True to the Roots (7 page)

Newberry, South Carolina I November 2004

When I arrive at the Newberry Opera House, a charming concert hall in an equally charming town, I believe Robert Earl Keen Jr. is expecting me. I knock on the back door. No reaction inside. I reach for the doorknob; it's open. I walk in. No one in sight. I look around, still finding no one. I walk up a set of stairs. Still, no warm bodies. Finally, I arrive at a dressing room door. Once again, I knock. Someone opens the door. Keen is walking toward me holding a plate of tossed salad.

I introduce myself. He starts to offer a handshake, only both hands are occupied. I explain that I'm the guy who's writing a book and is supposed to be interviewing him tonight. I tell him I'm early and can talk to him any time before or after his concert, still well over an hour away. Please don't let me bother you, I say. By all means, sit down and enjoy your supper.

While this little awkward exchange is going on, I notice a man heading our way from the opposite end of the room. He intercedes and asks my business. I tell him I'm here to interview Robert Earl Keen, but I'm in no hurry and will be glad to wait until it's convenient. He tells me he's the road manager, and he doesn't know anything about any interview. Somehow, in the course of this, I've been ushered back outside. I give him the name of the woman in management with whom I've exchanged e-mails. He seems to recognize the name and hurriedly punches some numbers into his cell phone. While I stand there, he has a brief conversation, apparently with the woman I've just named. When he gets through, he tells me there's been some breakdown in conversation, everything has to go through him, and, oh, by the way, how the hell did I get in here? I tell him I got in here because there was no one on the way to this room to tell me where I should go and that basically I arrived here because it's the first place where I found a warm body. He gets fairly agitated about this and starts walking. I follow him while he looks for someone representing the concert hall. He still seems to hold it against me that I "walked right up" to Keen. As we walk downstairs, I try to explain, as calmly as I can make myself be, that I made every effort to be as unobtrusive as possible and that I only spoke to Keen because he literally walked up to me. I'm trying to be forceful—after all, I don't want this interview to fall through—without being discourteous.

Finally, he settles down a bit, and his anger toward me seems to subside. He says, yet again, that no one told him anything about this, and he asks me for my cell phone number so that he can call me if he can work this out. I tell him I'm well prepared and have the interview mapped out and that I won't waste the artist's time. I ask him for his cell number, and that's when I find out his name is Carlos. I apologize again for "barging right in" and leave Carlos to continue his search for representatives of the Newberry Opera House. Back outside in the cold night air, I walk around the building, observing its layout and architecture, then return to my truck to grab a copy of a story on Keen I found online, another notebook, and a backup tape recorder. When I walk back past the rear entrance, I find Keen sitting alone in a folding chair, smoking a cigarette. This time the last thing I'm going to do is walk up to chat. We exchange glances, but that's all, and I keep on walking.

My cell phone rings. There's a message. Apparently, there's been a service glitch. The call was from Carlos. I call him back, and he tells me Robert Earl wants to meet me at the dock out back. I thank him. Keen had been sitting there waiting for me and may now be wondering why I not only didn't walk up for the interview but also seemed to be avoiding eye contact.

So, I go back, briefly explain that I only just found out I was supposed to be conducting my interview now, and everything is now cool, which matches the weather outside the Newberry Opera House.

It's cool, not cold, and clear. A jean jacket is enough to keep from shivering, and the starry night is enough to make up for any physical discomfort. Keen is a bit of a storyteller, and I stand there, leaning against a rail, thinking how this quaint little town is surely an evocative site for the kinds of songs Keen writes.

"Ideas and stuff come from novels, and more than anything, I'll read a book and it'll give me a certain feeling," Keen says. "Graham Greene's
Heart of the Matter
, there's this great, great book, but I don't recommend it to anybody because there's this great despair going on there. But as far as a song, once you read something like that, you're so overwhelmed by the feeling. It comes out in my own filter, or whatever you want to call it. I usually don't try to follow so much a story line as the vibe—yeah, insight into the human condition."

I remark that perhaps visibility and stardom make it difficult to make the kinds of observations necessary for the songwriter who likes to tell stories based on watching people live their day-to-day lives. Keen pauses to digest this point—it's tough standing nonchalantly over by the drink box in some general store if the people in there all want your autograph.

"It's a mirror in a mirror in a mirror sort of thing," he says. "I'm always amazed, not only in music but in television and stuff, at how everything closes in on itself. Somebody's there, and the real producer's not there, there's a fake producer, and in a way, it's so complex that it's enjoyable. I'm still trying to be part of life and pick up pieces of life. A lot of that comes from the fact that I live in this really sleepy town west of San Antonio, and I live a relatively normal life there. I do get to observe, and I try to. Although I write a lot of road songs, I try not to write too many 'lonely motel songs.'"

To Keen songwriting and performing are separate joys.

"I feel like the fun is in the creativity. When you just do the same set night after night or you do the same songs over and over or you decide you've got this bunch of songs that work for you, that's when it all stops for me. Everything just grinds to a halt. I feel like creativity is the gasoline that drives the engine. Words jump out. What I said is what I said. That's what makes me go."

I mention that I've noticed how he sometimes performs his songs in concert at a faster pace than the version recorded in studio. A 2003 concert I'd seen in San Francisco had the pace of a horse race, yet I enjoyed it. It had seemed almost as if Keen and his band cranked out all the standards—"The Road Goes On Forever," "Think It Over One Time," "I'm Coming Home," "Traveling Light," "Gringo Honeymoon"—at warp speed so that they could make more time for new songs. Keen says this wasn't consciously the case.

"For my money that's kind of a failing of mine," he says.

"I have a tendency to sort of run things fast. What I want to do is get this connection and this flow with the audience, and sometimes when it's not really taking place, you tend to push and somehow make it happen, and sometimes that's a little difficult.

"As far as songs on records and songs in concert, I think of them as two different things. A show is a show, and a record is a record. If you like the record, maybe you'll like the show, but maybe you won't. There are times when even the band tells me, 'You know, this song is a lot faster than when we recorded it,' and I'll go, 'ok, let's try to back it down,' but sometimes you feed on the adrenaline of the show."

Keen has carved a niche for himself because of his originality. His voice is distinctive, which also means that his detractors don't like it. Others have described it as weather beaten, rough hewn, bleary, and gruff, but if there's one adjective that describes the voice in my mind's eye, it's
boyish
. Keen sings with youthful enthusiasm, even though he is now well into his forties. He's like a kid with his phrasings and intonations, and I find his enthusiasm appealing.

"I don't feel like my place is copying everybody else and trying to figure out what the world wants," Keen says. "I feel like I'm equipped with everything I need to have to make up songs. I think that's the enjoyment, and I think that's why we have so many fans. I try to work with lyrics that are understood and story lines that are understood because there are only so many basic stories. I like to pick the things that are special to me."

His life is a dichotomy consisting of almost equal parts smalltown existence and the hustle and bustle of the road. Life "away from it all" fuels lines in his songs like the one describing a character who is "like an old desperado . . . who paints the town beige."

"I just like to walk around in life and just enjoy it," he says
.

"I like [the road], too, but I feel like I've got a good balance."

Keen has a following that sells out his concerts almost everywhere he goes, yet he gets little massmarket airplay and doesn't seem to yearn for it. It's not a matter of being defiant. He's just one of those people who has learned over time, through trial and error, that he is incapable of being true to anyone or anything except himself.

"I don't really put myself in that whole thing," he says. "I lived in Nashville for a couple years. I wrote. I never had a songwriting job; I just had regular jobs. My name was on every temporary list in town. I did dock stuff. I moved furniture. I did all kinds of stuff. I tried to do that, and I tried to be part of the Nashville thing. You had to be this certain kind of person, and, really, what I'm doing is what I'm happy with. If I were sitting around trying to figure out what was a hit all the time, I feel like I'd be just completely selling my soul.

"I don't even really know how to do it. I guess I've made a couple of attempts at thinking that maybe this was more broad and commercial, but it never really works for me. It never really rings true. The songs I've written in that manner are always really embarrassing. Sometimes I say, 'I'd like to do a song I haven't done in a long time,' and then I think, 'Oh, no, not that song.' I don't even want to go to that place because some of those songs are really terrible. I do what I do. I go along. If whoever accepts it, at this point in my life and my career, I'm just glad I've got a career."

Keen's "Merry Christmas from the Family" is a raucous celebration of dysfunctional family life. I tell him that the first time I played it for my mother, she was convinced I had written it about our family and persuaded someone to record it as a joke. It's become a guilty pleasure for thousands of families.

"The funniest thing I ever heard about that song is a guy came up to me one time and said, 'You know that Christmas song that you do?' and I said, 'Yeah.' 'You know that family in there?' I said, 'Yeah.' 'Is that your family?' I said, 'Yeah, you know, bits and pieces, that's what it is.' He says, 'You guys are a bunch of sissies compared to my family. That ain't nothing.' And I said, 'I'd hate to be over in your family.'"

It's not Keen's only take on the subject. His album
Walking Distance
includes a sequel called "Happy Holidays Y'all."

Maybe it's the ambience. Maybe being in the little town that surrounds the Opera House has left Keen a bit introspective, but the concert that night is anything but hurried. Between songs Keen's dialogue is rife with his ironic humor.

"Man, in this town you got everything," he says. "You got a place to play, you got a motel, you got a Laundromat, you got Morris's Barber Shop . . . what else do you need?

"Nobody back home's going to believe I was in the Opera House, man. They'll think I was trying to play 'Figaro' or something. Robert Earl Pavarotti."

This is a pretty special night. Keen takes advantage of that great innovation in live music, the remote amp, to walk completely offstage in the midst of one song to perform an acoustic solo in the audience.

And the wry observations flow. Just this very day, he says, he stopped off at a convenience store and tried "the new St. Joseph's Children's Aspirin flavored Gatorade."

When the laughter subsides, there's that little boy's voice again.

"It's really awesome," he says. "Really. It is."

At that moment Keen is the kid with his hand in the cookie jar, dissolving his mother's stare with a mischievous grin. He's explaining to his teacher that the dog ate his homework. Or maybe he's just explaining to a record executive how so much of the material on the new CD just sort of snuck in there at the last minute.

Getting Religious . . . about Country

New York, New York I june 2004

There really is a little bit of everything in the Big Apple. Some of it will inspire you. Some of it will gross you out. The city will teach you things you didn't know.

It's easy to stereotype New Yorkers. For instance, one would think the last place to find good country music would be in the place that is the antithesis of the very word
country
. But, although New Yorkers aren't country folk, some of them used to be.

At a Tower Records on the east side of Greenwich Village, I find more quality country music than I could find in many music stores in the South. I discover there is practically no interest, apparently, in the music played on most commercial radio stations. Most New Yorkers think it's garbage. That's because it is. There may not be many New Yorkers who like country music, but the ones who do like good country music, which is why I decide to augment my considerable collection with CDs by performers including the late Gram P
arsons, Loretta Lynn, and Billy Joe Shaver. None of the CDs sets me back more than $12.99.

I have Louisiana Cajun for lunch and Tex-Mex for dinner. I watch a traditional honker-tonker named Thad Cockrell perform at the Rodeo Bar in the Gramercy section of Manhattan on Saturday night.