By SALINA POST
Robert Earl Keen is bringing his final tour to Salina.
Keen's I’m Comin’ Home: 41 Years On The Road tour stop in Salina is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Aug. 14 in the Stiefel Theatre, 151 S. Santa Fe Avenue.
Tickets start at $59.50 and go on sale at noon Friday. Buy online at www.stiefeltheatre.org, by calling the Stiefel at 785-827-1998, or in person at the Stiefel box office. The box office is open for phone or walk-up sales from noon-5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
About Robert Earl Keen
Keen announced in January that his current tour would be his final one.
“I’ve been blessed with a lifetime of brilliant, talented, colorful, electrical, magical folks throughout my life,” Keen said. “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.”
Following is information from Keen's website.
With a catalog of 21 albums, his band of stellar musicians, and many thousands of shows under his belt, POLLSTAR ranked Keen in its Top 20 Global Concert Tours in July, 2021. Keen has blazed a peer, critic, and fan-lauded trail that's earned him living-legend status in the Americana music world.
The Americana genre was officially recognized by the music industry in 1998 and Keen was the first artist to be featured on The Gavin Report’s Americana Music Chart and on the debut cover of its magazine.
A Houston native, Keen is one of the Lone Star State's legendary singer-songwriters. In 2019, at a homecoming at the Houston Rodeo, Keen performed with his college friend Lyle Lovett. The old friends opened the show for George Strait to a record-breaking audience of more than 80,000.
Keen was weaned on classic rock and Willie Nelson records. By the time he entered Texas A&M University, Keen taught himself how to the play the guitar and turned his poetic musings into songs. These early days are captured in spirit on the Keen/Lyle Lovett co-write, The Front Porch Song, which both artists recorded on their respective debut albums, and in Happy Prisoner, Keen’s bluegrass recording.
From the beginning, Keen took the road less travelled. He produced and financed his first album, No Kinda Dancer. Keen began to make a name for himself when he won the Kerrville Folk Festival's prestigious New Folk Songwriting Competition.
After his debut release, Keen moved to Nashville. He worked at the legendary Hatch Show Print as a pressman. When he returned to Texas, Keen had a publishing deal, a new label, and a national booking agent. He released The Live Album and West Textures, the seminal album which debuted the rowdy rockin’ fan favorite The Road Goes on Forever.
Keen had no idea that his song about a couple of ill-fated lovers running afoul of the law would catapult into the stratosphere of classic Americana, but he credits DJ Steve Kaufman of San Antonio radio station KRIO for helping to start the fire.
"Steve talked the station into doing sort of a free-form programming format during ‘drive time,'" Keen said. "It was anything he liked, which turned out to be great music and a last glimpse at the influence of the DJ on radio. With an organic boost from Kaufman, I went from playing the front room at Gruene Hall for a max of 150 people to playing a show in San Antonio for 1,500 people. That was a moment that kept me going; because before that, I'd been working for 10 years and had a lot of rejection but very little success."
Fellow Texas icon Joe Ely recorded both The Road Goes on Forever and Whenever Kindness Fails on his album, Love and Danger, and the secret was out on Keen's credentials as a songwriter's songwriter. He is now a member of the Texas Heritage Songwriter Hall of Fame, The Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame, and the Texas Institute of Letters.
Two more albums, A Bigger Piece of Sky and Gringo Honeymoon, brimmed with instant classics like Corpus Christi Bay, Gringo Honeymoon, Dreadful Selfish Crime, and Merry Christmas From the Family.
The live performance, the show, is an essential experience for Keen fans. BMI acknowledged Keen’s contribution as a road warrior in 2015 when they honored Robert with the inaugural Troubadour Award.
Keen and his band hit the road, going out 180 days a year, to play dance halls, roadhouses, theaters, and festival grounds with diverse crowds of college kids, serious singer-songwriter fans, and plenty of true believers.
In 2018, Keen returned to College Station to accept the Texas A&M Distinguished Alumni Award. The prestigious honor has been granted to only a few hundred of Texas A&M’s half a million alumni. The award recognizes Aggies who have achieved excellence in their chosen professions, made meaningful contributions to Texas A&M University, and in their local communities.
Keen will continue to write music and create, host his popular podcast, support young artists, and follow his artistic muse wherever it takes him.