A Conversation with Robert Earl Keen – HuffPost 8.24.11

Mike Ragogna: Hey Robert Earl Keen, how the heck are ya?

Robert Earl Keen: I’m doing just great, Mike, thank you.

MR: Let’s talk about your new album, Ready For Confetti. I think this is your eleventh studio album, correct?

REK: You know, I’ve lost track. There’s a bunch of them out there, but I guess this is the second one in a couple years. So, I can start with that, going back about two years.

MR: I’d love to catch The Huffington Post readers up on your history. Back in 1974, you were pals with Lyle Lovett and you guys made a lot of music together.

REK: Right. We went to Texas A&M University and in between classes and stuff… I had this old house that was kind of near campus, just a couple blocks away really, and there were a lot of students that came through, but one of them was my friend Lyle. He played music and I played music and there were a handful of other guys that used to hang out there, so we all got to be friends. Lyle and I stayed in music and have been friends all this time.

MR: It’s nice, because the both of you have bucked traditional country or traditional folk or traditional anything for that matter when it comes to genres of music. Was that the intention or just the natural thing to do?

REK: Well, I always just thought in terms of writing the song and getting the idea across. A lot of my songs are story songs, so the idea would be to get an entire story in a three or four minute song. I never was really too concerned about how it played out on the radio. I wasn’t thinking in terms of having some huge music career, I just really like music and I like playing music. I’ve always enjoyed the stage. As far as trying to follow somebody else’s idea of what to do, it wasn’t really my style.

MR: I love the title track, especially the part where the guy gets abducted by a UFO but then is freed because he tells the aliens’ fortune.

REK: You know, when I write a song, I try to start from some kind of cornerstone of truth, and then I fictionalize it. The first character in the song is a woman I’ve seen from time to time that dances out there on the corner in any kind of weather — it doesn’t matter, she’s out there. Just like the song says, “Dancing out there with her earbuds and her cardboard sign.” Then, the second verse is based on a character that I knew a long time ago who did claim to be a psychic and also claimed he’d been abducted by a UFO. So, I just crammed that all into the song and then added the commentary about somebody actually having a dialogue with an alien. I thought that was kind of fun.

MR: And the spirit of the song, to me, says, “Everybody should be ready for confetti, everyday.”

REK: Well, you got a new day everyday, unless you’re living in the Gulag in Siberia. It’s a whole new world. And particularly with as vast and frenzied as the world is today, it’s always a surprise. I’m sure this is a universal truth, but you get up everyday and think you’ve got it figured out and you know what you’re going to do, and it just changes on you constantly. I think those few characters that were sort of fringe characters, I thought they would kind of magnify that whole idea that every day is a different day.

MR: I’m torn between “Play A Train Song” and “Show The World” as my favorite song on the record. I love the spirit of that guy who’s in “Play A Train Song,” who’s “a runaway locomotive out of his one-track mind.”

REK: I always do some song that I really love, and — just like you — I love that song. But it’s not one of my songs. Of the twelve songs on the album, only eleven of them I wrote, and that particular song is by Todd Snider. Todd is a really fantastic songwriter and performer that plays all over the country. I’ve been friends with him for a long time, and I’ve been as much of a fan as I’ve been a friend. When I heard that song, I decided to record it because — just like you — I thought it was a great story. It’s just fantastic.

MR: And you juxtapose that with “Paint The Town Beige,” where it feels like somebody is finally settling down and appreciating the slower things in life.

REK: Right. That’s a song that I wrote a number of years ago. It was on a previous record, and at the time, when I wrote it, I guess I was channeling some older guy. The reason I re-recorded it was because it really reflects my life, more or less, now. What I’d like to say about that is, I’ve grown into the song. I wrote it some years ago and now I feel like it 100% reflects my life.

MR: I also wanted to ask you about the opening track, “Black Baldy Stallion.” What is the story on that one?

REK: I have a real love for the western motif. I love western books, western movies, and I’ve almost always put some kind of western song on a record. But that wasn’t the intention here. I was just kind of sitting around strumming and working on a song. But the upshot of the song is the lover has been away from his true love for years and years. In the middle of the song, it somewhat explains that there must’ve been some kind of trouble or fight with some of the townspeople where they lived — like in a small village — and that he’s been excommunicated for that reason. In the song, he’s on his way back from wherever he’s been. You just have to assume it’s out in the wild, wild west, and he’s coming back to this village and he’s riding this beautiful horse and has to cross the river to get to the village. In the end, his long lost love is sitting there, in the village, reading the letter that he never was able to deliver as the black baldy stallion rider passes, gleaming in the sun, dripping water from the river. So, he never actually sees her in the end. It’s a forlorn, lost love song.

MR: Very cinematic. Now, I do have to ask about your stint in a certain musical calledChippy. (laughs)

REK: Yeah, that was back in the mid ’90s. I was friends with a bunch of these guys — artists, singers, and writers from around the Lubbock area, like Joe Ely, and Terry Allen, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. And even the man who produced Ready For Confetti, Lloyd Mains, was one of the people who played in the band for this play. Anyway, the Allens — Terry and Jo Harvey — wrote this play about a prostitute in West Texas in the ’30s. They wanted somebody who looked like kind of a ne’er do well, sad-sacked lawyer, and they picked me. So, I got to be in this play in Philadelphia for, oh, about a month, I think. We were at a playhouse there in Philadelphia and then we took it to Lincoln Center in New York for a week. I didn’t have a lot invested in it in that I’m not an actor, so I wasn’t worried about that kind of career. But it was the highlight of my life, just to be around so many creative people and getting to act onstage. I remember being backstage, waiting for my turn to walk onstage, and thinking, “You know, I want to remember every second of this because this has been one of the best times I’ve ever had in my life.”

MR: And you didn’t catch the acting bug after that?

REK: Not really. I’ve been in a few oddball movies and things here and there, but I’m not an actor. I’m much more a writer. I certainly enjoy performing onstage, but to me, it’s a whole different discipline.

MR: On the other hand, your actor side shines a few more times. Which movies were you in?

REK: I was in this movie called Grand Champion, and it plays on cable every now and then. It’s kind of a kid’s movie. Somebody described it as “Free Willy with a steer.” I had a little bitty part in that, and then I was in this other cowboy horror movie called Blood Trail. I’ve been in a few things. Acting is fun, you know. It’s just something else to do, really.

MR: There’s some sort of connection, though. You have so many songs in your catalog that have these cinematic images and stories. Are you at least a bit of a movie buff?

REK: Oh, I love movies. I don’t really watch any TV, but I watch movies. I have a pretty big collection and I’m a real fan of different actors and know some of the background on some of their careers. I’d say that’s my hobby — it’s not a very active hobby, but I certainly love movies.

MR: As a songwriter and artist, are there times when you wish you had written the theme song to some of these movies? Maybe even a movie?

REK: Well, I mean, I can answer that in two parts. One — I definitely think that a lot of my music can fit into different movies, and that happens occasionally. But the other thing — as far as the storylines go — I’m pretty hard on them. I go to movies in the theaters and think, “You know, so many times they get to maybe the last act in the movie and they just let them unravel.” I think that’s a common failing in movies. They have a good beginning and a good start with some good exposition and some good action going, and then it kind of falls apart. So, the answer is yes, I have felt in the past that I could certainly write better endings than some movies have.

MR: Don’tcha love the tinkering that some parent company does to a director’s work after a couple of focus groups get done with it?

REK: I think focus groups hurt art. I’m a believer in the idea that the best art is created by one person. Not that it’s not successful and doesn’t work a lot of times when several people are involved, but I think, in general, the best art is created by one person, and you don’t need a focus group to tell you whether it’s good or bad.

MR: By the way, I know two show hosts at KRUU who met and fell in love because of your song “Don’t Turn Out The Light.” It seems that your songs have been featured in peoples’ real-life movies. (laughs)

REK: Right, they definitely have. You know, I get a lot of fan mail from people expressing that they used a certain song at a wedding or that their high school senior graduation song was “The Road Goes On Forever” and that kind of thing. I certainly am a part of a lot of peoples’ lives without even knowing what’s going on. (laughs)

MR: Oh, since you brought it up, the story of “The Road Goes On Forever” is about the Willy Nelson 4th Of July concert when your car caught on fire, right?

REK: Yeah, it was back in the ’70s and I had a date with a girl — I didn’t even count it as a date because it was just so haphazard. You’re just sitting there kind of being a kid, stabbing your toe in the sand and going “You wanna go to a concert?” and she says “Yeah, sure,” and you’re totally unprepared and you go out there. It was in the Texas World Speedway, which is near College Station. It was one of those things… back in those days, they put on some kind of festival or something, and nobody’d know if it would work or not. But it was overwhelmingly successful, it truly was like a Woodstock for Texas. There were more people than they could handle, and they didn’t have enough room, and everybody was in hardly any clothes at all, and it was about a million degrees outside, and I was hanging out just trying to do the best I could. All of a sudden, the parking lot behind the stage caught on fire and burnt my car up. It was a long ordeal of trying to get it fixed, and within the whole deal, I lost my car and I lost the girl. So, consequently, there’s a story on one of the records that pretty much encapsulates that whole experience, and then it turns into the song. “The road goes on forever and the party never ends…”

MR: Robert, what advice would you have for new artists?

REK: My advice is to write and work as much as you can. Work through all your demons as far as lack of confidence and your need to show people stuff — just believe in yourself. And if you’re a writer, write as much as you can. If you’re a singer, sing as much as you can, and do it every chance you get, because there’s a point where if you’ve become famous or if you’ve become popular or sought after, that time will never be there again and you won’t be able to continue to work on your art. And the art part is really what keeps everything going.

MR: It’s difficult as young people try to make it in art these days. With Facebook and Twitter and now Google+, it almost seems like for survival, young artists have to both create a body of work and keep up with social networking to accumulate a fan base at the same time, and I fear that the latter takes away from making the art as good as possible.

REK: Well, it certainly takes away from that. I’m guilty of being a part of all the social media, but it doesn’t draw me in because I’ve been around for a long time and I’m not quite as enthralled with it. But in this day and time — and in this market — I think it is imperative that you’re part of those worlds of social media. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t turn off your computer and sit down with your keyboard or your guitar or your tap shoes or your singing voice and woodshed and get that experience in beyond just talking about it. I guess that’s the only real distraction with social media, that a lot of people spend a lot of time talking about stuff that they’re not really working on as hard as they would in a perfect world or as much as they would like to. So, you know, we’re somewhat distracted as a culture by some of that, and I’m fully guilty myself. However, I do know the value of really digging in and writing good songs and then writing another one. Just because you write a good song doesn’t mean you can’t turn around and write another one right afterward. You don’t have to sit there and pat yourself on the back for a year. You just keep on cranking.

MR: Jim, this interview will be featured on solar-powered KRUU-FM, which is the only solar-powered radio station in the Midwest. But we’re also a community-based station, which is interesting because you’ve based a career on these types of stations.

REK: Yeah, I’ve never had a real hit, you know? As a matter of fact, many people who know all the words to my songs will come to my show, and they’ll bring a friend and their friend has never heard of me whatsoever. And they’re going, “How do all these people know all your songs?” You know, for the most part, it’s word of mouth and people liking the records. And obviously they like the records enough to where they learn all the songs. But as far as that goes, the world of community radio has been my home for thirty years. I’ve been part of community radio all that time, and if it weren’t for community radio, I wouldn’t have a career. The other world of hit songs and commercial radio really just doesn’t even exist for me. It’s a real testament to the power of community radio — and I guess we’ll see what the power of solar community radio will do for us.

MR: Robert, thank you very much for those kind words.

REK: You bet.

MR: And thank you for visiting us here, all the best of luck with your new album, Ready For Confetti.

REK: Thank you. I think it’s really the best one I’ve ever made, and I get that feeling because although everybody seems to like it, I’ve noticed with repeated plays — and this is always good for movies or plays or songs or anything — as you get into repeated plays, it sounds better and better to you. I think that’s the kind of record we have here.

MR: Well, I’m ready to throw confetti for you regardless. I love this record. Thank you so much.

REK: Thanks a lot, Mike, I appreciate it.

Transcribed by Claire Wellin