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New Year’s Eve Party featuring Robert Earl Keen
w/ Randy Rogers Band| Wade Bowen| Band of Heathens|

DOORS 07:00 PM | SHOW 08:00 PM

ROBERT EARL KEEN

Among the large contingent of talented songwriters who emerged in Texas in the 1980s and 1990s, Robert Earl Keen struck an unusual balance between sensitive story-portraits ("Corpus Christi Bay") and raucous barroom fun ("That Buckin' Song"). These two song types in Keen's output were unified by a mordant sense of humor that strongly influenced the early practitioners of what would become known as alternative country music. Keen, the son of an oil executive father and an attorney mother, was a native of Houston. His parents enjoyed both folk and country music, and his own style would land, like that of his close contemporary Nanci Griffith, between those genres. Keen wrote poetry while he was in high school, but it wasn't until he went to journalism school at musically fertile Texas A&M that he learned to play the guitar. He and Lyle Lovett became friends and co-wrote a song, "This Old Porch," which both later recorded.

Keen made a splash in Austin with his debut album, No Kinda Dancer, self-financed in 1984 to the tune of 4,500 dollars. He moved to Nashville during the heady experimentalism of the 1980s that saw Lovett and k.d. lang hit the country Top Ten, but he soon returned to Austin. Texas landscapes and residents provided Keen with creative inspiration, as his second album, West Textures, made clear; that album yielded one of Keen's signature numbers, an ambitious crime-spree song called "The Road Goes on Forever." Now recording for Sugar Hill, Keen recorded a live album shortly after West Textures but waited several years to release a studio follow-up, 1993's A Bigger Piece of Sky. After that album (which contained "Corpus Christi Bay") came Gringo Honeymoon (1994), which merged Keen's story songs with the emerging sounds of alt-country: guitars were laid down by the influential Austin musician Gurf Morlix, who later produced albums for both Keen and Lucinda Williams, and a young Gillian Welch provided harmony vocals.

Once again, after taking his career to a new stage, Keen recorded a live album (No. 2 Live Dinner, 1996) and took time to accumulate new material. The 1997 album Picnic, his first for the Arista Texas label, again moved in the direction of alternative country, featuring Keen in a duet with the Cowboy Junkies' Margo Timmins, while 1998's Walking Distance featured sparer textures. Whatever production style surrounded his songs, Keen's musical personality seemed consistent, and his live shows, widely known thanks to a touring schedule that often approached 200 dates a year in the 1990s, grew organically in depth and control. In the early 2000s Keen signed with the Lost Highway label and released the album Gravitational Forces (2001). He also devoted time to his influential annual concert series and talent festival, Texas Uprising, which took place at several venues around Texas and the Far West. 2003 saw the release of his eighth studio album, the amiable Farm Fresh Onions, as well as The Party Never Ends: Songs You Know from the Times You Can't Remember, a compilation of Keen's Sugar Hill days. His next release was 2005's What I Really Mean for the Koch label.

RANDY ROGERS BAND

You’re just as likely to spot Randy Rogers in the crowd as you are to see him on stage. He’s an all around fan of music having learned very early what it can do for the soul. His natural ability for “song” brought him solid respect for the art of music producing a passionate believer in honest, straightforward storytelling. Lyrics aside, don’t let yourself be fooled into notions of sleepy folk persuasion because the Randy Rogers Band “ain’t no acoustic show.”

RollerCoaster, the band’s third independent release on Smith Music reveals a Texas-grown band that’s flipped the lid off the independent music vat spewing forth a rich sonic brew. Rogers penned nine of the eleven southern gritty tracks, three of which were co-written with the record’s producer, Radney Foster. Right out of the gate the record was deemed worthy of national kudos when USA Today rated it with three stars saying, “This Texas band’s guitars rock with an authority their Nashville counterparts rarely manage, but the songs on this Radney Foster-produced disc are pure country.”

Very much the successors of the autonomous music legion, the Randy Rogers Band comes up closely in line with grass-roots icon like Ray Wylie Hubbard, Robert Earl Keen and Jerry Jeff Walker. Circa 2005, RRB’s reputation arrives weeks before the actual live concert date harvesting fans by the thousands. The band’s tour schedule has been intensive since the new release taking them across the country and into major radio airplay. The first single “Tonight’s Not the Night” has settled well into mass rotation on country radio placing them on the big daddy of charts, Billboard that is, as well as R&R, Americana and Texas Music charts. The Gruene with Envy Awards have become something of a big daddy event for the Texas music folk. The awards ceremony draws all the top musicians in the area where they are honored to receive awards that are based solely on fan votes. In January, RRB swept up the majority of the honors including “Band of the Year,” “Album of the Year,” “Song of the Year” and “Songwriter of the Year.”

It was lucky for Rogers that his initial plans for post adolescence led him in pursuit of a public relations degree at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos. It was there that he met and ultimately banded with the RRB counterparts. Musically all band members add their own personal music taste. Guitarist Geoffrey Hill grew up on a rock diet pretty much exempt of any country music nourishment. Bassist Jon Richardson digested huge helpings of Waylon and Willie. Fiddle player Brady Black came from the bluegrass lineage, and drummer Les Lawless’s influences are still to be determined. Randy Rogers identifies himself just fine on his own. “As for me, my songwriting is as country as country gets. Add in the different flavors of the others and it comes out country rock with a fiddle.”

Their track record adds up to an admirable amount of units sold starting with the release of Live at Cheatham Street Warehouse in 2000 followed by Like It Used to Be in 2002. Nearly three years since its release, Like It Used to Be still remains on the top sellers list on LoneStarMusic.com. Now on board with the William Morris Agency for national booking, the Randy Rogers Band will undoubtedly ride their RollerCoaster to the top.

WADE BOWEN

Six years of touring and refining his music have left Texas Singer/Songwriter Wade Bowen at a critical juncture. Bowen's professional and personal life are busier than ever, and with the release of his new album, Lost Hotel , coming soon, he is not about to take his foot off the pedal.

“I like my life hectic,” says Bowen. “When nothing is going on, that's when I become lazy.”

Bowen acknowledges that his new studio effort, set to release February 21st, carries with it long-term ramifications. He is ready to capitalize!

“This has to be the record for me at this point in my career,” says Bowen. “A lot of people have turned their heads and are standing back looking at me, which is a cool feeling, but at the same time I can't mess around from this point forward….This is a critical point for people that haven't heard me yet.”

With that in mind, Bowen has traveled back and forth between Austin and Nashville since this past summer to work on his new release. Lost Hotel will be Bowen's first studio release since 2002's Try Not to Listen . He has again teamed up with J.R. Rodriguez, producer of The Blue Light Live , and is enjoying the laid-back, detail-oriented pace at which Lost Hotel has come together.

The first release off Lost Hotel , “God Bless This Town,” “stems from the frustration of rumors and how easily they are thrown around” says Bowen.

“This song has been my favorite since day one of recording this record….I have never captured the attitude of one of my songs as well as we did this one.”

Bowen's musical influences stretch from A to Z, from Aerosmith to Zepplin. His music has been described as roots rock, guy rock, alt-country, and Texas Music.

“I take great pride in producing music that can't be pigeon-holed,” says Bowen.

“People can call it whatever they want.” “That might hurt me because people want music that can reach a specific demographic….I don't write music for one demographic….I want to be an artist that can play blues, rock, country, and honky-tonk live.”

Bowen's rise to prominence has been marked by dogged determination. He began playing music as a student at Texas Tech in 1998 where he and friend/band member, Matt Miller, started the band West 84. While his popularity has spread far beyond the Texas Panhandle, Bowen has worked to maintain the personable approach that helped build his rabid fan-base.

“It's gotten more difficult to have that personal base with the people that are coming out to shows.” “But I know the faces and those people that keep coming out…I think of them more like friends than fans.” “I may be crazy, but it's hard for me to believe that I have fans that honestly care enough to listen to my music….It shocks me every day.”

BAND OF HEATHENS