LIVE MUSIC CHATTANOOGA JAN
JOHN & THE CONNORS A DAMN FINE BAND
CHERUB with SMOOTH DIALECTS ELECTRO-POP FROM THE FUTURE!
THE MACHINE
THE BEST PINK FLOYD TRIBUTE EVER
JESSTA JAMES with ZACH DYLAN BAND
THE DELTA SAINTS
FOOT-STOMPIN’ ROOTS ROCK & ROLL
10 FRI. 10p 11 SAT. 9:30p 12 WED. 9p 16 THU. 9:30p 17
THU. 9:30p
1.18: JORDAN HALLQUIST COMEBACK TOUR 1.19: VELCRO PYGMIES 1.23: JESSTA JAMES ALL SHOWS 21+ UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED • NON-SMOKING VENUE
221 MARKET STREET
HOT MUSIC • FINE BEER • GREAT FOOD BUY TICKETS ONLINE • RHYTHM-BREWS.COM
SPECIAL ISSUE • JAN. 17 honest music
Keen Insights Robert Earl Keen: Southern Gothic with a Twist of Lemon By Richard Winham
Robert Earl Keen 8 p.m. • Thursday, Jan. 17 $22 (advance) $25 (day of show) Track 29 1400 Market St. (423) 521-2929 track29.co
R
obert Earl Keen is a paradox. On one hand, he’s a careful writer who spends hours crafting his songs, the best of which are like Flannery O’Connor short stories set to music. Yet he doesn’t seem to care whether anyone actually listens to them. He and his band would rather play to “crazy, rowdy, drunk crowds” than to attentive audiences. “Getting up for [a quiet audience] is a little more difficult than riding the wave of a crowd of screaming, yelling, happy people,” he told blogger Blake Phillips in a candid online interview. “You’ve got to be a little more on your toes with a crowd that really listens.”
At their best, Keen’s songs are epigrammatic, sometimes Southern Gothic short stories. Take “The Road Goes On Forever (And The Party Never Ends).” If you only pay attention to the chorus (as I did for a long time), it’s a party song; a rambunctious ode to licentiousness. It’s been the centerpiece of his sets for years, but for a time that chorus backfired on him. Many of the people coming
to his shows assumed that he lived the life he celebrated in his songs. “A lot of frat kids started showing up at shows, and it was a double-edged sword,” he told an interviewer on his website. “They were energetic—maybe too energetic—and that drove off the other people. And here are all these guys saying, ‘He’s really drunk tonight’ or somebody writing I was drunk on stage. I never drink a beer before or
during a show. I might have a beer or a cocktail afterward, but people had this perception about me being drunk.” He’s a walking contradiction whose stories are partly truth and partly fiction. “I think that every good piece of fiction stems from a true story,” Keen told Phillips. And when they’re spiced with a little imagination, the stories are that much better. Keen learned that lesson long ago, along with his friend Lyle Lovett, when he was an English major and Lovett was studying journalism at Texas A&M. When they weren’t in class together they often sat talking about songwriting and playing their guitars on Keen’s porch, wearing little more than their underwear (much to the dismay of the churchgoers across the street). Lovett had a profound influence on Keen’s writing, and eventually the two wrote a song together (that Lovett included it on his first album suggests the respect was reciprocal). Called “This Old Porch,” it details the reasons they both always return to their small-town roots. The first two verses celebrate the world they knew growing up, while the third and fourth lament its rapid decline. But the closing verse, repeated to press the point, is a paean to that peculiarly stubborn Texan spirit of revival, “And this old porch is just a long time of waiting and forgetting / And remembering the coming back and KEEN»P10
local and regional shows
Summer More Than Others with Boardwalk Carnival ($3) The Magic Math with The Recruits &Woodford Sessions ($5) Crass Mammoth with Boxing the Compass ($3) To Light a Fire with Bearhound & The Hearts in Light ($5)
Wed, Jan 9 Thu, Jan 10 Wed, Jan 16 Thu, Jan 17
Special Shows
Tess Brunet (of Au Ras Au Ras) • Sun, Jan 20 • 8 pm • Free Show! Sundays: Live Trivia 4-6pm • Free Live Irish Music at 7pm Jan 13: Olta • Jan 27 Molly Maguires
8 • The Pulse • JANUARY 10-16, 2013 • chattanoogapulse.com
9pm 9pm 9pm 9pm
Full food menu serving lunch and dinner. 11am-2am, 7 days a week. 35 Patten Parkway * 423.468.4192 thehonestpint.com * Facebook.com/thehonestpint