Artist: Robert Earl Keen
Column from web archive November 5, 2008
Chicago, by way of Austin
If anyone knows the way from Austin to Chicago, it’s Alejandro Escovedo. The Texas veteran’s recent gig at Park West extended his amazing streak of playing more different venues in the Windy City than even most artists who live here have played. Since he first reached these shores with Rank And File in the early [...]
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #74 March-April 2008
Robert Earl Keen – Goode-Crowley Theater (Marfa, Texas)
Rowdy can be fun. There’s a place for rowdy, and sometimes that place is a Robert Earl Keen show at a beer hall favored by roofers and frat boys. The hook for the January 19 show in Marfa, Texas, however, was its Marfa-ness. The little 250-seat theater in this one-stoplight town meant this was a [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #65 Sep-Oct 2006
Robert Earl Keen – Live at the Ryman
The subtitle on the jacket is “The Greatest Show Ever Been Gave,” and darned if it might not just be. Keen and his longtime stalwarts played Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium for the first time in November 2004, and to hear them on this crystal-clear recording, they were playing for posterity, playing to the storied venue, and [...]
The Long Way Around - Feature from Issue #57 May-June 2005
Robert Earl Keen – Can you patch together a feeling that’s going to stick with somebody ten years from now?
So here’s the setup: “Two Aggies walk into a bar…” Aggie jokes are a staple of humor in Texas, but the two A&M alumni who embraced in the lobby bar of the Four Seasons in Austin early one Thursday morning in mid-March could luxuriate in the fact that the joke was not on them. One [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #48 Nov-Dec 2003
Robert Earl Keen – Farm Fresh Onions
“It’s the little things,” Robert Earl Keen once sang with switchblade humor, “that piss me off.” Here, it’s the little things that elevate a typically solid selection of material from the veteran troubadour into the most musically compelling album of Keen’s career. Little things like the interweave of Marty Muse’s steel guitar and the organ [...]
The Long Way Around - Feature from Issue #34 July-Aug 2001
Robert Earl Keen – The whole world’s out there to write about
From backstage at every show you can see them, pressed in tight with their faces turned up. The music goes out over them and holds them in sway, boys along with girls, women along with men. Some are wearing cowboy hats and cowboy shirts, and there are plenty of jeans and boots in whatever state [...]
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #33 May-June 2001
Robert Earl Keen / Kasey Chambers – Tennessee Theatre (Knoxville, TN)
At a glance, Robert Earl Keen and Kasey Chambers don’t have a lot in common. Not gender, obviously. Not nationality (she’s Australian, he’s from the Lone Star Republic). Not age, either; Keen, who’s now 45, is part of the generation of singer-songwriters the 24-year-old Chambers grew up listening to. But listen to their most recent [...]
The Long Way Around - Feature from Issue #18 Nov-Dec 1998
Robert Earl Keen – Straight outta Bandera
In pondering the uniqueness of Robert Earl Keen, let’s compare him with his fellow Texan Lyle Lovett. College buddies and fellow Aggies, the two co-wrote “The Front Porch Song”, which each recorded early in their careers. They shared a circle of formative acquaintance and influence on the Houston/Austin axis, one that encompassed the likes of [...]
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #16 July-Aug 1998
Fred Eaglesmith / Robert Earl Keen – Be Here Now (Asheville, NC)
They may come from different parts of the continent and talk with different accents, but as songwriters and performers, Robert Earl Keen and Fred Eaglesmith speak the same language. Whether they’re relating tales of outlaws, losers, dispossessed migrant workers, big hair, and bigger fish, Keen and Eaglesmith share an affinity for the down-and-out and the [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #9 May-June 1997
Robert Earl Keen – Picnic
It was a telling statement that I recently saw attributed to Robert Earl Keen, the one in which he mentioned he “was kind of burned out on being the ‘yuck, yuck, pluck, pluck’ guy.” Now, Keen has always been much more than just a funny singer-songwriter from Texas, but the poignant yearning of such songs [...]
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