Artist: Robert Earl Keen
Album: Ready For Confetti
Bitrate: 244kbps avg
Quality: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.98.4 / -V0 / 44.100Khz
Label: Lost Highway
Genre: Country
Size: 86.79 megs
PlayTime: 0h 47min 14sec total
Rip Date: 2011-09-19
Store Date: 2011-09-06
Track List:
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01. Black Baldy Stallion 3:59
02. Ready For Confetti 3:48
03. I Gotta Go 3:05
04. Lay Down My Brother 5:33
05. The Road Goes On And On 3:21
06. Show The World 3:30
07. Waves On The Ocean 3:12
08. Top Down 2:49
09. Play A Train Song 4:10
10. Who Do Man 4:55
11. Paint The Town Beige 4:20
12. Soul Of Man 4:32
Release Notes:
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Somewhere in the gulf between Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Rodney Crowell and
Lyle Lovett and next wave Lone Stars Pat Green, Jack Ingram, Stoney LaRue, Randy
Rogers and Hayes Carll, Robert Earl Keen put down rootsùand was slightly less
visible for the lack of a scene. But the journeyman troubadour, a Lone Star
fixture for more than three decades, took his energy and applied it to his
craft. Instead of bitching about not being famous, he crafted 16 albums that
stand as a measure of what a split rail songwriter/artist can be.
With Ready for Confettiùproduced by steel player and Texas legend Lloyd
Mainesùthe man who penned ôThe Road Goes On Foreverö and the wry ôMerry
Christmas from the Familyö delivers an album that can only be quantified as
classic Keen. With influences ranging from the swing-driven ôTop Downö to the
reggae-undertowed ôWaves on the Ocean,ö Confetti demonstrates the diversity that
is Texas music at its core.
For Keen, whose voice is solid as a plank and instantly evokes a masculine sense
of knowing, these are tales from a world he makes his own. Having seen much,
measured more and considered the possibilities, heÆs now a demi-institution in a
world where songwriters are gauged by the mettle of their tales and the
conviction with which theyÆre told.
Embracing bitter invective, Keen leans unapologetically into ôThe Road Goes On
and On,ö then seamlessly turns to the sweet ache thatÆs country at its purest
for the classic-feeling ôPaint The Town Beige.ö That ability to slip in and out
of attitudes, truths, genres gives the 55-year-old Houston-raised,
Kerrville-living songwriter both his intrigue and his staying power.
To drift, to ramble, to repel off the small details has always marked the former
newspaper writerÆs tales of losers, those existing at the margins and Lone Star
heroics that are both larger and smaller than life. The finger-picked ôI Gotta
Go,ö with its hand-jive rhythms and dobro coloring, works that reality to
perfection: a thrown-away child grows up unrepentant in his swagger and honest
about the need to ramble, moving from orphanage to card game to death by
misadventureùultimately gunned down in cold blood, professing ôI gotta go
somewhere/ I gotta go/ Wasting time standing here/ I gotta go.ö
Ready for Confetti creates that bridge between the romance of gone and the
reality of knowing what one does well. For fans of picking, straight-up
story-telling and that dusty Texas roadhouse folk, Keen creates an album that
works on its own terms.