song, “Dancing with the Lightning”, was originally written in the key of B and patterned strongly after Ed Sheeran’s “Lego House”. However, once I settled on the final recording, it ended up in a different key altogether and sounding nothing at all like “Lego House”.
I’ve changed a lot of things over the past few years. I now tune my guitars ½ step down (flat) from 432 (440 is standard pitch). I also use what I call a half capo on many songs. You use it typically on the 2nd fret and it covers only the A, D and G strings leaving the others open. The sound emulates the standard DADGAD tuning and produces beautiful, rich tones that would typically not be captured any other way.
The biggest reason I’m re-recording and re-releasing many of these songs that I had already done is because, after learning my DAW better and becoming more familiar with my recording processes, I felt I could do a much better job the second time around. I tend to jump into new things headfirst with kind of a ‘damn the torpedoes’ attitude. Had I taken my time and maybe recorded a bunch of cover tunes first, I would not be re-recording my own songs now but instead would be recording them all for the first time. No big deal. We all learn differently and at different paces.
This is kind of a 50/50 thing. I have some songs that tell a literal story. Others, like these two songs, I wanted to create as more interpretive. This is intentional and not just some accident of the lyrics. These are songs that have a specific meaning to me, but I also wanted to kind of leave them open to interpretation so that people could associate their own meanings to them as well. I very much enjoy it when people decide to share their interpretations of my songs. It means a LOT to me when I can touch someone’s heart in a way that they can tie my song to a special or specific memory or life event.
Interesting question. I am originally from the Southwest Michigan area, so I grew up listening to many different genres of music – from Chicago Blues to Detroit Rock and Motown Soul. And then there was my father’s music collection I used to listen to – mostly Country and Jazz (strange combination, but that was him. Everything from Sinatra, Sammy and Johnny Mathis to Hank Williams Sr., The Ink Spots and even Mario Lanza).
Whenever I hear a cover song I really like, I’ll start thinking about whether I think I can pull it off acoustically. If not, then it’s just a great listen. However, when I believe I can make it mine, I’ll learn it and revise it so that it fits what I want to do with it. But those are just cover songs. The original songs I write cover a lot of different genres too, but they are designed from the beginning to be acoustically oriented no matter what genre they are going to belong to.
One more thing on this subject. I have a little work to do yet to get them done, but I’m hoping to drop a couple of Christmas songs out there this year too. These are also re-releases that I had previously done and thought I could do a little better. The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) – the version I always loved was Nat King Cole’s, his voice was smooth like butter. The other song being Please Come Home for Christmas – done by several artists, but the one I always liked the most was recorded by The Eagles.
I want to remain in the studio until I have everything recorded and completed. It’s a tall order, but I feel like I really need to do this. I think the next project is going to be religious in nature. I have a project in mind, but not ready to share the details just yet. I’ll say this much – a 10-song album based on 2 books of the bible (although at least 3 of these songs will be a little more generalized, but the other 7 songs will be very specific to those 2 books). I believe this will be a very interesting project and I look forward to writing those 7 songs. The 3 songs I mentioned as being more generalized are already completely written and I’ve already recorded one of them. Two of the other seven have the music completed and just need lyrics (in answer to what I anticipate might be a question in that regard – I always write the music first, then the lyrics).
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