R Keenan Lawler is a Louisville Kentucky based musician, sound artist, improviser and composer. For nearly thirty years he has been a restless explorer of sound from rock to electro- acoustic improvisation and many points in between. Since the late nineties he is best known for developing a highly idiosyncratic difficult to categorize language on the metal bodied resonator guitar fueled by minimalism,blues,asian and african musics,ancient and modern classical, psychedelia and jazz.
Lawler is known for solo performances and recordings and also as a collaborator and perfomer working with a diverse range of like-minded artists among them: Matmos, Rhys Chatham ensembles, Charlambides, Pelt, My Morning Jacket, Tatsuya Nakatani,Paul K and the Weathermen,Connor Bell, Mike Tamburo and the Universal Orchestra of Pituitary Knowledge,David Watson, Helena Espvall, Lukas Ligeti, Ut Gret, Ignaz Schick, John Butcher, Christian Kiefer and Jon Mueller. Lawler’s music can be found on such labels as Important, Tompkins Square, New American Folk Hero, Music Fellowship, Rebis, Eclipse and Table of the Elements who released the acclaimed,”Music for the Bluegrass States”. He performs live regularly and has participated in such festivals as High Zero,Fantastic Voyagers,Time of Rivers,Transmissions,Greetings Fellow Pickers,Terrastock 7 and Table of the Elements Bohrium. His sound art has been presented in PS1 Brooklyn,Henry Art Seattle.and in Louisville via collaboration with artists Thaniel Ion Lee ,Valerie Fuchs and Russell Hulsey.