Interview: Robert Earl Keen
In January, legendary Americana singer/songwriter Robert Earl Keen announced that his current tour, I’m Comin’ Home: 41 Years On The Road, would be his last. “I’ve been blessed with a lifetime of brilliant, talented, colorful, electrical, magical folks throughout my life,” Keen said via his website. “This chorus of joy, this parade of passion, this bull rush of creativity, this colony of kindness and generosity are foremost in my thoughts today. It’s with a mysterious concoction of joy and sadness that I want to tell you that as of Sept. 4, 2022, I will no longer tour or perform publicly.”
Prior to playing The Orange Peel for the final time on Friday, May 27, Keen, who makes his home in Kerrville, Texas, spoke with Asheville Stages about literature and politics, escaping the self-destructive traps of touring life, and the joys of hosting a podcast.
A.K. Benninghofen: A lot of touring musicians were aching for the road during the height of the pandemic. Now it seems like they’re playing more than ever, maybe trying to make up for lost time. You, on the other hand, have decided to go another way, announcing your swan song. Did COVID and the experience of lockdown have anything to do with that?
Robert Earl Keen: No, I don’t believe it did. I will say 2021 was the toughest year I ever had in the music business — and, really, in my life. I’ve never had any great tragedies in my life. So much disorganization and chaos in the touring business last year — it was very, very difficult. We played in places I never thought we should be playing. Sound systems had been in storage for a year and a half or two years and they didn’t work well anymore, and you’d wait around a lot. The crowds were pretty good, but these were sometimes places that were never meant to be venues in the first place…
AKB: Like outdoor drive-in kind of shows?
REK: Yeah, like barbecue joints that had giant beer gardens and things like that. They decided to have music, so they went and got some cardboard boxes and some Fisher Price speakers and…
AKB: Mickey Rooney style: Hey, we’ve got barn! Let’s put on a show!
REK: Yeah, let’s put on a show! And they expected us to do what we did well. But you could never do it well. That’s the thing: it was very, very frustrating. So that did have an impact on me, but it wasn’t that. It was more or less I kinda felt myself slipping a bit and being more tired and having a harder time getting geared up for the show. I’ve always been a real passionate performer — I mean, I’m not [Bruce] Springsteen or Nathaniel Rateliff or anything, but… I’ve always been passionate about it and I’ve always loved the stage.
But I just didn’t feel like I was doing my job. I thought, “I’m 66 years old. In a few years, I’ll be really dragging and people will be helping me up onstage.” I didn’t want that — I’ve known that, since I was, like, seven years old, I did not want to be that kind of entertainer whatsoever. I want to go out there and look somewhat like I did when I started. So I thought, “This is the time.”
I still feel like I can do a lot of stuff outside of touring. I had to make the decision. A lot of people asked me, “How did you do this?” And I said, “Well, I finally just picked a date.” I’d thought about it before, but I never could get over all my obstacles I thought I had to overcome first. There was only one way — just pick a date, so I picked a date.
AKB: You mentioned Springsteen. It’s been said there are two kinds of people in the world: People who love Springsteen; and people who’ve never seen him live. I’d say the same is true for you.
REK: Thank you. I like that.
AKB: When you tour, are there certain places where you like to linger for more than just the gig?
REK: Well, you’re in North Carolina, right? I love Asheville!
AKB: Good answer!
REK: When people ask me, “You’ve been all over — would you ever move anywhere?” Asheville’s my number one. It’s a beautiful part of the country. Access to everything. If you want to go to the beach, it’s not all that far. Great location and, you know, the vibe and everything. Yeah, I love it! I’m crazy about Asheville. There are other places I used to like to go. I used to do a lot of fishing.
But I’ll say another thing, A.K.: my touring really took over my life. You know, I did it so hard and so day-after-day that I didn’t get really to enjoy a lot of the places I went. Coastal places are good, and I like the mountain states a lot. Some places I’d like to go and stay. New England’s really nice if you just want go walk around on the sidewalk — look at decent stuff walking around on the sidewalk.
AKB: Watch the leaves change.
REK: Yeah!
AKB: I love your podcast. Are you planning to do more with that once you finish touring?
REK: Absolutely.
AKB: What’s been your favorite or most surprising thing about that gig?
REK: Digging into the music these people make. You do live in an echo chamber, living in a bus and touring all the time, you rarely even see other acts. If you’re at a festival, you might see a little bit, but you don’t get the full force of what somebody does. My takeaway from [the podcast], and why I kept doing it and loving it, was because, all of a sudden, I had to open up my eyes and ears to other music. I just couldn’t believe how much great music there is out there, especially since we’re talking about artists who are pretty far away generationally.
I’m just shocked at how good some of these people in their 20s are. Where the hell did they get all this knowledge about how to put together a song, how to write, how to sing some of this stuff? I mean, I can understand singing to some degree, but especially writing — you gotta really be paying attention. Some fantastic writers out there, and I want to know, what have they been listening to to learn this? Who made them listen to this stuff to figure this out? For a while, I was totally shocked and now I’ve come to expect it. So much great stuff that, if I hadn’t done the podcast, I wouldn’t know.
AKB: I’ve discovered so much fun stuff from listening. I love the one with the guy — what’s his name, the Sons of Anarchy guy?
REK: The White Buffalo! I love the White Buffalo. Really cool, interesting history. To look at him and know him, you think, just a normal, middle-class upbringing in Southern California? He’s fantastic.
AKB: You’re a bit of an anomaly in your industry in that you don’t have addiction issues, you’ve been married forever, you have a close relationship with your daughters, etc. How did you manage to steer clear of the traps so many of your peers fell into?
REK: One of the ways that I separated myself from all that was I always wanted the opportunity to play bigger and better places, to be part of the music scene altogether, play with other artists I admired. I’d seen so many people before me who completely trashed their lives and I thought, “Why would you do that?” I mean, you finally got what you wanted — some of them were just gifted, piled on with all kinds of accolades, money, opportunity. And I thought, “If I ever got that chance” — which I did to some degree, not huge, but pretty good — “I’m never gonna squander it.” That’d just be stupid.
And there were some people, younger than I am or exactly my age, who were just flat-out stupid. I’d just blink at them, “What the hell is wrong with you?” We all talk about it in songs. You know, “This is my dream,” or whatever. If you catch that dream, or even get a whiff of that dream, why lay down? Why spit on it? Never made sense to me.
AKB: Seems that not being huge is kind of the best of all worlds. You’re not a household name, but you have this enormous, loyal fanbase. You can still go out to dinner.
REK: Yeah, it’s usually when I open my mouth and start talking I get recognized, not by looks. Actually, in Asheville once, I was in one of those— what’s it called? Weird, old-timey looking department-like store, there on the main street…?
AKB: Mast General Store?
REK: Yeah! I was in there buying some gloves and the guy is looking down, getting my receipt or whatever, and I said something about the gloves. Without looking up, he says, “Oh my god, oh my god! It’s Robert Earl Keen!” I said, “You never even looked up!” Welp, there it is. But I’m lucky in that way. Oh my god, if you’re Brad Pitt or somebody, you cannot go anywhere! That’s its own trap, in and of itself. It’s too much, right?
AKB: That’s probably why people do succumb to addiction. Fame is an unnatural way for a human to be.
REK: It’s definitely not normal.
AKB: Your fans are often not on the same page as you are, politically. How has that affected your experience, especially in recent years when everything is so much more fraught?
REK: It’s mainly affected my experience when it has to do with family. My brother and I get along really well, but my cousins and all that kind of business, they’re way on the other side — like, they drank the Kool-Aid, you know? That’s kinda breaking my heart because we don’t talk anymore. You read about the Civil War, brother against brother and all that business, you never think it’s going to come into your life, but it has. I’m still struggling with it, because I’m generally pretty moderate, but it just keeps going and going and getting harder and harder.
And, you know, I have campaigned for certain people out there [e.g. Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama], and, all of a sudden, somebody shows up on my Instagram or somewhere saying. “I’m burning your records!” Well, burn away! I did always tend to think that artists and entertainers were more on the open-minded, liberal end of things, but I’m finding out that’s not necessarily true. There’s a shitload of them out there who’ve gone all militant, and I’m just like, “Jesus, man. I thought we were on the same page!” A few of those out there that are really vocal about me.
But that’s what it’s all about — the land of the free; we all get to have our own opinions. You don’t have to completely go throw paint on somebody’s door. I just don’t get it. Doesn’t make sense to me, because what we’re doing now is we’re shooting ourselves in the foot — culturally, all the way across the board. Because when I look at bigger issues, like environmental and health kind of issues, you know, we’re not really paying attention. We’ve been sidetracked and we’re screwing around with issues that really are just ideological. They’re not hardcore, real issues.
AKB: You have the ear of a lot of people who may have thought twice because of you making your feelings known.
REK: I hope so.
AKB: I read somewhere about the place your wife calls your scriptorium. Would you tell me about it?
REK: Really? [surprised I knew about this] What it is is just a place to be — a comfortable place. It’s up on the side of a hill with a view of like 10 miles. I have a little fire pit there and a grill. I like to grill things. It’s full of books. Looks like a cabin built in, say, 1850 or something, like they did in this part of the world — we use a lot of limestone instead of the kind of log cabins and stuff they have in the mid-Atlantic states. This is more limestone, but the same kind of size — like, 400 square feet, not even that. So, it’s full of books, doesn’t have A/C in it or anything like that. Everybody says, “You have to have A/C!”
When I go there, I stay anywhere from three nights to two weeks. I don’t take the phone. If you want to talk to me, you have to come find me. And then I just bring a bunch of guitars in there, you know. I’ve got two or three sitting in there all the time, but I take a bunch more. I read ’til I get tired of reading, then I play guitar ’til I get tired of playing guitar. Then I put all my effort into writing.
There’s this sort of catharsis that goes on, too. A couple nights by yourself and it’s cool. Three or four nights? You get all these kinda crazy thoughts — sorta paranoid, almost hallucinogenic. Like, “I’m freaking out! Nobody’s around me. Where’d they go? Where the hell’s the world?!” On the other side of that, though, there’s this focused, peaceful sort of feeling, and that’s when I write my best songs.
AKB: When you were young and broke, and you didn’t have a scriptorium, how did you carve out the space to get in the zone, into the flow like that?
REK: I drove around a lot. I’d just pull over on the side of the road and sit at a picnic table or any kind of grassy spot. I carried this weird-ass camp stool and a guitar. I only had the one guitar. Now, my biggest problem is picking which guitars I’m gonna take! I really feel spoiled. If I want a song with this feeling, I better grab this guitar. I mean, every guitar has some personality and they all speak in a different way, and you truly can get some different kinds of songs on different kinds of guitars.
AKB: I’m not surprised you have a space filled with books. Your songs are so literary — the narrative arcs, character development, setting. Are there particular prose writers in whose work you hear a musicality, the way we hear the literary in your songs?
REK: One of the greatest things I ever did, and maybe one of the worst [laughs], was going down the Cormac [McCarthy] rabbit hole.
AKB: That’s a pretty good rabbit hole!
REK: Yeah, the problem is it’s hard to get out of. You have to go back to the 19th century to match his level of poetry and the time that he takes to get to a point. I’m real snobby about it. People send me books saying they’re like Cormac. I give it a hundred pages and think, “Naw, this is the Hardy Boys here.” The bad part is I have a hard time finding prose that I like. [Larry] McMurtry does it for me sometimes.
I still love people like John Cheever because it can be so wacky — the way he can really turn something on its head. And, of course, the writing itself is pristine. When you find that, it’s worthwhile whether the narrative is really going anywhere or not. So, finding that, that’s my own problem. I love Charles Bowdin — first journalist I ever really fell in love with. I guess I’m kind of snobby about that, too. Reading Bowdin was, like, “Oh, wow! This is the difference here.” You can have this great beauty in telling the truth just as you see it.
AKB: When you announced your retirement, I had this fantasy that maybe you were going to work on a novel. Any chance of that?
REK: You know, A.K., I have to admit, I’m not a very good prose writer. I tried, and I’m OK. But I’m intimidated by great prose writers. Because here’s the deal: you have a boundary around you in a song — I break those boundaries all the time, and I like doing that. Still, in general, those boundaries hold you together. But prose? You write one sentence and then…where do I go from here? How do you make that decision?
AKB: You didn’t play guitar until college, right?
REK: Exactly. Started when I was a freshman ‘cause I wasn’t a great student and I lived with these guys — they were good guys, but they were kinda strange. I felt really isolated. It was in the fall, right off the bat. I went home one weekend and picked up my sister’s guitar. It had five strings on it, kinda dirty. I pulled it out of the closet, got somebody to put new strings on, bought a book, and started playing.
AKB: Before that, what did you think you were going to do?
REK: Thought I’d go into agriculture. That’s why I went to [Texas] A&M. I like the outdoors, thought there was a place for me with, I don’t know, horses and cows?
AKB: And you majored in English because you like to read?
REK: Yep, that was it! And when I went to change my major, they were pretty uptight about that sort of thing at A&M. They begrudgingly signed off on me leaving the Ag program and going over to the liberal arts program. Like, “Well, good luck!” An English major at A&M back then? I may as well hang up a commie flag or something.
But, you know, it all played out. Some of my best friends are Aggies who still work for the system. By and large, most of my really good friends went to A&M, either when I went or 10 years after. I have that deep connection to the place. They gave me a distinguished alumni award! That’s like 300 out of half a million who graduated. Shocked the hell out of me. Don’t look at my transcript! [laughs]
AKB: I read about how you refinanced your home in order to keep your band members paid and insured during the pandemic. That says a lot about your relationship. How did they take the retirement news?
REK: By the time I announced, we were down to just four guys in the band. Only one of them was shocked. These others accepted it, not totally surprising. What I did there, that was a big part of my decision because I didn’t want to leave anybody high and dry — just shut it off. So, I made the announcement in January and they’re paid through the end of the year.
We’re gonna stop in September, so they’ve got another four months on me. They’ve all got themselves kind of set up, I’d say. The one guy is still a little discombobulated ‘cause he’s been with me longest. We’ve been playing together 27 years. And he’s a lot quieter, but he’s just as passionate about it. When we’re not playing, he’s off playing with some country band somewhere — full-blown, old ‘50s/‘60s stuff. He’s been in music since he was a teenager — he’ll be just fine.
AKB: What are your plans with the podcast? What else are you thinking of doing with your time after touring?
REK: I have this handful of things I really want to do. One is expand the podcast. I’ve had to work on it on a peripheral basis, but what I want it to look like is more regularity, more shows. The way it’s been is we just start grabbing people. I run into them at a festival, or I think, “This would be a great person,” and we track them down. We have a good success rate. We’ve have some notable people, but we also tend to lean on some of the outliers within Americana, and we’ve earned some credibility out there.
People seem to like it. That keeps building. Our current episode is Jim Lauderdale — he’s a North Carolina guy. Not that we don’t delve into brand new people just starting out, but we are getting a lot more interested in some mainstay Americana artists and I want to take advantage of that. The Americana family is lucky enough to have the Americana Association, where there’s a place to go and talk and meet, like, in September and get that going. But I think in an effort to really make it stronger, we need to just keep having this solidarity going on.
And I have not put enough effort in yet. I need to, because when everything stops in September, this needs to be a little bit rolling; have some traction. Anyway, one thing is I’d like to create a collective for younger artists, kind of an advisory or counsel — whatever you want to call it — for people who are running around like me, wondering what they should do, what they need to know to advance their careers, follow their dreams the best they can. I want to be able to help. The music landscape has changed dramatically, but the pitfalls in the business are pretty much the same. People make the same mistakes all the time, and some are easy to avoid. I’d like to have some kind of system to help artists through — musically, socially, business-wise.
AKB: The whole package: life, business, keeping your sanity…
REK: It is a business. Like we were talking about earlier: keeping your head together and not losing it, not blowing it all on some…you know, like one of those Jamey Johnson songs [e.g. “High Cost of Living.”] One thing I have to credit for that, the thing people don’t know about me is I’m really good with numbers. And that’s not only money. I think in numbers. I know how promoters look at [trade publication for the live music industry] Pollstar. That’s eye-opening information. Even in what I’m doing with this retirement, which is to step up and say, “I’m quitting, but I’m going to give you nine months here to come see me play and wind us all down.” Even within that, I’ve had a lot of people closer to my age say, “Thanks for providing a map, because I’ve been thinking about this.”
IF YOU GO
Who: Robert Earl Keen with Kelsey Waldon
When: Friday, May 27, 8 p.m.
Where: The Orange Peel, 101 Biltmore Ave., theorangepeel.net
Tickets: $60 advance/$65 day of show
(Photos by Melanie Maganias Nashan)
