Audio CD review:
Jr. Robert Earl Keen - A Bigger Piece Of Sky

Jr. Robert Earl Keen - A Bigger Piece Of Sky

Band: Jr. Robert Earl Keen Title: A Bigger Piece Of Sky Rating: Release Date: 08 October, 1993 Media: Audio CD Tracks: 1: So I Can Take My Rest 2: Whenever Kindness Fails 3: Amarillo Highway 4: Night Right For Love 5: Jesse With The Long Hair... 6: Blow You Away 7: Here In Arkansas 8: Daddy Had A Buick 9: Corpus Christi Bay 10: Crazy Cowboy Dream 11: Paint The Town Beige 12: Bonus Track 1

Editoral Review Almost alone in a field dominated by "sensitive" types, Keen is willing to write songs about America's--especially his native Texas'--obsession with guns and violence. Robert Earl Keen is the Sam Peckinpah of the singer-songwriter movement. Although he is often pigeonholed (and not without reason) as a comic songwriter, guns are all over his fourth album, A Bigger Piece of the Sky. Keen is not a great singer (he sounds like Jerry Jeff Walker with a cold), but he is one of the best lyricists in a state crawling with them. Keen's "Jesse with the Long Hair. . . ," for example, is a Peckinpah movie condensed to three succinct verses. It stars wanted-man Jesse, his ambivalent girl friend Luann, his old pal Sheriff Paul and the corrupt banker Mr. Brown; you may have to listen several times to figure out what happens when all four pull out their guns. "Blow You Away" is a more modern tale of paranoia; each verse describes an everyday scene (stopping at a gas station, cashing a check at the bank) that could suddenly erupt into violence. The violence never comes--and the song, appropriately enough, doesn't have a chorus--but Keen's voice and Marty Stuart's mandolin keep increasing the tension. The album also includes a lovely romantic duet with Maura O'Connell and ends with three fine songs about a Corpus Christi drunk, a rodeo rider and a desperado turned fisherman, all growing old gracefully. Nonetheless the highlights include "Here in Arkansas," the complaint of a recently murdered man rendered ghostly by George Marinelli's slide guitar, and "Whenever Kindness Fails," an explanation of why the singer uses his gun to teach simple courtesy. Joe Ely covered the latter song on his last album, and if Keen can't hope to match Ely's vocal, at least he can surround the song with others of the same strange sensibility. --Geoffrey Himes .. You can see a complete list of all Jr. Robert Earl Keen discography, or go back to the Jr. Robert Earl Keen tabs