Sean Keel

In spring 2024, my friend and fellow audiophile, Arndt Scheuren, came by our house to audition some new loudspeakers and systems. For his own orientation, he brought along an audio CD by a relatively unknown artist. The album did not run for more than a minute, when we all (Arndt, myself, and our female companions) fell awkwardly silent, unable to comprehend the transformation that was taking place on our Martin Logan system. I had heard many excellent recordings on our electrostatic speakers, but this album was making all other vocal recordings seem pale in comparison.

I was immediately captivated by the high recording standard but also by the music itself. The lyrics, especially, were indeed very clever. I was so taken in that I just had to find out more about the artist Sean Keel and about the story behind his album "A Dry Scary Blue". When I saw that Sean had no more than 25 "followers" on Facebook (not that this ever meant anything), I mustered the courage to ask him for an interview. A few days later, Sean wrote back to me that he had been on the eiaudio website and was very much interested in talking to me.

At the time of the interview, Sean (who actually lives in Texas) was travelling in Colorado. He set up his MacBook in a log cabin at the bank of the Conejos river. I set up my MacBook with Open Broadcasting Studio (OBS) for the background frame and used Cisco WebEx to set up our meeting. In preparation of the interview, I tested all settings with a friend, and we ran into repeated issues with sound and video quality. It was not until the very last minute that we were able to solve most of the issues.

Here is the interview that we came up with on that day. Both of us definitely not professionals in this field, but eager to get Sean's story told and to present the album: "A Dry Scary Blue". Thank you to Arndt Scheuren of "Salon Voss — Audiophile Hair Studio, Marne" for bringing the CD. — Here goes nothing:

Interview Details:

• Recording: 2021, MacBook Air (M1)
• A/V Streaming: Cisco WebEx
• Composition: Open Broadcasting Studio (OBS)
• A/V Editing: CapCut