In the entertainment world, retirements are notoriously short-lived. Legendary Texas singer-songwriter is no exception. (Fellow Texan and beloved wrestler Terry Funk retired so many times I lost count!) He briefly stopped touring in the wake of the COVID pandemic, only to return to the stage not too long after. That was great news for his devoted tons, who turned out in numbers on Friday evening, the second of three shows at The Birchmere.
Part of Keen’s return to the business was making 2022’s Western Chill, an album that saw him going deeper into collaboration with his long-time bandmates. He opened the set with one of those songs, “Ride,” which he cowrote with Bill Whitbeck. It’s inspired by the story of a man living in Philadelphia in the late 1800s who decided to leave that city, buying a ticket to the end of the line, which turned out to the be tiny town of Menard, Texas.
Watch Robert Earl Keen perform “Ride” live on YouTube:
Before that, though, when he took the stage, he joked, “Don’t get too excited. I just woke up.” He also mentioned having 40 picks: “I don’t use them, but I like to see them.”
As notable a songwriter as he is, Robert’s always promoted the work of other artists. He played tribute to the late Todd Snider with “Play A Train Song,” sharing a story about the one time Todd went out to the merch table to meet fans and sign. Keen advised, “Don’t engage,” telling him to just sign stuff and keep things moving. Todd being Todd, the advice didn’t take, and, almost immediately, Robert found him engaged in a shouting match.
Keen introduced “Corpus Christi Bay,” a tale of the rough lives of oil rig workers, with a bit about how his brother is “a happy guy.” The song includes the line, “We got drunk and rolled a car.” After he finished playing, I said, “I rolled a car, too,” and, holding up my hand, added. “You win thumb, you lose thumb.” Someone else in the audience called out, “Don’t engage!” which got a lot of laughs.
It can be hard to capture the essence of his stage banter, which can include many digressions and often jumps around. “Whenever Kindness Fails” and “The Dark Side of the World” (if I followed him) were both inspired by a trip west he took as a young man. I can relate to “It’s The Little Things (That Piss Me Off);” people standing on the left side of the escalator fill me with murderous rage.
Early in his career, Keen lived in Nashville for two years. He was trying to write a hit song, something, he said, he never figured out. But he did get something out of the experience: the songs “Mariano” and “Leaving Tennessee.” It was fitting that he followed the latter with, “I’m Comin’ Home,” as he went back to his roots in Texas.
Watch Robert Earl Keen perform “I’m Coming Home” live for Austin City Limits on YouTube:
Robert wrote “Pre-Tesla Austin,” he explained, to entertain himself. It pokes fun at the rapid growth of the tech sector that’s drastically changed Austin, which has also grown explosively in the past several decades. When I moved there in August 2003, the population was about 690,000, and it’s since surpassed 900,000. I didn’t experience the mythical days of old Austin, but there was still some of that in the air during my time, and my wild and inadvisable misadventures, like going to HEB with the drug dealer who lived next door, provided me with an ample source of material for songs and stories.
Among Keen’s most beloved songs is the hilarious “Merry Christmas From the Fam-O-Lee.” I’ve heard Robert’s music dismissed as lightweight because he goes for humor and doesn’t do the oppressive, melancholy stuff that fellow Texans like Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle do. This assessment is mistaken: in this song, he tackles issues of race and ethnicity — a Mexican is brought to their white partner’s family Christmas dinner — but he does it in a way that makes it palatable, almost sneaks it in.
Throughout the set, Robert was accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Brian Bacon, who he introduced before “Feelin’ Good Again.” He also played his signature tune, the anthemic “The Road Goes On Forever and the Party Never Ends,” “Dreadful Selfish Crime,” “The Wild One,” “Rodeo,” “Walking On,” and the fan favorite “Gringo Honeymoon.”
Race Ricketts, who hails from a small town in Northern Texas, got the evening started. He introduced himself as, “Race, like Nascar, and Ricketts, like the bone disease, but with two t’s.” Race started with a song about a string of bank robberies in the area he grew up that inspired Taylor Sheridan’s film Hell or High Water. Introducing “Texas BBQ, he said, “I don’t have too many love songs,” adding that it’s “is a true story.” He followed that with what he called an “anti-love song,” then one about the 940, which is the code for the area between Dallas and Lubbock.
Ricketts shared a new song, “Happy To Be Here.” Introducing “Times Like These,” he explained how he wasn’t good at math in high school, which led to him going to the University of Oklahoma, where he studied acting. I share his pain: I’m half-man, half-amazing, and 10% below average at math. Race finished his set with a cover of a classic song by a fellow Texan, Guy Clark, “LA Freeway.”
A Robert Earl Keen show is always an experience: The audience sings along for much of the show, the stories are wild and woolly and the songs are always. It’s always a good time, and Friday night was no exception.
