REK in NYC

Last weekend Greg and I saw Robert Earl Keen in New York. Greg got me the tickets for Valentine's Day, and we drove down from Vermont early Saturday morning. I here post my review, as slightly modified from the email sent to my mother about it:

He was great. The concert was in this huge place with a big standing-room hall down by the stage and then two big balconies with bars. It was all packed with displaced Texans--the bands kept referencing "Texas' birthday," and I discovered later that it was the anniversary of Texas' independence from Mexico. Anyway, there were three warm-up bands, two from Texas and one from Oklahoma, and there was much frantic waving of Texas flags by the audience, and whole-hearted flashing of long-horn
hand symbols, and some Oklahoma pride as well. I have described it rather weakly, but it was very impressive in the flesh. Most of the audience was younger than 30, lots of West Point cadets (we talked to some of them, and they spent the rest of the night telling everyone else, "there are lots of Yankees here!"); actually it looked a lot like the crowd at a Texas A&M football game. All the many hundreds of them were packed tight together, waving their beer cups and flags in the air, leaning towards
the stage screaming with all the force of homesickness, patriotism, and drunkenness. They knew every song of the warm-up bands, whom I did not recognize. Actually I still have no idea who they were, or how everyone else even knew that there would be warm-up bands, as it was printed nowhere on the website, tickets, signs, etc. There was this one kid with a big, elaborate "Party Never Ends" tattoo on his shoulder. That was pretty impressive.

Anyway, after three hours, REK finally came on, and it was worth all the hours of jostling with drunken Texans, because he was so, so good. By that time Greg and I had wormed our way to the very front row, center, directly in front of the stage-- it was so cool. I knew almost every song he sang, and sang along at as high a decibel level as I could manage (thankfully more than drowned out by the blaring speakers). He sang my mother's favorite, about knocking over the porta-cans at
the 4H rodeo (Shades of Gray), New Life in Old Mexico, Wild Wind, Walkin' Cane, 5 Pound Bass, Buckin' Song, Dreadful Selfish Crime, I"m comin' home, Gringo Honeymoon, that song Townes Van Zandt song Walking Shoes. The best was when he sang "Feeling Good again"-- you could tell how much the audience (which was screaming along with every song) loved it, and you could tell how much REK loved it, and he would sort of look at the audience and see how happy the song made everyone, and
then look really happy himself. He ended, of course, with Road Goes on Forever.

Later note: The warm-up acts were Willy Ray Hubbard (writer of "Redneck Mother"), Charlie Robinson (formerly married to a Dixie Chick, wasn't really very good, not even as good as his CMT music video of "Lookin' for you Baby," which I used to like a lot), and Cross Canadian Ragweed (very good). The concert venue was called Terminal 5.

Here's a picture from Greg's cellphone. As my aunt Margaret noted when I sent her the picture, the wardrobe could use some work, but as I assured her, he is not, in fact, wearing sweatpants.