Keen '78 inspired fellow Aggies joining Sept. 2 concert

The performers opening for Robert Earl Keen ’78 on Sept. 2 aren’t just fellow Aggie musicians:

They’re all Robert Earl fans, too.

Each of the opening acts for the Aggie Park Kickoff Concert – a free show thanks to sponsors led by Southwest Airlines – describes Keen as a trailblazer and professional influence.

The Barn Dogs’ Sam Hall ’25 says the first song he learned to play was a Keen original. Julianna Rankin ’18 grew up singing his lyrics, and Max Stalling ’89 says he and fellow Texas songwriters use Keen as a benchmark: Does the song we just finished approach that quality of craftsmanship?

In the 1980s and 1990s, Keen rose from the Texas folk scene to recognition as an Americana music pioneer.

At that time, there wasn’t a huge, fanatic following for grassroots Texas music – until Keen built one.

“It’s hard to overstate the importance and influence of Robert Keen in today’s Texas/Red Dirt/Americana music scene,” says Stalling, himself a respected Texas country singer-songwriter with a hefty touring schedule and six studio albums.

“I’ve often said that REK has motivated so many people to take up songwriting and run out and buy a guitar that Guitar Center and Sam Ash should be sending him annual royalty checks.”

Rankin, a New Braunfels singer-songwriter who has opened for acts such as Stoney LaRue and Randall King, says, “Some of my earliest musical memories involve REK. I can think back and remember knowing every word to ‘Feelin’ Good Again’ and ‘Love’s A Word I Never Throw Around,’ along with his other classic hits, at a very young age.”

For The Barn Dogs, Hall says, “In our eyes as Aggies, as country music fans, and fans of music in general, Robert Earl is a legend to all of us… I think I can speak for most everyone in the band but especially myself when I say that Robert Earl played quite a large role in mine and our childhoods.” (The group is an alternative country rock band made up of current students Hall, Luke Morace ’24, August Galliano ’24, Clay Didway ’23 and Michael Wood ’23.)

Hall says, “I’ve grown up listening to him my entire life… I’ve seen him play his Christmas show the past four years in San Antonio, and ‘Corpus Christi Bay’ was the first song I ever learned on guitar.”

Stalling speaks reverently of the emotion and storytelling in Keen’s music.

“Robert’s songs have a way of making you feel like they were written just for you and your personal needs, whatever those may be… It felt like he had somehow been to my favorite watering hole when he sang 'Feelin’ Good Again.’ And he somehow knew my unique sources of melancholy when he sang ‘Dreadful Selfish Crime' and 'Lonely Feeling' and ‘Paint The Town Beige.’

“And his songs are so well crafted. Songwriters in the generations behind Robert Keen saw his songs as the watermark/benchmark we all needed to be striving for,” Stalling says (noting, “Songwriter generations are shorter than regular generations, by the way.”)

“My compatriots and I, upon finishing a new song, would ask ourselves, is this song Guy Clark quality? Is it Robert Earl Keen quality? Trust me when I say we failed miserably and consistently. But we tried (and still do) to live up to the standards he established.”

Though Keen plans to continue writing songs and creating art, the Sept. 2 concert is slated to be his last show in Aggieland, as he is retiring from the road in 2022 after 41 years of touring.

The Aggie Park Kickoff Concert is the third-to-last stop on Keen's “I’m Comin’ Home” farewell “World Tour of Texas,” and the only one of those final shows not sold out. (Register to attend the free show at tx.ag/AggieParkConcertRegister.)

It will be a chance for loyal fans and the Aggie Network to cheer Keen and his musical legacy, as well as some of the very musicians he has inspired.

Rankin says, “He’s blazed the trail for all of us, and the road he paved for songwriters in Texas will in fact go on forever.”