Winnipeg actor and musician Tom Keenan is looking forward to a quick tour of the west this week with his brother Patrick as part of the “Bros Before Hosers” tour which stops by the Slice on Thursday (April 1).
“It’s because when we were young, we used to go on these long road trips with our dad and we used to call them hoser tours,” Tom Keenan chuckled over the phone from his Winnipeg home.
They both have new CDs out and are looking forward to introducing them to Lethbridge.
“We have a couple songs we wrote together, but because we both have new CDs out, we’ll be backing each other up with a rhythm section, playing our solo material and supporting each other,” Keenan continued.
He started playing music with his brother when he was 15.
“I’ve learned a lot about songwriting from him because he’s been
writing songs when he was really young, I started pretty late,” he said
“I just enjoy singing with him. We just play off each other,” Keenan continued.
“I like the sound of us together and the fact we can always surprise
each other but at the same almost always know what the other one is going to
do,” he said adding the duo toured out east a couple years ago, however this tour will be the first time out west together.
“I’ve been busy acting,” said Keenan,” who is taking advantage of Easter break to tour as a musician.
He also tours schools as part of a traveling production called ‘Beneath the Banyan Tree’ which played in Calgary and Banff during the Fall, but has a week off from it because of Easter.
He has been in several plays and films including starring in a controversial Sean Garrity independent film called ‘Zooey and Adam’ which played film festivals across Western Canada last year.
“It was a pretty powerful movie,” he said.
“ I was a musician first. I never knew I was going to be an actor. It just happened. I like performing. I like being able to explore what’s beneath the surface and decoding the expressions of one’s soul,” he said.
From a music standpoint, elder brother Patrick plays piano and sings while Tom plays guitar and sings.
Both CDs feature some familiar faces from the thriving Winnipeg music scene including Jaxon Haldane from the D-Rangers and Dave Quanbury of Twilight Hotel who figures prominently on both albums, particularly Tom’s.
“Dave and I recorded most of mine at recording school. He just grabbed whatever instruments were handy and added a bunch of awesome sounds,” Keenan said.
The D-Rangers’ Jaxon Haldane adds some banjo to ’River Street,’ one of the CD’s highlights.
“I actually found out that Winnipeg has a River Avenue, but every town has a River Street,” he continued adding the song, like most of his songs, is an amalgamation of a lot of different people in his life including the pugilistic wedding crasher in ‘I Don’t Want to Fall Down.’
“That’s definitely not me, I’m not a fight type of person,” he said.
