OK, I confess! I’ve occasionally judged a book by its cover. And I’ve sometimes judged a musician by his or her fans. Robert Earl Keen, f’r instance.
Keen’s a good ol’ Texas boy best known for his frat-guy party anthem, “The Road Goes On Forever (and the Party Never Ends).” And for the rowdy fans who populate his live shows, singing along drunkenly with every song. Todd Snider even wrote a song about ’em, called “Beer Run.” So I had Keen pegged as just another good-time Texas music maker, who likes to cite Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark as influences but whose music is closer to Toby Keith and Garth Brooks.
Well, I’m here to testify that I was wrong. As Keen demonstrates on his umpteenth album, Farm Fresh Onions, he is an original talent, riding that same line between folk, country, rock and blues that is trod by so many excellent tunesmiths from the Lone Star State. This album is by turns funny, touching, lazy, rockin’, twangin’ and swingin’, and it’s pretty-near all good.
The title track seems a nod to Guy Clark, one of whose signatures tunes is “Home Grown Tomatoes.” It’s a jaunty, uptempo blues shuffle, its lyrics delivered in a combination of earthy rap and talking blues, backed by a psychedelic Sixties vibe of woozy steel, howling organ, and a wailing wall of soulful chorus vocals. If you can conceive of Sly and the Family Stone jamming with Moby Grape at Willie’s Birthday Bash, it might come out something like this.
The rest of Farm Fresh Onions lives up to the title tune’s promise. “Furnace Fan” is an homage to his fans, with catchy chorus and clever wordsmithing throughout. “All I Have is Today” is Texas folk-rock with some Brit-pop influence — a little Doug Sahm, a little Buffett. “Out Here in the Middle” is a slow, chunky soul-rock song, a sort of “Please Come to Boston” in reverse, contrasting life in Middle America with the evils of the two coasts. “Floppy Shoes” pays homage to the Seventies with a multi-guitar attack that evokes both the Dead and the Allmans and quotes Elton John. “So Sorry Blues” is a hilarious parody of the blues form, played as slow and dirty as can be, a joke on Keen for his couch-potato tendencies: “I could use some motivation/but I’m trying not to move/maybe rehabilitation/but there’s not much to improve.”
There are a couple of lighter-weight tracks, like the zydeco-flavored “Gone On,” and the garage-rock “Beats the Devil,” and a hidden track of punk and Nashville-style takes on the title song. But they’re balanced by the poignant closing number, “Let the Music Play,” and the stunning “Train Trek,” a six-minute rocker that uses all the train-song cliches in fresh ways.
So if like me you’ve written off Robert Earl Keen as just another Texas country-rocker with three names, check out Farm Fresh Onions. It’s as fresh and sharp as its title, and it does Texas proud.
(Koch/Audium, 2003)
