"It all comes down to livin' fast or dyin' slow"

While Robert Earl Keen seems not especially well-known outside of Texas, "Gringo Honeymoon" ranks among my personal Top 10 All-time Favorites. The first time I heard it, it took me several days to finally listen all the way through-- I kept repeating each song two or three or four times in a row as soon as I'd heard it. Since then, I've become a HUGE fan of Robert Earl Keen, now owning every album in his catalog and having seen him in concert at least six times in the past four years.

The first song, "Think It Over One Time," sets the tone for the entire album. When Keen sings "Little girl think it over one time before you break in your walkin' shoes," he's not boasting or bragging -- he seems more to be pleading for his true love to consider all that might be lost if they decide that they can no longer continue through the hard times.

"Tom Ames Prayer" is a great cover of a Steve Earle outlaw song -- Keen is at his best when he's singing about cowboys and outlaws, and this song always makes me think about the classic final scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

The title cut -- "Gringo Honeymoon" might be my favorite song of all time. I'm not sure if it relates to being a fellow native Texan, but somehow this song feels more like a memory lived than a song heard. Every line seems intimately familiar and real. Anyone who has ever experienced a perfect moment-- a moment when everything in your private corner of the world seemed just absolutely and finally right -- will understand the glory and sadness that coexist in the line where Keen sings "I was wishin' that the world would stop / when you said we'd better go..." To me, one of the dependable highlights of a Robert Earl Keen live show is hearing thousands of people singing along to this amazing song.

Many of the songs on this album seem to take place in the Old West badlands of the Texas-Mexico border. "The Raven and the Coyote" tells the story of a soldier fighting in the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Love, war, separation, loss, and redemption, all played out over an absolutely beautiful melody.

"Lonely Feelin'" seems autobiographical, detailing the way that awareness of personal isolation can creep on you at strangest times, provoked by the most innocuous things. "It's your best friend from high school who sees you and wishes you well / You try to break through but you've run out of stories to tell / So you bid him goodbye and step into space / There's so many questions that you cannot face / It's a lonely feelin' taking his place / It's a lonely feelin' you just can't erase." This is an incredible song, recorded or live.

Changing the mood completely, "Merry Christmas From The Family" is likely the funniest Christmas song I've ever heard. It's a twisted tale of a white trash holiday gathering somewhere in Texas. It might be too oddly alien for people who don't have these exact sorts of people hanging like Spanish moss somewhere in their own family tree, but for me, it's a slice of ridiculous reality. Again, this song has become a standard in Keen's live shows.

The next song, "Barbeque," is by far the weakest song on the album, in my opinion. Basically an ode to Texas BBQ set over a bass and guitar riff, it is amusing to hear once, but it seems oddly out of place on this album and seems added mostly to slowly ramp down the over-the-top silliness of the previous "Merry Christmas" track. Still, it's hard to hate any song that seriously sings the glories of a cold Big Red. ;-)

"Lynville Train" is another of Keen's great cowboy songs, telling the tale of a proud man whose one true love has left him for another and is now bringing that new love back to the same small town.

"I'm Comin' Home" is another song that seems autobiographical, telling of a man on the road far away from the girl he loves and how happy he is to finally be coming home. Another staple in his live shows, "Comin' Home" never fails to make me sing along with a wide smile.

"Dreadful Selfish Crime" is yet one more song that seems to have strong autobiographical overtones as it tells of a young singer struggling to start a career while already having adopted some of the more self-indulgent habits of a "big rock star." Yet another great live song.

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Admittedly, Keen's singing is not his strength -- one reviewer early in Keen's career compared him (favorably!) to the bellowing of "a strong young bullcalf" -- but for my money it's precisely this "average" voice that lends most of these songs their impact. This music is NOT the typical overproduced formulaic treacle cranked out by radio-friendly "Nash-Vegas" country acts and singers. Much like Steve Earle, Keen shows obvious influence from a variety of musical genres-- country, rock, folk, and bluegrass. In fact, it's hard to classify exactly what sort of music it is that Keen plays. I've seen different record stores call it country, folk, and rock. I just call it great.

I can't recommend this album highly enough.