Tommy Keene (born Thomas Clay Keene; June 30, 1958 – November 22, 2017)
Education
Evanston, Illinois-born Keene was raised in Bethesda, Maryland. He graduated in 1976 from Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, which was also the alma mater of fellow musician
Nils Lofgren, who went on to play and record with
Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. Keene played drums in one version of Lofgren's early bands.
Keene then attended the University of Maryland, College Park.
Musical career
Keene first received critical acclaim with the pioneering Washington, D.C. rock band the Razz, who released several local independent singles. His 1984 EP
Places That Are Gone became one of the year's top selling independent releases.
That same year,
Washington City Paper dubbed Keene "one of the best pop songwriters anywhere."
garnered a four-star review in
Rolling Stone, and was voted the No. 1 EP in the following year's
Village Voice Pazz & Jop Poll. Keene recorded and released numerous albums on such labels as Dolphin,
Geffen Records and
Matador Records. He worked with producers
T-Bone Burnett, Don Dixon, and R. Walt Vincent. He continued to record and tour and released an album with Robert Pollard, of Guided by Voices, as 'The Keene Brothers.' He was also a member of Pollard's live backing band the Ascended Masters, also featuring Jon Wurster, Jason Narducy, and Dave Phillips. As well, he toured as an additional guitar player in Pollard's Boston Spaceships. Keene also played guitar on the Goo Goo Dolls' hit song, "Broadway", on their 1998 album,
Dizzy Up The Girl.
In 2011, Keene released his ninth original studio album, Behind the Parade on Second Motion Records. This was the fourth release working with Second Motion's founder Stephen Judge. Judge had released Keene's 2010 two-disc retrospective Tommy Keene: You Hear Me and his previous release, Crashing The Ether. Keene's 2006 release Eleven Thirty Records was released while Judge was A&R Director and general manager at Redeye Distribution.
Death
Keene died in his sleep on November 22, 2017, at the age of 59 from
cardiac arrest.
Discography
Albums
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Strange Alliance (1982, Avenue)
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Songs from the Film (1986, Geffen Records) U.S. No. 148
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Based on Happy Times (1989, Geffen)
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Ten Years After (1996, Matador Records)
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Isolation Party (1998, Matador)
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The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down (2002, SpinART Records)
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Crashing the Ether (2006, Eleven Thirty)
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In the Late Bright (2009, Second Motion Records)
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Behind the Parade (2011, Second Motion Records)
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Excitement at Your Feet (2013, Second Motion Records)
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Laugh in the Dark (2015, Second Motion Records)
Compilation albums
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The Real Underground (1993, Alias Records)
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Driving into the Sun (1994, Alias)
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Drowning—A Tommy Keene Miscellany (2004, Not Lame)
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(2010, Second Motion Records)
Live albums
EPs
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Places That Are Gone (1984, Dolphin)
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Back Again (Try...) (1984, Dolphin)
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Run Now (1986, Geffen)
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Sleeping on a Roller Coaster (1992, Matador)
External links
