No Day-Time Guy: Robert Earl Keen

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ROBERT EARL KEEN has played thousands of nights at hundreds of barrooms in Texas and beyond. Simultaneously lamenting and romanticizing the rootlessness of life on the road, he chronicles the hard-knocks lives of barflies and wanderers, white-trash kinfolk and conflicted lovers.

Widespread acclaim has largely eluded Keen, but the Houston native has won the adulation of his peers (like friends and fellow Texans Lyle Lovett and Willie Nelson) and a fiercely loyal group of fans through his incisive songwriting, raucous shows and sly sense of humor. Few musicians can move so easily and naturally from a yearning ballad like "Rollin' By" to a hilarious tongue-in-cheek number like "That Buckin' Song."

Since scrounging together money to pay for his first record in 1984, Keen has released nine albums total, along with two best-of compilations that honestly aren't worth very much. To get a better grasp of what makes him such an original and compelling performer, pick up any of his live albums, particularly 1996's "No. 2 Live Dinner," which captures two particularly rowdy shows in Helotes and Austin.

Or better yet, head over to the 9:30 Club and see for yourself on Nov. 12. If you go, here are some of Keen's songs to shout for and sing along with.

» "Runnin' with the Night"
Keen's ultimate road song, this track from 1997's "Picnic" savors the freedom of losing a job and hitting the road to wherever, even as he longs for those he left behind. It's a song as character sketch, but take away some of the concrete details and this could be Keen's most autobiographical song: "Never been no day-time guy, love the neon lights / I'm a swinging door, a meteor / runnin' with the night."

» "Gringo Honeymoon"
Two newlyweds hike around the desert in this ode to a Mexican getaway, drink a lot of Coronas, and listen to a guitar picker who sounds just like Marty Robbins. Not a lot happens, and that's the point. Keen's laidback delivery and

» "Levelland"
James McMurtry's tune fits perfectly into Keen's oeuvre, thanks to its aptly observed details about a small town slowly dying. McMurtry gets the people just right—the old woman with the new satellite dish, the high school marching band murdering "Smoke on the Water"--but Keen's performance emphasizes tempo and intensity, as if building to the narrator's departure as a defining moment of freedom.

» "Dreadful Selfish Crime"
A barroom lament that almost becomes a party, "Dreadful Selfish Crime" chronicles another Keen character's shortcomings, from the French girlfriend he let get away to all the chances at the big time that passed him by. Rather than make the confessional lyrics sound gravely regretful, Keen gives it a unruly wistfulness that builds up to that climactic last line, a perfect summation of his ethos: "It all comes down to livin' fast or dyin' slow."

» "Five Pound Bass"
A rambling, rambunctious sorta-bluegrass number about redneck Ahabs getting up early, smelling bad, sitting for hours in a boat, and trying to capture their own Great White Whale.

» "Merry Christmas from the Family" / "Happy Holidays Y'all"
A long-time live staple in any season, the former is a loving tribute to white-trash family togetherness that begins famously: "Mom got drunk and Dad got drunk at our Christmas party". Keen followed it up with a sequel in 1999, revisiting those characters on a hungover holiday morning and finding them a renewable source of comedy. Expect a lot of hoisted beers and drunken shouts of "a box of tampons, some Salem Lights!"

» "The Road Goes on Forever"
There's a reason he typically closes with this story-song about a small-town waitress and a small-time drug dealer. It's not only one of his most well-known compositions (even covered by the Highwaymen), but it gives him and his band a chance to jam. Often the song goes on forever.

» Encore: "Feelin' Good Again"
Keen's songs inhabit the bars during the good times as well as the bad. Here, he finds a safehaven where all of his friends are waiting for him and "my favorite band was playin' an Otis Redding song / and when they sang the chorus, everybody sang along." Sing along.

» 9:30 Club, 815 V St. NW; with Corb Lund; Wed., Nov. 12, 7 p.m., $35; 202-265-0930. (U St.-Cardozo)

Written by Express contributor Stephen M. Deusner

Photos courtesy Koch