A Polished Razor Keen

I first heard Robert Earl Keen right after I moved to Texas in 1989. A few weeks before, back in New York City (git a rope), I enjoyed the ideal send-off for my migration to the Lone Star State at a songwriters show featuring Guy Clark, Joe Ely and Lyle Lovett, with a special guest appearance by Willis Alan Ramsey. Then I caught Keen, and it was obvious from the first song that he was the next master in the Texas pipeline.

But these days, you can mention Keen to people who are genuine Texas music buffs, people who discern and love quality writers and artists, and too many of them say, “I don’t like him.”

Huh?

Usually they dismiss him as a collegiate act. Obviously these people have never heard the telling character study of “Mariano,” or felt the prayer for repose in “So I Can Take My Rest,” or sensed how “If I Were King” bears the same depth and wit as that of Keen’s college song-swapping pal Lyle Lovett, to cite some — but hardly all — of Keen’s masterworks.

It’s irksome that such a talent gets so easily dismissed simply because of the fans he draws. And Keen is a bit peeved about it, too. “I hate it. It just pisses me off, like the top of my head spins off,” he says, retaining his trademark laconic good humor. “There was a magazine that refused to review [his latest, Gravitational Forces] according to the publicist at my record label, because, they said, ‘He’s too much of a frat party band.’ “

Keen may be an Aggie, but he wasn’t in a fraternity. “When people dismiss me as the frat band or the college band I just think, ‘You fuckin’ don’t know anything about me,’ ” he says. “The fact is, I didn’t come from that whole mind-set anyway. I came from the basement coffeehouse mind-set. And some of my best shows are when I can stand there and talk and play songs. But I’m afraid I can’t hardly do that anymore.”

Part of Keen’s image problem stems from all the Robert-come-latelies — or maybe better, the Robert-come-lamelies he has inspired. Pat Green, Cory Morrow and the rest sing what they think are Texas songs, but Keen is immensely ambivalent about his role in their advent. “Do you think inspired is the right word?” he ponders. “Spawned is more the right word — the devil’s spawn.” To borrow a line from Ray Wylie Hubbard, Keen hopes he’s not responsible for what they’re doing.

Keen even gets a chuckle from the obeisance paid to him by Green, whose act may have much of Keen’s form but none of his content. “He’s come to so many of my shows, and when he sees me, he always holds his hat in his hand like he’s meeting the president or something. And he tells me how he wishes we could spend some quality time together.

“And I’m like, ‘Well, call me, here’s my phone number.’ And he never calls me.” Keen sounds almost relieved at the notion.

Even if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Keen is less than impressed with some of what has arisen in his wake. A college degree in Burgers-n-Beer Technology and a membership in I Tappa Kegga do not a songwriter make, Keen believes. “Man, I’ll tell you what, there’s some bad ones out there. They’re terrible.”

Now, Robert, you are speaking to the press. “Well, there are some bad ones. They shouldn’t be writing songs. They should go back and woodshed a bit.”

Don’t get the man wrong. Catching on with the college crowd has brought him some benefits, even if the association creates misperceptions among people. “Look, I’m not going to downplay my audience, like the college people coming to see me. That’s fine. They’ve made up a huge part of my audiences in a lot of places, and I’ve made a lot of money off them, and things are good. They like it; I like it.”

The mutual admiration goes only so far, however. “Sometimes they get overbearing. And sometimes they really piss you off when you’re trying to sign autographs, and they just want to climb over their mothers to get to you. They’re just ill-mannered sometimes, and that stuff can really drive me crazy.”

Truth be told, this writer is reluctant to go to another Keen show after his last attempt.

That night, as Keen played the atmospheric song suite that was the best part of 1998’s Walking Distance, the kids’ gossiping drowned out the band. Keen assures me that he still performs shows where one can listen, and where he can chat with the crowd and delve into subtler realms. “Oddly enough, sometimes we won’t have any of the college crowd, and the place will be just as full. And it’ll be like older people,” he says. “It’s like [the two crowds] get on the Internet and talk to each other and say, ‘Are you coming? Because if you’re coming, we’re not.’ “

Perhaps Keen’s new release, being a subdued affair, is a subconscious attempt to cut the rowdies loose. “I don’t know. Maybe,” he ponders. Sure, it has “Wild Wind,” which Keen calls his “kinda lyric — several bodies, and that open-ended, we-can-still-get-out-of-here-alive deal.” But it also has “Goin’ Nowhere Blues,” which mentions such frat-crowd conversational lead balloons as Langston Hughes, Woody Guthrie, Martin Luther and Cesar Chavez. (Didn’t that last dude used to be like a boxer or something?) There are also covers of songs by Townes Van Zandt, Terry Allen and Johnny Cash, and a spoken-word beat poetry jam on the closing title track.

Actually, Keen confesses, of Gravitational Forces, “I started out wanting to make a really country record, and I’ve just decided this is as country as it ever gets for me. There’s no Bakersfield blood running in my veins. It’s just not there.”

“It’s weird to like country music all your life and really like some pretty twangy people, and then I actually try to do it, and it’s just not there,” he admits. “I really can’t write a twangy country song; that’s why I was kind of a washout in Nashville. And I damn sure can’t sing one. So I dunno. I like it, want to do it and can’t. So I just do my own stuff.”

Perhaps, I suggest to the Houston- area boy who now has a 250-acre spread outside of Bandera, it’s a Hill Country record. “I guess so. I’m not the thing with the twang.”