Seeing Robert Earl Keen at the Texas Hall of Fame is Like Seeing Springsteen at the Stone Pony
From the outside it looks a giant quonset hut with some paint and lights stuck to the front — and it’s surrounded by a grey- and worn-looking parking lot, and the parking lot is surrounded by some mighty dull, flat Texas land — so I thought the Texas Hall of Fame was going to be pretty crude and maybe even dusty — sort of a Texas version of the old warehouses we used to have shows in when I was a young man.
But it’s actually a classy dancehall and concert venue, with polished wood floors, a mirror ball, airplane fans, bars on each of the three non-stage sides, pool tables in the back, a shoeshine stand in the back (?!), and in the front a shallow stage and very good sound and lights.
The only thing that makes it different from any other big dance hall is that it’s in East Texas. The three bars, for example, are called “Luckenbach,” “New Orleans,” and “12th Man” — the last a very Aggie thing. A couple of police officers cheerfully worked the room in uniform, which no one thought anything of.
And the dance floor was taken up by two-steppers — just like you’d see in the movies, only for real. Some were modest and awkward, just trotting and moving their arms semi-rhythmically so they could be together on the dance floor; some worked complicated steps and twirls like they were on DWTS. Most hardly altered their routine to suit what was being played. If the DJ’d busted out Lady Gaga or Best Coast, I doubt they’d have changed up much. This is just how people dance here.
Few of the patrons were dressed fancy by coastal standards: the ladies were mostly in nicer versions of mall-wear if they weren’t dancing, and pressed jeans (short or long) and flouncy tops if they were. We only saw one girl in high heels, and she was boot-scooting across the dance floor with the rest of them, bless her. The men wore cotton or linen shirts, either checked or plaid, Wranglers and boots; many wore cowboy hats, tending toward straw as the weather is already very hot.
The Hall of Fame is a money venue, and they were sure making money last night: Not only did Robert Earl Keen fill the place, but people were drinking, some of them hard. The couple next to us kept getting pitchers, or rather the fellow was, and when we crowded down against the stage to watch REK, the scrum was full of youngbloods hoisting beers and even pitchers of beer that were, very obviously, far from the first they’d hoisted that night.
Which brings up another big difference from back home: Robert Earl Keen is a Texas singer-songwriter of the very highest order. At this point he’s a doughy, middle-aged fellow in a untucked button-down shirt — good player, good singer, master of his craft, but not a rock star by East Coast standards. He’d be revered perhaps at The Beacon, and his very tight band might have stirred the rock sensibilities of the oldsters in attendance. But you wouldn’t expect kids to go for it.
But here in Bryan — just down the way from College Station where, former Aggie REK was not shy about telling the crowd, he used to live (WHOOOOO!) on Church Street (WHOOOOO!) across from the Presbyterian Church (WHOOOOOOO!) and play on the porch with a Texas A&M student named Lyle Lovett (WHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!) — it’s a different story. In Texas they’re taught to revere their legends. I’m not sure why this works so well here when it hardly works at all in New York or anywhere else I know about. Maybe it has something to do with the Alamo. But it’s how they do.
For example, even the kids know who Waylon Jennings was. They may not listen to him, but they respect him. (Waylon preemptively returned this favor more than once with songs like “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” and “Bob Wills is Still The King.”) Once you get into the Texas pantheon — and Keen is definitely up there — you are guaranteed to be loved across all boundaries and classifications.
So the nice, short-haired, drunk young men in neat checked shirts and blue jeans went CRAZY for this middle-aged singer-songwriter. They sang along with all his songs — even the obscure ones. During “Gringo Honeymoon,” for example, Keen just stopped after “He blew a smoke ring and he smiled at us,” and they all roared, full volume, “I AIN’T NEVER COMIN’ BACK!” It was like a football yell — as was their chant, when he departed the stage, of ROBERT-EARL-KEEN! ROBERT-EARL-KEEN!
This is far outside my usual experience. It was not Dionysian at all — the boys were drunk but they were not grinding or riotous or rowdy. They were, despite everything, well-behaved, and their enthusiasm was religious in the old-fashioned and everyday manner — the way I expect that of the Four-Minute Men of the early 20th Century had been.
Still it was deeply felt and, by the usual understanding of popular music, deeply weird. It was as if John Prine had sold out the Bowery Ballroom and the hipsters all sang along with “Onomatopoeia” and “Fish and Whistle” and chanted his name politely until he came back onstage.
And this being Aggie territory just made the Keen worship more intense. Seeing him in Texas is like seeing Bruce Springsteen in Jersey, but seeing him in College Station was like seeing Springsteen at the Stone Pony. The energy is very different, but still very intense.
And let me say: Keen was good. Though he obviously read the crowd, and his effect on the crowd, with the practiced eye of an old-time road warrior, he and the band cheerfully served up the high-grade material in good form and in good portions for the hometown crowd. If you’re not familiar with him. here’s one of his best-known songs. I and the short-haired boys sang every word of it along with him. I don’t know if they know what a beautiful story it is, but suspect that, on some level, they must. In fact, seeing where they are and what they’re like, maybe they know it better than me.
