3,958 Miles With Keneally, Beller, and the T5
From Taylor Guitars’ Wood & Steel "Worldview" Section
Written by Thomas Supper
Published Winter, 2006

NOTE: This article is a tour journal by Thomas Supper, Marketing and Sales Manager for Taylor Guitars at their distributor, Meinl, located in Neustadt (Bavaria), Germany. It was written from a very Taylor Guitars-centric point of view. It is included here in the “Press” section because, ultimately, it is a press piece on Mike Keneally and myself, but it’s more of a M.I. tour diary than a feature article. Anyway, enjoy.

Sunday, October 2, 2005, 7 a.m.  Time to leave Neustadt for the long ride down to Aosta, Italy to pick up Mike Keneally and Bryan Beller for a one-week Taylor workshop tour of Germany, specifically to show the T5 to our dealers and their customers. It had been my big wish to get Mike over here ever since I saw him rocking the Anaheim Hilton during a Winter NAMM show 15 years ago. I couldn’t imagine anyone better suited to this “job.”

After a quick stop to pick up Max (a Meinl trainee) to show him “life on the road,” we head down to the Swiss/German border (I couldn’t pass by historic Montreaux, Switzerland without showing Max where the Deep Purple song, “Smoke On The Water,” was born). Then it was up to the mountains, through the big tunnel where the Swiss/Italian border is and down again to lovely Aosta Valley [the smallest Italian region, located at the “hub” of the Alps, surrounded by Europe’s four highest mountains – Mont Blanc-Monte Bianco, Matterhorn-Cervino, Monte Rosa, and Gran Paradiso – all more than 13,000 feet high].

After 12 hours on the road, we meet Mike and Bryan and a film crew in a nice Italian restaurant in the middle of nowhere (Mike and Bryan were guests on a DVD shoot for a German drummer [Marco Minneman]). The next morning, we leave Italy and return to Neustadt around midnight, where we’re met by Mike’s European road manager, Pieter van Hoogdalem from Amsterdam, Holland.

Tuesday, October 4, first workshop day.  After a quick stop at Meinl to meet the boss, Mr. Meinl, and show the guys our facility, we hit the road through the former East Germany to set up our first workshop at Just Acoustic Guitars, in Berlin. Mark Bazaniak, the store manager, gives us (and his customers) a really warm welcome, with snacks and Italian red wine. It is always a pleasure to hang out with Mark and his crew in Berlin; I’ve known him for a long time, and our relationship is a cool mixture of friendship and straight business.

Mark was well prepared; a nice and interested crowd showed up and we had a wonderful evening. Mike and Bryan played as though it were a stadium gig, while we stood in disbelief at the things that are possible using the T5 – am I still on the same planet? Mike’s use of the T5 was amazing as he switched so fast between the acoustic side and the rock ‘n’ roll rig that our brains could hardly keep up – and he was using regular, borrowed gear from the shop. Those two hours totally kicked my knowledge and understanding of the T5 to a new level, and I had already been working with the guitar for a while! (Mark and Ray, thanks again – you rule Berlin!)

Wednesday, October 5.  I agreed to a late checkout at the hotel because this would be an almost 24-hour day. I drove us to the former East Berlin, past the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate, and ending up at Potsdammer Platz, which used to be the “dead zone” back in the cold war times. It remains a very strange feeling to drive on a road where you can still see the marks on the ground where the wall used to be. I explained to the guys that you could hold your hand out of the window and it would be in East Germany, while your body would still be in the West!

Enough sightseeing. We hit the road to Hamburg for our second workshop day. A shop called “Amptown” would be hosting us; they’d had a “grand opening” a couple weeks earlier after moving to a new location inside Hamburg’s well-known “The Bunker,” left over from the bad days of WWII. When we started right on time at 7 p.m., store manager Michi Palow and acoustic department manager Frank Elwart couldn’t believe that more than 90 people had shown up, because this was the last date confirmed and they had not had time to publicize it in a big way.

An enthusiastic crowd celebrated a great evening, in which Mike and Bryan had to do more Frank Zappa material because a couple of hardcore Zappa fans were in the audience. Again the T5 shined. Mike had to sign tons of CD’s – more than 30 for one customer! (Thanks again to Michi, Frank, and the whole Amptown crew for setting up such a well-prepared evening for us all!) I decided to cancel our Hamburg hotel reservation and drive the four hours down to Cologne, site of our next workshop.

Mike and Bryan had requested we rent a rehearsal room so they could rehearse the next morning with a drummer and a violinist for an upcoming gig in Amsterdam [the October 11, 2005 Paradiso show with Herman van Haaren on violin and Marco Minneman on drums]. We arrived in Cologne at 3 a.m., and after a short night’s sleep Mike and Bryan left for rehearsal. A few hours later, we were saying, “Hello, it’s nice to be in Cologne at Beyer’s Guitar Center. Let’s have a cool evening together.”

The Guitar Center workshop rocked. They had a well-prepared stage for Mike and Bryan, drew another big crowd, and again I had to stop the guys with hand signals because they were oblivious to the time. Our thanks to Peter Alexius, acoustic floor manager of Guitar Center/Cologne, who did the scheduling, let us use his rehearsal room, provided overnight accommodations for Mike’s violin player, and made a perfect workshop possible, and without whose unselfish help all our plans for Cologne could not have happened. Also, thanks to the Guitar Center boss, Winni Beyer, who drove to his second store in Bochum to get a rehearsal drum set for Mike’s drummer. We’ll never forget your support!

The next morning, we said goodbye to Max, our Meinl trainee, who left by train for home. It was a great experience for him to hang out on the road with us “old rabbits,” and it helped to prepare him for future tasks in the world of guitar business! For Pieter, Mike’s road manager, Max’s departure was a blessing – he no longer had to sit between all the boxes of Wood & Steel’s, merchandise, and luggage.

Thanks to my GPS, we were able to avoid some serious traffic jams on the short drive down to Waldorf, near Heidelberg, where Franz Schobert, manager of Session Acoustic, awaited us. Franz loves to host musicians from all over the world, whether it is the acoustic guitar festival, Dan Crary, or Beppe Gambetta, and being so well received made us feel like we were home. Because the European NATO headquarters is in Heidelberg, some American friends showed up for the workshop and an audience of more than 85 made it an unforgettable evening. Mike broke the ice by asking a question and rewarding the person with the correct answer with a free copy of a Sounds Of Wood & Steel CD I’d given him. We did that for the rest of the tour.

Bryan was in seventh heaven meeting Geli [Angelika Taylor] the pro bass player on Super Idol, Germany’s version of American Idol. One moment in the workshop stands out for me: Mike broke a string on a T5 Custom Koa but kept playing while pointing to the string, hoping for a replacement guitar. Franz kept pointing to the wall, where there were three different T5’s to choose from. Mike kept pointing and playing, Franz would respond by pointing to the wall as if to say, “You have your choice – which do you want, the spruce top, the maple top, or another koa?” The whole audience started to laugh. After the workshop, the “spare” T5 Mike had played found a new home with a proud, excited customer. (Thank you, Franz – we’ll be back!)

Saturday workshops are always a bit difficult because there are so many things to do on a late Saturday afternoon. But while driving from Waldorf to Freilassing (border town to Salzburg, Austria), I was sure that George Oellerer. Andy (of SoundAndy), and Giancarlo of Musikhaus Oellerer had done a perfect job preparing for our T5 performance. Over many years of working together, George, the owner, has become the “man of special requests,” and his demanding customers know that they will always find hard-to-find Taylor on his newly-designed “Taylor Wall.” Whether it’s Anniversary models, LTD’s, or simply guitars with outstanding wood figures, George, Andy and Giancarlo carefully choose guitars, and their customers love them for it!

This workshop like all those before it, went very well, and we were really surprised that Sound-Andy used a Midas 56-channel console and a big touring P.A. system to give Mike a 10,000-seat-venue sound! Because of the workshop’s early starting time, we were able to spend a lot of time afterward talking to interested customers about the T5 and its possibilities. This is a good time to acknowledge Mike and Bryan for devoting so much time to discussion and to answering customers’ questions after the workshops.

The last official tour day started with a bombastic wake-up concert, courtesy of a traditional Austrian marching band playing right in front of the window of Bryan’s hotel room! Once on the road, we traveled to Vienna, Austria, where we were guests at Musik Productiv’s house fair. Big stage, big lighting, and Jennifer Batten – former Michael Jackson guitarist – conducting a clinic right before we set up the gear!

Mike and Bryan met some friends from Prague and we had a great tour finale. Shopowner Martin Sobotnik couldn’t stop smiling and telling me how cool the guys are. He decided to keep another T5 in Austria, which he took from the Meinl booth that my two colleagues, Matthias and Rolf, were running there.

We left Vienna and started the murderous 800-mile drive to Amsterdam, where the Mike Keneally Band had a show at the legendary Paradiso Club. For me, it was time to say goodbye to the guys and head back to Germany.

I can’t say “thank you” enough to everybody involved in this fantastic 10-day trip – Mark and Ray in Berlin; Michi and Frank in Hamburg; Winni, Peter and Dennis in Cologne; Franz, Holger and Geli in Waldorf; Georg, And, Giancarlo and Sound-Andy in Freilassing; Martin, Meinl-Matthias and Headliner-Rolf in Vienna; Pieter van Hoogdalem from Amsterdam; and the masterminds, Mike Keneally and Bryan Beller! And above all, thanks to Taylor Guitars for making the T5 and for sending such wonderful clinicians all over the world; they help us to understand your passion for making guitars!

To read Bryan Beller’s own take on this tour, click here to go to the Screed Du Jour

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This copyrighted article first appeared in the Winter 2006 issue of Taylor Guitars' quarterly publication, Wood&Steel. It is reproduced here by permission of Taylor Guitars for the sole discretionary use of Bryan Beller and cannot be reproduced or reprinted anywhere else without the express permission and consent of Taylor Guitars.