The Party Never Ends
“Robert Earl Keen!....Robert Earl Keen!....Robert Earl Keen!” the packed crowd was chanting in unison while banging their beer bottles on the long wooden tables in the cavernous concert section of Billy Bob’s (Texas’ self-billed “The World’s Largest Honky Tonk”). Keen just completed his forty-first and presumably last appearance at the historic venue and they wanted an encore. It’s a ritual I’ve participated in hundreds of times over my concert-going career. I’ve been among the thousands of fans over the decades who bellowed “Robert Earl Keen!” knowing that this group incantation would magically produce Mr. Keen and his band from behind the curtain. Tonight was no different. “Robert Earl Keen…Robert Earl Keen…Robert Earl Keen!” we continued to chant, and at a duration longer than needed but not so long as to wane the enthusiasm. Keen appeared back on stage carrying a vintage Gibson J-45 tobacco colored acoustic guitar as he made his way to the chair in the middle of the stage.
At sixty-six years old Keen had announced his retirement from touring after forty-one years of crisscrossing the country playing at innumerable bars, opera houses, festivals, theaters, and every other type of concert venue you can imagine. I have been along for the ride for my entire adult life - almost thirty of those forty-one years - and as I watched this final Fort Worth show with a little bit of sadness, I saw a chapter closing. Despite our wishes to the contrary, the road doesn’t actually go on forever.
Throughout the show Keen’s voice was as strong as ever and his guitar picking had even improved over the years, but decades on the road had started to show. In this and recent shows Keen had taken to performing sitting down, and when he did stand he seemed to move just a little slower and with a slight haunch in his back. His hair and beard were starting to look more white than not, like that of a silver fox, but this only made him look every bit more the elder statesmen of Texas Country and Americana music that he already was.
As I looked around I noted that the crowd too had aged along with Keen. While we all were hooting and hollering and singing along, we drank a few less beers than we once did, and we probably checked our watches a couple of times when the show crossed the 11pm mark on a Thursday night.
As Keen sat down in his chair to begin the encore, my mind went back to all of the Robert Earl Keen concerts I have attended over my life. The first time I saw Keen in concert was in 1993 at the Wolf Pen Creek Amphitheater in College Station. I was at the show to see Jerry Jeff Walker, my other musical hero, but was also excited to see Keen. I had discovered his “Bigger Piece of Sky” CD while a senior in high school and knew all the songs on it, but I didn’t know much beyond that. When he took the stage and started singing about an old porch on Church Street in College Station where he and his roommate, Lyle Lovett, used to pick songs; followed by a song about getting drunk with his brother on the Corpus Christi Bay; followed by another song about the joys of going after a five pound bass; followed by a song about crazy cowboy dreams; and on, and on…I was amazed at all the stories and characters that poured out of Keen’s songwriting pen. The crowd cheered and hollered and I felt like I’d been invited into an exclusive club for those in the know. Keen closed with his now widely known song, “The Road Goes On Forever”, about a couple of small-town lovers who are in over their heads and on the run, and that sealed the deal for me. In that moment I knew I was a fan for life.
Keen’s songs run the gambit from the absurd tragedy of a crazed man running down armadillos on the highway in order to make a little extra cash (“The Armadillo Jackal”), to sweet and tender love songs about how love is a word to not use lightly (“Love’s a Word I Never Throw Around’). If you’ve ever questioned your life’s choices and been close to a nervous breakdown in public or if you just want to have a honeymoon adventure south of the border, Keen has a song for you (“Then Came Lo Mein” and “Gringo Honeymoon,” respectively). Of course there is Keen’s ode to family dysfunction and love (“Merry Christmas From The Family”) and more songs about love and longing and the need to be close to those who mean the most to us (“I’m Comin’ Home,” “Feeling Good Again,” and “What I Really Mean”). Keen’s songs are populated by outlaws and in-laws, friends and lovers, highways and dirt roads, dancehalls and lonely streets, ghosts and anthropomorphic animals (seriously!) and so much more. Keen always had wry sensibility that is sincere and sarcastic at the same time. It’s a magic trick that Keen has been pulling off for forty-one years and it never gets old.
After that first show I saw in 1993, I have seen Keen countless times across the state of Texas. There was one memorable show after a rodeo in Odessa at a little bar called Dos Amigos where there were only about fifty people. My friends and I sat right in front of the stage as we sang along to every song. And like manna from Heaven a beer distributor was at the show handing out free beer to anyone who asked, and we asked many times. We were young with the whole world in front of us and we had the time of our lives that night. As one of Keen’s songs, “The Wild Ones,” says,
We were the wild ones
The young guns
Restless as the wind
Several years later when Keen had gone from playing in front of fifty people in a little Odessa bar to selling out the opulent Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, I saw him close one of his first Bass Hall shows with a moment that still gives me chills. The concert was full of Keen favorites, as always, and the setting of Bass Hall with its plush seats, sky painted ceiling, gold accented walls, multiple levels of balcony seating and incredible acoustics elevated the whole affair.
At the concert’s encore, Keen sang a version of “The Road Goes on Forever” that was played at two- or three-times normal speed. Rich Brotherton (Keen’s gifted lead guitarist for many years) played the lead guitar solo moving across his guitar’s fretboard at an inhuman pace. Keen was on point with every lyric and note and the whole band was as tight as ever. Everyone in the audience was on their feet clapping and cheering as the song, and presumably the show, came to an end. After the song the band left the stage and the theater lights remained dim. There was more clapping and more cheering and after a few more beats Keen and the band returned to the stage for a second encore.
Keen then moved to the very front and center of the stage and had his bandmates, each carrying acoustic instruments, gather in close around him. Keen then asked everyone in Bass Hall to sit down, the band to unplug their instruments and the sound engineer to cut the sound. Keen said he wanted to take advantage of the excellent acoustics offered by the Bass.
The crowd of approximately 2,000 concertgoers, who had been raucous and cheering five minutes ago, now sat silent and you could hear a pin drop. Keen began to sing the haunting Billy Joe Shaver song, “Live Forever,” and the band joined in. No one moved a muscle and I’m sure many held their breath, like me, because you did not want to break that magical moment. Keen’s voice and the band’s instruments traveled softly throughout the hall unaided by any amplification and time seemed to stop. That moment ranks as one of the best and most serene of any Keen show I have attended.
“Robert Earl Keen!...Robert Earl Keen!...Robert Earl Keen!” the crowd continued to shout at Billy Bob’s as I was pulled from my memories back to the show at hand. Keen was in his chair and started talking. The crowd settled down. He explained that the Gibson guitar he was holding used to belong to the late Jerry Jeff Walker. Keen then launched into the Jerry Jeff classic, “Gypsy Songman,” and followed it with “L.A. Freeway,” a song written by Guy Clark and made famous by Jerry Jeff. Twenty-nine years ago I saw a fresh-faced Robert Earl open a show for Jerry Jeff and now the grey whiskered Keen covered two of the late singer/songwriters’ songs. It had all come full circle.
Keen closed out the show with “I’m Comin’ Home” and he was indeed on the road back home as this final tour was ending in a couple of weeks.
My friends and I parted ways after the show and as I laid in bed still vibrating and wired from the concert, my mind swirled with all the good memories, good times and great songs. I tossed and I turned, and I did not want the party to end. “Robert Earl Keen!…Robert Earl Keen!…Robert Earl Keen!”