Keegan McInroe

There's an appealing, unhurried nature to Fort Worth singer-songwriter Keegan McInroe's voice. He approaches his songs -- and on his latest album, A Thousand Dreams, there are 19 to choose from -- as though he's telling a handful of stories to a small, attentive audience. Breaking up his evocative tunes with brief instrumentals (often featuring stellar performances from locals like Ginny Mac or Michael Maftean), McInroe fashions a record tailor-made for lazy rainy days or intimate, sunset backyard gatherings. Produced by McInroe with Paul Williams, A Thousand Dreams is simply transporting. - DFW.com

As if Fort Worth needed another reminder of just how deep its pool of singer-songwriters is, now comes Keegan McInroe’s A Thousand Dreams, a recently released 19-song monster of taste and creativity. Clearly the one-time Catfish Whiskey rocker hasn’t stalled since the band dispersed in 2009. Dreams is the Fort Worthian’s third solo album in four years, and it’s easily one of his best.

The album-opening “I Don’t Mind” is a tidy, catchy toe-tapper that sets a nice, chill tone for the remainder of the lengthy disc. (Lengthy, in this case, is a good thing.) Think of McInroe as a something of a Texan Cat Stevens or Sufjan Stevens who sounds best during a Sunday afternoon on a sunny porch with a snoozy dog at your feet.

If that sounds sappy, so be it. Although this artist’s odes are emotionally charged, they’re genuine, which is to say credibly and incredibly folksy. The jacket’s listing of accompanying instruments alone attests to this album’s backwoods bona fides. Fiddles factor heavily in many of McInroe’s songs. So do harmonicas, pedal steels, mandolins, organs, violas, and trombones — all masterfully blended into a seamless neo-folk tapestry, courtesy of the mixers at Tomcast Studio in Dallas and the mastering pros at Jones Audio here in Cowtown. Backup vocalist Sally Glass, if anything, needs to chime in on more of his songs. Her voice is divine.

Sometimes McInroe keeps it lighthearted and jaunty, as on rolling lyrical tracks like “Old Lover’s Arms,” one of the album’s highlights. On others he gets gruffer though not necessarily darker, like “Don’t Ya Never Leave,” an enchanting yet elegantly simple heartbreak ditty driven by old-school, long-bearded country. Its steady strumming and repetitious lyrics show that McInroe knows how to wow without showing off.

Then, suddenly, tracks like “Abe’s Dream II” and “Abe’s Innards” swing toward the more experimental and prog-rocking influences of a musician who clearly gets the occasional wild hair. — Matthew McGowan
- The Fort Worth Weekly

Keegan McInroe combines Americana and heartfelt lyrics
Posted: July 29, 2011 - 12:01am


By BRITTANY HOOVER
FOR GO!

Texas-based singer/songwriter Keegan McInroe is known for weaving together threads of his favorite genres of music. From old country to blues and from gospel to rock ‘n’ roll, 28-year-old McInroe combines a wide range of original music with heartfelt lyrics to create his own unique Americana sound.

Growing up, McInroe said, he listened to a lot of country music, but never thought about a career in the industry until ninth grade when he first heard the album that inspired him most. It was “American Beauty” by rock band Grateful Dead, also known for its eclectic style and fusion of genres.

“It’s got that real Americana (sound) — a lot of acoustic stuff on that album. I thought it was just a beautiful album,” McInroe said. “A lot of the country I was listening to was ’90s country, and this album went back to early Americana music, which I got into more and have taken to more.”

McInroe, who grew up in Lubbock and graduated from Coronado High School in 2001, calls the moment he heard that album the “precursor” to thinking about a musical career. The Americana roots sounds he heard resonated with him, he said.

In 2003 McInroe took part in founding rock ‘n’ roll band Catfish Whiskey in Fort Worth, which toured in Texas and Louisiana. Since graduating from Texas Christian University in 2005, he uses his degree in religion and philosophy when songwriting.

And it’s his writing that reels in the audience and turns them into longtime fans, said local fiddle player Tina Turner, who met McInroe at a concert in 2009. She has played gigs with the artist and has performed on his albums.

“He’s very eclectic, with a dynamic energy with his audience, and heartfelt,” she said. “He’s somebody you want to come back and listen to over and over again because he draws you in. It makes you wonder what the next song is going to be. He’s such a great storyteller.”

McInroe spends his time playing shows in West Texas, Fort Worth and Austin venues, and one of his favorite parts of performing is finding the niche of people in various places that understand his writing.

When studying abroad during his time at TCU, McInroe was surprised by the reaction to his performances. He said people were excited about his music and very complimentary, and he knew they were too far removed from life in Texas to be saying nice things only to be polite.

“That’s the best feeling when someone says ‘I could feel that,’ or ‘I could feel what you were doing on that,’” he said.

The artist has distributed two solo albums since 2009. He said his debut album, “Mozelle,” is a stripped-down story album with limited instrumentation and was nominated by The Fort Worth Weekly for Album of the Year.

“From the Wall and In the City” was released the following year and is a much more dramatic production dealing with politics and spirituality, McInroe said. It displayed the talents of 28 musicians from the Fort Worth area and earned three nominations in the 2010 Fort Worth Music Awards.

His third album, which he hopes will be released by the end of the year, shows a more somber side to his talent, McInroe said. “A Thousand Dreams” features finger picking and lyrics centered on relationships and loss.

The artist has several upcoming shows during July and August in Lubbock and recalled his all-time favorite moment as a performer taking place in Hub City. He was playing with Catfish Whiskey at a fraternity party and local musician Scuba Steve was performing alongside them.

“We were both jumping up and down, and our energy just seemed to be in pocket with each other,” McInroe said. “There’s a different feeling playing with a band and playing solo. When you’re playing with a band you have good energy, and any moment like that would be high energy.”

McInroe said he enjoys the energy he receives from the large crowds when playing shows in his hometown, and he especially likes the paycheck Lubbock venue owners offer performers.

“It’s a great music town, obviously. A lot of people come out to see music there, and you know, it’s a different kind of place that way,” he said. “I love playing in Lubbock, and they still have a pretty good idea of paying an artist. It’s hard to turn a buck in Austin.”
- Lubbock Avalanche Journal

Buffalo Bros. is a bar and restaurant near the corner of Berry Street and University Drive, right off the Texas Christian University campus. In the couple of years that it's been open, the place has developed an uncommonly loyal following for its wings, pizza and publike feel -- they were barely beat out in DFW.com's "Best Damn Sports Bar" poll, losing to Pour House by only 13 votes. Now the owners have thrown their hat into the music-venue ring, and so far, they've done an impressive job, showcasing such talent as Sam Anderson, Stephen Beatty and, last Friday night, Keegan McInroe.

McInroe, who rose to local fame with the band Catfish Whiskey, set up in a dimly lit corner of the bar and patiently waited for the Rangers to finish battling with the Red Sox in extra innings. (It is a sports bar, after all.) Once the Bostonians were sent packing in the 11th, much of the crowd left. With only two days' notice, only the faithful knew about the show -- and, alas, sports fans are not always music fans.

That's OK though, because those who stuck around were fans of Keegan's from way back; the atmosphere was that of a group of friends hanging out just for the music. McInroe tore into soul-wrenching covers of songs by Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and then Ophelia, by the Band. He played straight on through till 2 a.m., with a good mix of originals and songs by Dylan, Mississippi John Hurt, Johnny Cash, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Robert Johnson. Kenny the Pirate even dropped in. (If you don't know about the pirate, you don't hang out on Berry enough. Check out the Kenny the Pirate fan page at www.facebook.com -- you can thank me later.) McInroe changed the words of the song he was playing to refer to Kenny -- then broke into an original pirate shanty in his honor.

McInroe's voice has got a serious, gargles-with-Red-Devil-Lye edge to it. It perhaps follows, then, that he draws his artistic inspiration from Jack Kerouac's classic book On the Road.

"When I was reading On the Road, what hit me was the genius of what he was doing," he told me Friday night. "He was re-creating that romantic feeling that one gets when traveling and being on the road.... Some music is obviously to make people shake their bottom. But when it's done properly, I think it's about conveying emotion ... getting somebody to go to a place [they haven't been before]."

McInroe's latest CD, From the Wall & In the City!, is a heavily political piece of work that some listeners may find a bit too extreme for their tastes. For example, Come and Take It champions states' rights, demonizes the Federal Reserve and encourages rebellion against, well, the people he holds responsible for the Fed, I guess. But at least he shows the fortitude to put his views out there. There's something to offend all sides.

"No matter what you believe," Keegan says of his lyrics, "at some point you have to deal with disagreeing with me."

(The list of musicians that played on the CD reads like a who's who of Fort Worth music. Matt Skates, Ginny Mac, Darrin Kobetich, Ever Lovin Jones, Travis Dixon, Justin Pate, Daniel Katsük, Trip Mathis, David Wade and Jeff Dazey are just a handful of the people involved.)

As for Buffalo Bros, it's still trying to find its niche in the vibrant Berry Street music scene. But it's definitely off to a good start. The food is good and reasonably priced; the staff is friendly. With a little more lighting for the artists, the owners might just be able to entice a few Rangers fans to stay after the game.

For information on McInroe, check out www.keeganmcinroe.com.

For more information on Buffalo Bros, check out www.facebook.com/pages/Fort-Worth-TX/Buffalo-Bros. - DFW.com

On the heels of his 2009 solo debut, Mozelle, singer-songwriter McInroe's sophomore effort -- the "spirit" of which McInroe says first began taking shape during the "fear and loathing of the W. Bush years" -- bursts with ambition. With 15 tracks, nearly 30 guests (everyone from Michael Maftean and Ginny Mac to Daniel Katsuk and Justin Pate) and impressively dense compositions that don't collapse into chaos, From the Wall and in the City is a rootsy epic. It's not an easy album to wrap your arms around, but McInroe rewards patience with his keenly felt songs and deliberate pace. - DFW.com

Keegan McInroe sings like he was born into the wrong century, with a baritone that’s woozy, ribald, and rambling. But his eccentric arrangements, which slide organically into disparate genres and styles, are definitely here and now. - Fort Worth Weekly

By JIMMY FOWLER

Last year, the personal and professional lives of musician Keegan McInroe took a sharp turn. In the spring of 2008, the 25-year-old frontman for the blues-folk outfit Catfish Whiskey was managing the band, booking its gigs, and playing live shows as the group supported its debut CD Blood and Bones. Running the business side of the group was wearing him down creatively, though. He really wanted to take a break and write new songs, but the call of the road was insistent: He plowed forward and booked a slew of dates along the East Coast.

Then on May 28, his grandmother succumbed to bone cancer. It wasn’t a complete surprise but was devastating nonetheless. McInroe returned to his grandparents’ home in Levelland, about 30 miles west of Lubbock, to help prepare for the funeral and support his 88-year-old grandfather.

“I moved in [with my grandfather], thinking it would be temporary,” he said. “Then I cancelled Catfish Whiskey’s East Coast shows for the summer, thinking I’d stay [in Levelland] through the end of the year. Then I realized I couldn’t say to my grandfather, ‘You two were together for 63 years, but now it’s time to stop mourning so I can move out.’ And so I decided to relocate there.”

McInroe wrote a song called “Mozelle” –– that was his grandmother’s name –– in the few days between her death and the funeral. It’s a wise, beautiful, acoustic blend of sadness and joy, a celebration of the woman’s life told from his grandfather’s point of view. The old man asked him to perform it and the gospel standard “In the Sweet By and By” at the service. Unbeknownst to McInroe, the church’s audio system was recording his live performances. When he heard them later, he decided he wanted to preserve them in more polished studio versions.

That was the genesis for Mozelle, McInroe’s just-released debut solo CD. Unlike Catfish Whiskey’s signature gothic swamp-rock sound, the album is pared-down, intimate, openly spiritual, and bursting with details from the lives of real and fictional people. “Grandfather’s Boots” is a wry, pretty ode to visits he and the old man made to the family cemetery in Idalou –– his grandfather could relate anecdotes about practically every name on the headstones. (“I said to him, ‘You know more dead people than live ones,’ ” McInroe said with a laugh.) “The Yank” is about a Northern transplant to the South who shoots and kills his drunken son in a field one night. The song deals subtly with regional cultural friction, the consequences of living silently with bitterness, and the dangers of a closed mind.

During the many months that McInroe was gradually writing and recording Mozelle, he returned periodically to Fort Worth to gig with Catfish Whiskey. Meanwhile, another side of him emerged during the 2008 presidential primary season –– a politically curious one. Republican U.S. Rep. and then-candidate Ron Paul of Texas appealed to McInroe because of his plainspokenness and libertarian bent.

“I watched him in the primary debates, and he was talking about the things that my friends and I were talking about,” he said. “He was talking about the root of economic and foreign policy problems, not just the problems themselves. He was a politician saying true things, as far as I could tell.”

Not all of the members of Catfish Whiskey were comfortable endorsing a presidential candidate, so three of them, including McInroe, performed at Ron Paul fund-raisers in Houston, Lake Victoria, and Fort Worth. They called themselves Uncle Ron’s Sons of Liberty. McInroe has since written songs like “We’re Gonna March” and “The Haight” that are calls to resist the status quo nonviolently. (He’d intended to include “March” on Mozelle but decided that this particular juxtaposition of the political with the personal would be jarring.) Such experiences have fired up what McInroe calls “an activist side” that he’s careful not to bludgeon people with at live shows. In friendly conversation, though, he’s not afraid to express strong opinions.

“Just two weeks before his term ended, George W. Bush said he didn’t believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible,” he said. “I thought, ‘Why didn’t you have the nerve to say that while you were in office?’ For me, being a Christian means you follow the teachings of Christ, and those are a lot different than the bastardized ideas of Christianity that the religious right is pushing.”

For the record, McInroe isn’t thrilled with President Obama’s administration, either. For him, it’s a case of the same spoiled wine in attractive new wineskins. The difference now is that when he posts critical comments about Obama on his MySpace blog, McInroe said: “I get the angriest reactions from people who’re so-called friends.”

Right now, promoting Mozelle and continuing his work with Catfish Whiskey are foremost on his mind. After performing several area shows with and without Catfish Whiskey, McInroe plans to hit the road by himself and play clubs - Fort Worth Weekly

There’s a wonderful, lived-in, bone-deep weariness to Keegan McInroe’s voice that often makes his solo debut, Mozelle, feel like a postcard from a lonely, rambling ranch deep in the woods. The Catfish Whiskey frontman’s expansive 14-track collection, which he self-produced at Lubbock’s Tripower Productions Studio, features help from Kinna McInroe, Nic Shute and Will Dowdy, among others, but exists largely as a showcase for McInroe’s dusty, intense songs, like the epic opening title tune and the spellbinding, mournful Dreaming ’Bout New York. It’s a deeply felt document sure to please fans of Steve Earle or Tom Waits. McInroe will celebrate Mozelle’s release Thursday, March 19, at Lola’s Saloon, with support from Scott Copeland and fellow Catfish Whiskey member Mikey Maftean. McInroe also tells me he’s opening for Okie rock legend Leon Russell at the Fairmount on March 25, with an assist from Tina Gola, who plays fiddle on a couple Mozelle tracks, and bassist Matt Skates.

- Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Keegan McInroe is the leader of local southern rock outfit Catfish Whiskey. But he's also a budding solo artist: McInroe's debut solo effort, Mozelle, hits the streets this week. Here's a quick preview of said album in the form of "The Yank."

Bonus MP3: Keegan McInroe-- "The Yank"

Very Dylanesque if you ask me; and frankly, I dig this quite a bit more than what I've heard from Catfish Whiskey. Seems that the acoustic country blues vibe suits McInroe's world weary voice better than Whiskey's extended, southern boogie jams. Whatever the format, solo or group, McInroe's a local songwriter worth some recognition.

The CD release party for Mozelle will come on Thursday, March 26, at The Green Elephant. Special guest Tina Gola will accompany McInroe on violin, adding some sweetness to his acerbic narratives. - Dallas Observer

With a deep, raspy voice sounding twice that of his age, 26-year-old Keegan McInroe dishes out a bit of the blues, Americana, folk and country on his solo debut, Mozelle. The title track pays homage to the singer’s late grandmother and unfolds the sweet tale of old fashioned forbidden love that eventually brings two hearts together.

Hailing from West Texas, McInroe makes evident his Southern roots influence on “Grandfather’s Boots” with a weeping slide guitar that evokes visions of a dusty country road on a hot Texas summer day. Keeping true to the feel of a live performance, the production is minimal with an intimate and raw clarity to the sound. McInroe’s gravely and impassioned vocals bring to mind those of Tom Waits or John Gorka. That voice, along with a knack for narrative, proves that Keegan’s a keeper. —CF - Performing Songwriter Magazine

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Folk Music. In my earliest understanding of the term, it involved one man or woman, playing a guitar and singing. By that definition, Keegan McInroe is the closest I’ve come to presenting a folk singer. McInroe plays mostly acoustic guitar here. He plays occasional single note runs, but mostly he strums. McInroe does no solos, flashy or otherwise, but he is as fine a rhythm player as you would ever care to hear. For a couple of tunes, he puts down his acoustic, and plugs in his resonator guitar, but it’s still strictly rhythm.

Can you think of anyone nowadays who does an entire album of just vocal and guitar? It’s so rare that we listeners have lost the patience for it. So McInroe needs to do something to vary the sound here. So one song might have a fiddle, another a harmonica, another a mandolin. Trumpet and jaw harp are more unusual choices that also turn up here. I would never have thought of it, but acoustic guitar and trumpet turns out to be a great combination.

McInroe’s voice has a gruff quality. It sounds like he has done a lot of living. In his mellower songs, his voice can convey longing and desire, as well as sorrow. He can also go with a rougher sound for a great bluesy effect.

When I listen to music for the first time, I hear the sound and feel of the music. I usually don’t know what the songs are about until later. When I receive an album for review, I give it that first listen, and I decide by the feel of it whether I want to come back to it. If I do, I find out then what the words are saying. And that happened here.

So call it a coincidence if you like that I went back to review this when I did. Mozelle was Keegan McInroe’s grandmother, and the album is dedicated to her memory. The title track leads off the album, and here McInroe’s grandfather describes his love for her, and his memories of their life together. This sounds like the words you might speak at a funeral, in honor of the newly departed. There would follow a hymn, talking about the promise of a bright hereafter, and on the album this is the traditional Sweet By and By. The rest of the songs on the album are originals.

I can attest that the death of a loved one can make you look back at your life, and that it is what happens on the rest of the album. McInroe is a devout Christian, but he never gets preachy here. He describes a man torn between sin and salvation. Statements of faith interrupt sequences of songs about lost loves and earthly temptation. McInroe, as he presents himself here, is not a man who is better than us because he is saved. Rather, he is a believer who finds it hard to live up to his own beliefs. This makes him thoroughly human. Christ himself shows up in a couple of songs, and McInroe makes Him human as well. The Jesus song has Him stopping by for a visit. He and McInroe’s character share jokes and wine, and Jesus has a message for him. The message is a private matter, and its contents are not in the song, but they don’t need to be. This is a kind of Christianity I have never encountered before, and I find it very refreshing. The Jesus Song is followed by White Elephants. McInroe’s character falls asleep at the end of The Jesus Song, and it seems to me that White Elephants is the dream he has. The lyrics, about dancing and talking elephants, seem silly and slight at first. But this is the surreal language of dreams, and this dream has something real to say. Following the trials McInroe’s character has endured to this point, White Elephants is a song of encouragement.

There are more trials to come, culminating with The Yank. This one strikes me as being Keegan’s effort to make sense of an incident he has heard about. The story, which I don’t want to give away, has elements of Greek tragedy. In trying to comprehend how this could happen, it seems to me that McInroe’s character experiences a bottom. This story brings to the fore all of the spiritual struggles he has been going through. The Yank is also astonishing musically. McInroe plays the rhythm, with a dialog between the fiddle and the trumpet on top. The turbulence of emotions is reflected in the interaction of the lead instruments.

After The Yank, only two songs remain on the album. Waiting is a hesitant, and The Way is an assured, reaffirmation of faith. The Way is the most religious song here, a retelling of the Easter story.

So Mozelle, taken as a whole, seems to me to be a tale of a man wrestling with his spiritual path. His road is not easy. I don’t think the matter is necessarily settled at album’s end. But this is not an album that requires you to share McInroe’s faith. I am not a Christian, but I am taken with McInroe’s honesty in the telling. And I can relate to the theme of struggling with one’s spiritual path. That can happen in any belief system. Even though McInroe supplies specifics, his theme is universal. And his telling is for everyone.


http://www.oliverdiplace.blogspot.com/ - Oliver di Place