July 29th, 2011
Robert Earl Keen to play Texas Music Theater

The creator of an acclaimed hybrid of country and folk, Robert Earl Keen will perform in San Marcos the night his new album, Ready for Confetti, is release. PUBLICITY PHOTO

STAFF REPORT

Alternative country legend Robert Earl Keen will perform at the Texas Music Theater on Aug. 30, the night of his new album released.

The album, Ready for Confetti, is a followup to his 2009 offering Rose Hotel, which broke Billboard’s top 20 country chart. Ready for Confetti is being released on the Lost Highway label and is produced by Lloyd Maines.

Best known for the single “The Road Goes On Forever,” Keen is among the school of Lone Star State singer-songwriters who emerged in the late 1980s and 1990s to transform the genre. Starting with a self-produced album in 1984, No Kinda Dancer, Keen has emerged as a favorite of country fans as well as the college radio crowd. Critics call his style a hybrid of folk and country music.

CMT.com describes his music as striking “an unusual balance between sensitive story-portraits (“Corpus Christi Bay”) and raucous barroom fun (“That Buckin’ Song”). These two song types in Keen’s output were unified by a mordant sense of humor that strongly influenced the early practitioners of what would become known as alternative country music.”

He lives in Kerrville.