Robert Earl Keen - Private Event

THE PIONEER

ROBERT EARL KEEN

"The road goes on forever …"

It's not always easy to sum up a career - let alone a life's ambition - so succinctly, but those five words from Robert Earl Keen's calling-card anthem do just that.

You can complete the lyric with the next five words - the ones routinely shouted back at Keen by thousands of fans a night "and the party never ends!" - just to punctuate the point with a flourish, but it's the part about the journey that gets right to the heart of Keen’s legacy. From the get-go, Keen wanted to write and sing his own songs, and to keep writing and singing them for as long as possible.

"I always wanted to play music, and I always knew that you had to get some recognition in order to continue to play music," Keen says. "But I never thought in terms of getting to be a big star. I thought in terms of having a really, really good career writing good songs, and getting onstage to share a really good time."

Now with 21 records to his name, a band of stellar musicians, and thousands of shows under his belt, there is no end in sight to the road ahead. In July of 2021, POLLSTAR ranked Keen on its Top 20 Global Concert Tours, proof that he has blazed a peer, critic, and fan-lauded trail that's earned him living-legend and pioneer status in the Americana music world.