Tommy Keene, a guitarist and singer/songwriter from Bethesda, Maryland, specialized in melodic guitar-based pop and rock. Classical piano occupied his early years before guitar and drums entered the picture. During adolescence he drummed for the rock trio Blue Steel, whose original guitarist Mike Lofgren was Nils Lofgren’s younger brother, so the band’s first significant appearance found them opening for Grin. While studying at the University of Maryland in 1977, Keene moved to guitar and launched the short-lived the Rage with Richard X. Heyman; he soon left to join the well-known Washington, D.C. rock band the Razz, whose opening slots included shows with the Ramones, Devo, and Patti Smith. Bassist Ted Nicely, a mainstay of Keene’s work throughout the 1980s, entered the picture during that stint.
After the Razz, Keene toured Europe as a sideman for new-wave singer Suzanne Fellini, then co-formed Pieces in New York. Dissatisfied, he assembled his own band with Nicely, drummer Doug Tull (another Razz alumnus), and guitarist Michael Colburn, who was quickly replaced by Billy Connelly. Recording under Keene’s name, the group issued Strange Alliance on their own Avenue label in 1982, after which North Carolina’s Dolphin picked them up. Two EPs followed before Geffen signed Keene and released the albums Songs from the Film and Based on Happy Times plus the six-song EP Run Now, drawn from earlier recordings, and then dropped him.
Early in the 1990s Keene signed with Matador after forming a new band that included bassist/vocalist Brad Quinn and drummer John Richardson; the deal produced the EP Sleeping on a Roller Coaster and the 1996 album Ten Years After. Alias issued the 1993 retrospective The Real Underground, which gathered unreleased tracks and long-out-of-print 1980s material. Throughout the decade Keene also worked as a guitarist for hire, touring with both Velvet Crush and Paul Westerberg. Isolation Party appeared in 1998. Four years later he reunited with Richardson and Quinn, added Wilco’s Jay Bennett, singer/songwriter Adam Schmitt, and ex-Gin Blossoms frontman Robin Wilson, and released The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down.
A new lineup yielded Drowning in 2004, followed two years later by his tenth solo album, Crashing the Ether, on Eleven Thirty Records. In the Late Bright came out on Second Motion in 2009; the double-disc compilation Tommy Keene You Hear Me: A Retrospective 1983-2009 arrived the next year. Behind the Parade appeared in 2011, the covers collection Excitement at Your Feet followed in 2013, and the all-original Laugh in the Dark closed the sequence in 2015. Tommy Keene died unexpectedly of natural causes in his sleep in November 2017 at age 59.
