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Keen is well-known for his popularity with deaf audiences...
...though it's annoying when deaf audience members "talk" all through the show.
Also in town -- the 2002 Meaty, Thick-Necked Guys Convention.
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Any unsuspecting New York music fan who showed up to this show (and by our count, we were the only ones who did) would have been exposed to a culture that was both alien and frightening. As we had both been to southern frat parties, we were familiar with the beast. It was just over a month ago that we both attended a Mercury Rev show at the Irving Plaza, and we feel comfortable in stating absolutely that we were the only two audience members that these two shows had in common. Notably absent were the indie-rock, alt-country creatures of the night -- those nocturnal, horn-rimmed, pasty-faced citizens of the nation of Radiohead who cower behind music counters and venture out to shows where they feel safe among their own short-sleeved button-up kind. In their place were well-muscled, square-jawed, folded-brimmed-college-ballcap-wearing guys who make up two-thirds of the student body at Ole Miss, but whom one never sees on the streets of New York. Accompanying them
were their adorable, blonde, tittering, aggressively affectionate girlfriends. In miniature cowboy hats. When we arrived, the crowd was 2.75 sheets to the wind, and had begun chanting "Robert...Earl...Keen!" every three seconds. It felt as though we had stepped through a portal into the Mississippi and Georgia of our respective adolescences, with none of the pluses and all of the minuses.
We awaited Keen's arrival with trepidation. The guy's music is great -- singalong country of the kind that should be blaring from every C&W-themed top-forty station, but isn't. His live recordings are possibly his most successful, and the energy on display on those albums had made us eager to be a part of one of his shows. Now, though, the raucous crowd energy that sounded so appealing on the record seemed likely to mutate into that country bar scene from The Blues Brothers, broken bottles, scars and all.
Keen and other Texas songwriters were recently given a shot in the arm by Lyle Lovett's tribute album Step Inside This House. Along with legends Townes Van Zandt (whose song "Snowing on Raton" was a Keen showstopper) and Walter Hyatt, Lovett paid homage to Keen with his cover of "Rollin' By". The added recognition gave Keen the much-deserved acknowledgment as one of the progenitors of the Texas songwriting scene.
Amid the chaos, REK (sporting a black sunglasses and a goatee) and company laid down the music with grace, professionalism and a smile. Among the
first songs they played was the instant-classic "Wild Wind", from Keen's latest effort Gravitational Forces, his first for Lost Highway. The song is traditional country, with Bruce Whitbeck playing a plodding bassline and a harmonica around Keen's distinctive nasal delivery. It was clear from the start that Keen is a firm believer in using the same musicians on the road as in the studio. From Martin Muse's steel-playing to Rich Brotherton's
masterful lead guitar, each song received its due, giving Keen's lyrics a place to call home with the warmth that comes with playing around the same musicians for years. Brotherton was exceptional, wearing two hats all night: first as the nimble-fingered, tasteful lead guitarist, and
second as security (by keeping overenthusiastic audience members from joining the band onstage). Brotherton's hollow-bodied Epiphone lent beautifully melodic and jazzy lines to the slower songs and perfectly placed leads to the hoedowns. So, after the transcendental tongue-in-cheek sing-along "Merry Christmas to the Family" (still the best dysfunctional family song ever) and the even funnier impromptu playfulness of the live chestnut "Fuck It!", there was an abrupt shift in mood as Keen
arpeggiated the opening to "Rollin' By". Keen, like many important lyricists, writes about what he knows and convincingly at that. Deserted gas
stations, alcoholism, failed relationships and four-wheelers barreling down the highway are topics and images that Keen exploits and transforms with
surprising originality. Keen's songs are peopled with "panhandlers, manhandlers, post-holers, and dustbowlers", to quote one song, and their
difficult, if not downright heartwrenching, stories. It is this balancing act of wry humor and gentle pathos that Keen presents at his live shows -- and
to a lesser extent on his albums -- that makes seeing him both tremendously enjoyable and deeply affecting.
As a side note, we noticed an interesting phenomenon: any time Keen played a song featured on his live album (especially "Merry Christmas From the Family" and "The Road Goes On Forever"), the audience sang along, interjected, cheered, clapped, yee-hawed and hooted in a precise mimicry of the audience on the album. It was a strangely B.F. Skinner moment -- an entire crowd behaving in the way that a Robert Earl Keen audience is supposed to, based on the holy scripture of a live album that is his most memorable recording. Did Frampton audiences slavishly imitate the Frampton Comes Alive audience? Do they still? Is Frampton turning into a frog?
During the "The Road Goes On Forever", the audience started to get up on each other's shoulders to sing and love one another in their own young Republican way, but mostly they just fell over and got trampled by their drunken brothers and sisters. The poster hanging on the back wall seemed to sum it up pretty succinctly. It was a picture of a contemplative Keen standing in the middle of a dry, bucolic Texas prarie, and in the lower left hand corner was the sponsor of the tour: Shiner Beer. Rollin' hard, rollin' fast, rollin' by.
Article and photos by Daniel Arizona and Brett McCallon.
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