The Musical Box

robert earl keen.

“Hey, it’s just like the Oak Ridge Boys,” remarked Robert Earl Keen as the pace behind a merry country melody picked up last night at the Opera House.

Well, maybe not - especially since the tune in question was Copenhagen, a love song where the only thing that comes between the guy and the girl is a mouthful of chaw. Truth to tell, Keen’s acoustic performance with Todd Snider and Bruce Robison was a lesson in magnificent imperfection. All three writers performed separately and together without bands. The often diverse temperaments of their songs served as the performance’s only real artistic glue.

Keen pulled a fast one on the crowd, especially the numerous late-comers, by opening the program with a half-dozen world class Texas-fueled yarns. There was little denying that a touch of the brilliant Lone Star color inherent in Keen’s music was lost without the aid of his expert touring band. But in its place was a heightened sense of storytelling that he has scaled back on in recent years. Sure, gems like Gringo Honeymoon and the wistful homecoming portrait Feelin’ Good Again needed little introduction. But Keen prefaced one his best known songs by recalling a correspondence between his mother and uncle.

“Joe, Robert has written the most awful song.”

“Well, Juanita, is the song true?”

“Hell yes, it’s true.”

With that he sailed into Merry Christmas from the Family, his irreverently poetic snapshot of a dysfunctional holiday celebration.

bruce robison.

Robison, a fellow Texan whose songs have become hits for country kingpins like George Strait and Tim McGraw, offered a set of more streamlined tunes where the lyrical creases Keen so openly underscored were ironed out. That didn’t make songs with such generous melodic charm as Lifeline or Wrapped any less enjoyable. In fact, Robison poked fun at his own fortunes when introducing Travelin’ Soldier. The tune was a major hit for the Dixie Chicks the week Natalie Maines made public her infamous evaluation of then-President Bush. Robison last night dubbed the single as “the fastest descending No. 1 hit in country music history.”

todd snider.

Snider couldn’t resist a jab to corporate Nashville after Robison’s set. He admitted ahead of Money, Compliments, Publicity (Song Number Ten) that the tune was inspired less by the demons of artistic gluttony that inhabit its lyrics and more by a need to quickly think of a toss-off song to complete his new The Excitement Plan album. “Then I thought, ‘Hey, that’s how they make country music now.’”

A second set brought the three artists together to swap songs for just over an hour. But their stylistic differences were on display just as much when they weren’t singing as when they were given the spotlight. Keen played congenial host, Robison seemed eager to play some kind of accompaniment for his pals and Snider, his face buried in shadow from a loose fitting hat, generally looked like a caged animal.

But there was simpatico. Robison matched the barbed family sagas that pop up in Keen’s music during My Brother and Me, a tune influenced not by his sibling but by a black sheep grandfather. Similarly, Snider’s popularly giddy Beer Run made direct reference to Keen’s signature renegade tune The Road Goes On Forever, a tune Keen himself was more than happy to follow with.

But Keen was rightfully awarded the evening’s last song, I’m Comin’ Home - a travelogue tune that drew inspiration from heart and hearth. Performed with a sense of Texas country longing, the stune was a reminder that even though the road still goes on forever, it eventually leads one back home.