Back on Earth: prolific actor Tom Keenan finally records new album

It’s been 54 years since anybody set foot on the moon, and 16 since Winnipeg songwriter Tom Keenan released a solo album.

You couldn’t accuse Keenan of being reclusive in the interim: one of the city’s most reliable and versatile actors, he’s appeared in more than 50 professional stage, television and film productions since launching his career in the early 2000s, most recently playing MacQueen in Murder on the Orient Express on the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre mainstage, Pozzo in Godot for Shakespeare in the Ruins (a role he’ll reprise for RMTC in 2027) and starring in the pandemic-set feature film Melaleuca.

Yet Keenan’s loaded resumé in those modes of performance have largely taken precedence over his efforts in the realm of indie music, where the actor is no slouch.

“Good things keep getting in the way, which I’m thankful for, but it makes it hard to have any momentum as a professional musician, so it’s always been more of a passion project,” says Keenan, who’s latest album as Tommy Douglas Keenan — that’s his actual middle name — is out today.

Most passion projects aren’t quite so polished: Returns to the Moon — a 12-song excursion produced with Keenan’s longtime friend and collaborator Matt Peters (Royal Canoe, deadmen), along with vocals by Slow Spirit bassist Natalie Bohrn — could easily slot into a vinyl collection alongside records by Paul Simon, Joel Plaskett and Micah Erenberg’s the Secret Beach.

Keenan’s sophomore release is also likely the only album out today that features William Shakespeare as a credited songwriter: Lover & Lass, the first track of the record’s flip side, is a rendition of a sonnet from As You Like It that Keenan and Peters — whose duo is called Heavy Bell — wrote for an SiR production of A Winter’s Tale.

For Keenan — who graduated from the University of Winnipeg’s theatre program before studying in Paris at École internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq — songwriting has been a steady part of the creative diet since his teen years, which were bookended by the grunge-rock era and the opening of the Times Change(d) High and Lonesome Club, where he recalls being wowed by local bands such as Nathan and the D-Rangers.

In the Keenan household, Tom says his older brother Patrick was the musical paragon, teaching himself the piano at age 12. Most of Tom’s earliest experiences as an instrumentalist came sitting next to his brother, doing his best to keep up.

Keenan’s next songwriting partnership began while studying at the U of W, where his father, Brian, was a beloved professor of philosophy for nearly 40 years.

Across a chessboard in Lockhart Hall, Keenan befriended Peters, and soon, the duo were sharing their earliest stabs at songwriting. By 2001, Peters’ first band, the Waking Eyes, was taking off, while Keenan was a founding member of a trio called the Church Choir, which toured modestly through the mid 2000s.

If his debut Romantic Fitness was an account of the creative and passionate travails of an emerging artist, Returns to the Moon represents the songwriter’s attempt to reckon with lessons learned in retrospect.

“When songs come at me, it’s usually a result of learning a new form of humility,” he says.

“A lot of the mistakes I make come from a place of pride, or utter foolishness; the aftermath leaves me somewhat broken but at least aware of where I went wrong. It doesn’t always stop me from making similar mistakes again — returning to the moon — but once in a while, something sticks.”

A recurring mistake Keenan admits to making is to amplify his inner critic.

“I can’t bear writing a bad song, and I’ve done it, of course, but I’d just rather wait for something that feels like it’s outside of me to write it, you know? I’ve never been one to rush. It’s not like, ‘Oh, I’ve got six songs. I should write six more and record an album.’ It’s more like, ‘Oh, I’ll just wait until six more songs show up.’”

One way the songwriter has sidestepped that hurdle is by leaning into collaboration. With Heavy Bell, in 2018, he and Peters adapted Canadian author Elizabeth Smart’s novel By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept into a touring chamber ensemble piece.

One of the artists the duo collaborated with then was bassist Bohrn, who introduced Keenan to the Song Every Week Club, a creative challenge that has prompted dozens of Manitoban artists to meet the quota by sharing snippets or finished products with one another.

Other collaborators on Returns to the Moon include former Royal Canoe drummer Derek Allard, David Quanbury (Twilight Hotel) and Winnipeg actor-musician Cory Wojcik, who co-wrote the album’s most upbeat track, Sugared Impromptus, which sounds like something Julio might sing about down at the schoolyard.

With opening act Hera Nalam and with Son of Dave spinning 45s between sets, Tommy Douglas Keenan takes the stage at Sidestage tonight as a five-piece band, joined by Allard, Quanbury, Bohrn and his brother Patrick.

Keenan has pressed 200 copies of the record — mastered by Philip Shaw Bova (Feist, John K. Samson) — for the occasion. After tonight’s gig, Keenan can be seen acting in the upcoming Shakespeare in the Ruins season (which will be announced next week) and performing his music in August at Trout Forest Music Festival in Ear Falls, Ont.

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