![\"Robert](\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Robert-Earl-Keen.jpg\")
<\/b><\/h1>\n<\/b><\/h1>\n<\/p>\n
Those of us who love music usually love to share it, so I was happy to take my young friends Sasha Gavrilova and Andrei Bekrenev\u2014both New York-based correspondents for the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS, to see the one and only Robert Earl Keen a few weeks ago at Irving Plaza.<\/p>\n
Of course, they didn\u2019t know who REK is, though they\u2019re hardly alone in this regard. While Keen deservedly retains a legion of college age and over fans who pack his performances and shout out every lyric, he\u2019s never been a hit recording artist, nor a <\/span>hip<\/i> one, for that matter, in the manner of fellow Texan singer-songwriters like Guy Clark or Joe Ely or even his Texas A&M college neighbor Lyle Lovett, with whom he wrote \u201cThe Front Porch Song\u201d (they both recorded it separately) and with whom he recently toured.<\/span><\/p>\n That said, anyone who does know who Keen is knows he\u2019s one of a kind\u2014none better. Still, I was hard pressed to explain to Sasha and Andrei what kind of music he played, and had to settle on \u201ccountry,\u201d more or less\u2014though not the modern Taylor Swift kind they were most likely to know about.<\/span><\/p>\n But the Houston-born Keen knows we have a problem in this regard, and addressed it during the show after asking how many had brought friends who had never seen him before.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI know it\u2019s hard to explain who I am,\u201d he conceded. \u201cI\u2019m not <\/span>folk<\/i>\u2014but who does folk music anymore? I guess just the Coen Brothers!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAnd I\u2019m not <\/span>R&B<\/i>,\u201d he continued. \u201cI can\u2019t even tap my feet to my own guitar!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n And then came the clincher.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAnd I\u2019m sure not <\/span>country<\/i> music! I don\u2019t wear leather pants or have highlights in my hair.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n But he didn\u2019t stop there.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cRascal Flats,\u201d he said, reverently, but with tongue visibly in cheek. \u201cTaylor Swift. I sure miss the Band Perry. Lady Antebellum.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Sasha and Andrei knew Taylor Swift, but not the others. Actually, it\u2019s debatable whether anyone in Irving Plaza cared enough about the others to have been much help for Sasha and Andrei.<\/span><\/p>\n Otherwise, Keen\u2019s show was somehow better than ever, and I say this as someone who\u2019s seen him countless times over more years. He and his band are up there with the Stones and the Dead, not to mention all the great Texas country artists that Robert Earl both evokes and transcends.<\/span><\/p>\n And to top it all off, he\u2019s selling his new Robert Earl Keen\u2019s Yardbird Bloody Mary Mix along with his CDs, DVDs, t-shirts, shot glasses, etc., and in an even more novel merchandising touch, he brought a crate full of hardcover volumes from his Western book collection for purchase, each with signed bookplates.<\/span><\/p>\n Jim Bessman<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ROBERT EARL KEEN Still Defying Labels Those of us who love music usually love to share it, so I was happy to take my young friends Sasha Gavrilova and Andrei Bekrenev\u2014both New York-based correspondents for the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS, to see the one and only Robert Earl Keen a few weeks ago at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4976,1058],"tags":[2825],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11442"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11442"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11447,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11442\/revisions\/11447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Robert](\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Robert-Earl-Keen-1.jpg\")
Suddenly thrusting himself into the future, REK looked back, nostalgically, at what passes for country music today.<\/span><\/p>\n