If you play any kind of amplified music in Chicago, you’ve probably dealt with enough live sound engineers to know that you’d be lucky if the one working your gig was Patrick M. Kenneally. “Playing in bands, sound guys are often your first introductions to venues—seeing Pat made you feel a little more at home,” says Metro talent buyer and Lasers and Fast and Shit vocalist Joe Carsello. Kenneally, who died at age 43 on Wednesday, June 6, spent the past couple decades doing sound at clubs such as Darkroom, the Empty Bottle, and Lounge Ax. (Recently he worked mostly as a building superintendent, but he still picked up the occasional gig.) He’d ingrained himself in the local scene, becoming a vital piece of the largely invisible infrastructure that keeps it healthy. He wasn’t just punching the clock—he cared about the music community and supported it with more than his labor.
Kenneally had been a regular at the Fireside Bowl since moving to Chicago, and his My Lai bandmate, Brian Peterson, booked it as cofounder of MP Presents. There he became friends with veteran soundman Elliot Dicks, whose company Elliotsound provided the venue with a PA system and people to run it. The day after an employee bailed on a shift, Dicks complained to Fireside owner Jim Lipinski about the no-show. “The owner was like, ‘You should hire Pat,'” Dicks says. “We became great friends working together.” Kenneally’s first live sound-engineering gig was at a Fireside show by U.S. Maple and the Scissor Girls, in 1997 or 1998 (Dicks can’t remember for sure). “He was organized and he was good at solving problems,” Dicks says. “If you needed help with tools, he was the one you went to.” Kenneally quickly picked up more work as a soundman, landing regular slots at the Fireside, Lounge Ax, and Darkroom.
Frederickson is a vegan and Kenneally was an ethical vegetarian, which also helped them connect. When Kenneally opened an intimate venue and restaurant called the Blackbird in 2001, he put vegetarian and vegan food on the menu. Chantelle Hylton, who left a booking job at the Medicine Hat to do the same work for the Blackbird, describes the city’s music scene in those days as small and tight-knit. “He was recording a bunch of bands in Portland, and was a little bit on the periphery and a total force—and he did it, he made a venue for us, he made it happen, and none of us could have done that,” Hylton says. “The Blackbird ended up being a catalyst for Portland’s music scene finding itself in that moment.”
Wardle was a live audio engineer too, and as she found her footing in the Chicago scene, Dicks and Kenneally helped set her up with gigs. In June 2004, Kenneally flew back to Portland to record a band, and he asked Wardle to cover a show for him at the AV-aerie. “He pulled all his good microphones—he was like, ‘You should be fine, it’s this band called the Unicorns,'” Wardle says. “‘There’s this band opening called the Arcade Fire, I’ve never heard of them.’ When he got back from his recording trip, I was like, ‘Pat, you owe me.'”
