Robert Earl Keen has written lyrics that rank among the very best: “I only use my gun whenever kindness fails,” “I had a little place up the block / Had me a little French girlfriend I loved the way she talked,” and, perhaps his most famous, “The road goes on forever and the party never ends.”

Keen, a well-schooled graduate of t
he fertile Austin, Texas music scene (and longtime friend of fellow troubadour Lyle Lovett), has spent nearly twenty years perfecting his rootsy, somewhat ragged brand of countrified rock and roll, imbued with the spirits of Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams and various Van Zandts (Townes and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Ronnie come to mind).

His songs speak to the real American experience, and Keen carves out images of life that other, less qualified songwriters would fail to construct.

“Merry Christmas From the Family,” one of Keen’s most famous songs, is a perfect example of this. In this laid-back shuffle, Keen finds every bit of humor, pathos and contradiction in something that seems so typical and uninteresting: the family Christmas gathering. Any song that begins, “Mom got drunk and Dad got drunk at our Christmas party,” and then proceeds to get funnier and more strangely touching is something of a classic. It’s a concert staple, and it deserves to be.

Tonight, Keen returns to Madison, headlining a show at Luther’s Blues. His live shows are famously excellent, and tonight’s gig should be no exception.

Over the years, Keen has become one of the most respected of the large crop of Austin-based singer/songwriters to emerge from the city during the 1970s and 1980s. Like most of that group of performers, Keen became a favorite of music critics while building a growing cult following. He was helped in this endeavor by more well-known artists like Joe Ely or The Highwaymen covering his songs; Ely’s version of “Whenever Kindness Fails” is arguably better than Keen’s.

Eventually, the rumblings about Keen’s ability became loud enough for his own work to gain mainstream acceptance. His last album, Gravitational Forces, was released on Lost Highway Records, the Universal roots-music subsidiary that is currently one of the hottest labels in the country.

The album is the best he’s released yet, as well as being one of the best albums of 2001 overall. Working with Lucinda Williams cohort Gurf Morlix, Keen has created the most solidly consistent album of his career.

The performances are sharp, Keen’s trembling voice has never sounded better and the songs (both originals and covers) are some of the best to ever grace his recorded work. One of those covers, Townes Van Zandt’s “Snowin’ On Raton,” is arguably his best vocal performance yet. Granted, it’s not hard to sing a song as beautiful as that one well, but Robert Earl goes far beyond any bare minimum and delivers a powerful reading.

He also rocks right on the blues-inflected “Walkin’ Cane” and on a hopped-up re-recording of “The Road Goes On Forever.” He goes honky tonkin’ on a cover of Johnny Cash’s classic “I Still Miss Someone,” and adds two great originals to his deep, deep catalog of great songs (for the record, those new classics are “Wild Wind” and “Goin’ Nowhere Blues”).

In this age of plastic, roots-less country music and angry, harsh rock, an artist who bridges that gap successfully is a unique individual indeed.

Robert Earl Keen is such an artist, and his ability to create great records and deliver electrifying live performances attest to the fact that the best music is often rough around the edges, with the occasional slight “imperfection” but a larger purpose and quality that lift it above any more streamlined and sterile material. The Badger Herald sat down with Robert Earl Keen to discuss the Austin music/drug scene, bands with numerical suffixes and the “O Brother” phenomenon.

The Badger Herald: Gravitational Forces has been hailed as one of your best. Where do you place it within your larger body of work?

Robert Earl Keen: I would say that it’s far surpassed any of my work to date, and I hope to double it with the next effort.

BH: You emerged from the Austin scene, which has produced a lot of really unique talent. How did that atmosphere help nurture your development as an artist?

REK: Well, I developed a dependence on alcohol and a pretty good drug regimen, so I stayed happy most of the time. By the time the music business got a hold of me, I was too dumbfounded to really think too much about it. I’m still like that in many ways; every time I get on stage I’m sort of amazed that this is what I get to do. I applaud Austin for letting people be who they want to be.

BH: Do you find it difficult to do your own thing in the current restrictive industry environment?

REK: Yes and no. I do in that whenever I make an attempt to be like someone else or follow some sort of trend, I fail miserably. However, I’ve never been good at emulation, so my expectations aren’t very high. I’m best when I just stick with what I do. Luckily, people seem to like it, which surprises me too. ‘Cause most of the time when I write a song it’s just to get my creative jollies out.

BH: How has Townes Van Zandt affected your work?

REK: I think he’s the most colorful and poetic songwriter to ever come out of Texas. I don’t want to get too far into the poetry notion, ’cause I was an English major, and I know how language and footnotes can get beyond people’s understanding and turn them off. As far as colorful, every time he sings a lyric, I can see the pictures in my head. I don’t know if they’re the same as were in his head, but his images are really strong. My favorite Townes lyric is in “Flyin’ Shoes:” “I’d maybe like to stay and watch a winter’s day?” I mean, if you can’t picture something when you hear that lyric, you’ve probably never seen a lake. I don’t know many songwriters who can do that.

BH: There’s been a lot of talk about the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” phenomenon changing the musical landscape. As someone who has been playing rootsy music for a long time, do you see this happening?

REK: Well, of course there’s going to be those who want to follow the bouncing dollar sign, and then there’s those who are going to say, “You know, I really like this kind of music, I want to hear more of it.” And there’s certainly lots of it out there. Right now, not far behind [the “O Brother” soundtrack] is Nickel Creek. It’s ironic that Tim O’Brien, who’s been around for a long time, is getting notice now, since his records are where [the producers] found a lot of those old traditional songs. It’s definitely a blessing. I tell you, if I see another band pop up on the TV set with a weird adjective followed by a number for their name, I’m gonna shoot myself. It’s like the “Pulp Fiction” thing, with Fox Force 5, except that was a joke in the movie. If a band called Fox Force 5 showed up today, they’d probably be the next teenage girl sensation.

BH: Do you have any memorable Madison experiences?

REK: I have never seen as much snow as I have in Madison, which is both good and memorable, because I come from Houston, Texas and I didn’t see any snow until I was eight years old. Believe it or not, I think Wisconsin is a great state. It’s definitely one of the best-kept secrets because nobody tells you how great it is up there, and the people are so modest that they don’t tell you either.

BH: What are you listening to right now?

REK: My all-time favorite record, Chicken Skin Music by Ry Cooder, is in my truck right now. I’ve bought something like 20 copies of that record over the years; as a matter of fact, I just found an old, scratched-up copy in a briefcase the other day. As far as new people, Beaver Nelson from Austin is one of my favorites. Beaver writes all his own songs, and he’s kind of a roots-rocker. The good thing about him is that he doesn’t set off my hair-trigger bullshit meter. I can usually tell the bullshit lyrics from the ones based in reality, and I haven’t really heard any bullshit in his stuff.