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D I N E- I N OR CARRY-OUT
4
Friday, February 14, 2003
AGGIELIFE
THE BATTALION
The road goes on to Aggieland
By True Brown
THE BATTALION
There are a couple of venues that Robert Earl Keen always
looks forward to playing. While concerts in Santa Cruz, Calif., and
Colorado have an edge in scenery and weather, there is only one
place that Keen considers his home: College Station.
His first homecoming in more than a year and a half is
tonight, when he takes the stage in Rudder Auditorium. He is
also playing Saturday night, and tickets are still available at the
MSC Box Office.
The concerts will be just the third and fourth of the month for
Keen, who said he always enjoys coming back to play in College
Station, the place where he first started playing guitar some 25
years ago.
“It’s always like coming home to me,” said Keen, a 1980 grad
uate of Texas A&M. “If there was a coming of age movie about
my life, it would be set in College Station, because I really didn’t
know squat when I got there. I learned everything I know there, so
it’s always like a homecoming.”
While he has released several studio albums. Keen’s signature
has always been his live performances, which range from playing
in front of 60,000 at the Astrodome to more intimate venues all
over the United States. His live 1996 album “No. 2 Live Dinner”
is a standard in the CD rotation of Texas music fans, and is the
trademark of a prototypical Keen concert.
Richard Lindner, a junior construction science major, has seen
Keen play at Floore’s Country Store in San Antonio and Gruene
Hall in New Braunfels. At those shows, Lindner said, Keen played
to an up-tempo crowd.
“The crowds are so into it when he plays in Texas,” Lindner
said. “During the song ‘Five Pound Bass,' I remember the band
turned it into a 10 or 15 minute jam. People were climbing up on
each other’s shoulders and having a good times.”
Keen has, however, been known to sit on a bar stool onstage,
tell stories and give a more laid back performance at venues like
Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth and smaller theaters in the
northeast.
Either way, fans rarely leave disappointed.
Brandon Turner, a junior electrical engineering major, was
one of the first in line last month when tickets went on sale for
this weekend’s concerts. Turner saw Keen in Virginia last sum
mer, and said it was different than the types of shows he had
seen him do in Texas.
“We got there about five minutes before the show started and
walked up and got tickets on the third row,” Turner said. "We went
in and sat down and there was maybe 50 people.”
Turner said that while the show was very laid back, it was
entertaining to see Keen in a different atmosphere.
“Keen came out and gave a mellow but stellar performance.
He played songs for an hour and 15 minutes and talked for about
45,” Turner said. “He just talked and told jokes, and sat on a bar
stool the whole time. He told us all the stories of where his songs
came from, so it was a great show.”
For Keen, the type of show he likes to play usually depends on
what his touring schedule has been like leading up to the concert.
“Sometimes when I come off the road when I’ve played a lot of
theaters and it’s quiet, it’s a real relief to come to a show where
we’re pounding out the music and trying to stay ahead of the wave
of the crowd,” Keen said. “On the other hand, when I've just been
pounding the pavement, it’s nice to be able to hear yourself.
“That’s what’s great about Rudder, is shows can go either
way there.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF METROACTIVE.COM
Robert Earl Keen will perform tonight in Rudder Auditorium at 8 p.m.
Tickets can be purchased at the MSC Box Office or by calling 845-1234.
For Keen, his diversity in concert types is a telling microcosm
of the way the Texas singer-songwriter movement has evolved
over the last quarter of a century.
It is easy trace the current Texas country music craze to Keen.
When he moved to Austin in 1980 the city was just starting to
buzz with the blues music of singers like Stevie Ray Vaughan.
“Austin had become this major blues scene ” Keen said.
“People like Marcia Ball and Delbert McClinton were playing all
over, so there was a lot of blues. It was great for me because 1
hadn’t had much exposure to blues. The Texas singer-songwriter
thing wasn't really happening at all yet, so I moved to Nashville
in 1985.”
His stint in Nashville only lasted two years, and Keen found
himself in Bandera in 1987.
Without a band of his own, he toured with legendary songwrit
ers Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark.
From there. Keen had an awakening.
“I figured out that after a certain bit of time that I was going to
need to playing some bigger venues besides coffee houses and
small beer joints,” Keen said. “After I built up a band people came
to see me in these big places like Billy Bob’s, and The Backyard
in Austin or Wolf Pen over in College Station.
“Then all of a sudden, a lot of people came on the scene who
were pail of the Texas music scene. For my part, I think my biggest
contribution was opening up some bigger venues to people, because
previous to that, people would only hire national touring acts. Then,
they found out that they could hire more local acts and be just as
successful.”
And they have been successful, as acts like Keen, Pat Greenand
Cross Canadian Ragweed now get exposure nationwide, and several
other bands are right on their heels.
“I certainly want a lot of attention on Texas music,” Keen said.
“There’s a lot of music that comes out of Texas. So every time the
spotlight goes on Texas, it’s good for everybody.”
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