Conrad Keely (born 15 May 1972) is a musician, artist, and writer known primarily as the lead singer for the American rock music band ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead.
Background
Born in
Nuneaton,
Warwickshire, England
of
Irish people and
Thai people descent,
[ Orlando Sentinel: "Trail Of Dead - The Real Story" By Michael Corcoran March 4, 2002] Keely grew up in the neighbouring town of
Bedworth before he and his mother moved to the U.S. state of
Hawaii when he was five years old.
Keely and family returned to Bedworth when he was eight for three years before returning to the United States.
In 1988, while in high school in
Oahu, Keely met
Jason Reece, with whom he would later form ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead.
Keely then moved with his mother to Olympia, Washington in 1989 where he attended The Evergreen State College. Reece joined Keely in Washington a short time later, and the two tried forming bands in Olympia's underground music scene.
Finding little success,
in 1994 Keely and Reece moved to Austin, Texas to form bands.
Before signing a contract to Interscope Records with ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Keely primarily worked clerical office jobs in Austin while playing with the band at night.
Keely relocated from Austin to Brooklyn, New York in 2008,
Work
...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
Keely founded ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead with childhood friend and fellow musician
Jason Reece in 1994 when the two moved to Austin, Texas.
Originally planning to form two bands, with Keely on vocals and guitar with Reece drumming in one band and switching roles in the other band, the two soon settled on one band where they swap duties depending on the song.
After initially a duo performing as You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead,
the two soon expanded the name and the lineup. ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead quickly became known for their "anarchic" live shows and their sound, described by
AllMusic's Jason Ankeny as "an unlikely but powerful combination of punk fury and prog rock ambition."
By 1998 the group signed with Trance Records and released their eponymous debut album. After a second independent album, this time on
Merge Records, the band signed to
Record label Interscope Records in 2001. The critically acclaimed
Source Tags & Codes was released in 2002,
and since then the band had released six more studio albums.
Solo work and other bands
Keely released his debut solo album,
Original Machines, on January 22, 2016 on
Superball Music.
Songs for the album were primarily written while traveling in Cambodia, but a few were written while on tour with ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, recording them in the back of the tour bus.
On the sound of his first work without the band, while speaking with Steve Bell of Australia's
The Music, Keely said that he was "given more freedom to explore other textures and stuff that I might not usually" while having "the liberty to create something that's outside of Trail rock paradigm."
He also plays
wurlitzer and
fiddle for Austin, Texas country-folk band Brothers and Sisters.
Musical style and influence
Musical influence
Keely states in interviews that his biggest influences growing up were
Classic rock,
Progressive rock, and
alternative rock; listening to bands like
Pink Floyd, Rush, and The Replacements.
The style and sound of the Trail of Dead album
Tao of the Dead came from such influences, like Pink Floyd's
The Wall, Yes albums like
Close to the Edge and
Relayer, and Rush's
Hemispheres, with Keely telling William Goodman of
Spin that "I always liked listening to records that were just a continuous piece, like an orchestra or a symphony."
Bandmate Jason Reece claims he got Keely into punk music
and Keely makes the same claim for influence on Reece regarding prog, with the two swapping cassettes of music throughout school.
Musical style
's songwriting often shows the influence of progressive rock, as the aforementioned
Tao of the Dead illustrates. Other songs often have political or social meaning characteristic of punk music;
[Sabin (1999), pp. 4, 226; Dalton, Stephen, "Revolution Rock," Vox, June 1993. See also Laing (1985), pp. 27–32, for a statistical comparison of lyrical themes.] for example, the song "Up to Infinity" from
Lost Songs about the Syrian Civil War and the first track "Open Doors" is about human trafficking in Cambodia.
Many tracks on the album
Worlds Apart are about social unrest in the United States after the attacks of September 11th and consumer culture,
and Caryn Ganz of
Spin described the writing on
So Divided as "lyrically bleak."
2014's IX showed a change in Keely's style to a much more introspective one in writing and sound. While never intentionally seeking to change musical direction, Keely says that he was going through "a lot of personal stuff" while writing the songs for the album and the result was a lyrically personal album.
Artwork and writing
Keely is an avid visual artist. He claims he has been drawing his entire life and that he had an agent at the age of seventeen, displaying works at science fiction conventions.
He studied art at The Evergreen State College but claims he "didn't learn anything," and that he quit art "symbolically" to focus on music, as he cannot quit something that is part of who he is.
Keely considers himself a modern artist, and much of his work is inspired by comic illustration. He's stated his admiration for comics, that "they teach you how to draw."
Keely is a fan of the
X-Men and even noted that, as a reference to
Secret Wars, he wanted to include a
New Mutants character in the collage cover art of
Worlds Apart.
Despite his enjoyment of comics and the lowbrow art movement, he's said he finds little emotion or enjoyment in modern art and that he prefers "old art."
Keely wrote an article for
Filter magazine in 2003 titled, "Modern Art is Shit,"
in which he lambasts the modern art movement. Keely noted that he received a considerable amount of criticism for the article.
Keely has commonly incorporated his drawings and paintings into Trail of Dead's album art, designing and illustrating most all of their albums.
Keely has been working on a science fiction graphic novel titled Strange News From Another Planet for many years.
External links
