Americana and Texas legend, Robert Earl Keen, joined Bobby Bones for a one-on-one interview at his house. It's been three decades since Robert released his debut album and has put out 20+ since. He also opens up about why after 41 years of touring he's deciding to retire from the road. He shares the approach he took making his new album, Western Chill, and the graphic novel he released for it. Robert also talks about his love for poetry and songwriting and reveals a certain part of history he knows every detail of and more!
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When I wrote that song about up tempo cool got you know, some drama in and stuff like that, but that I didn't know like that Christmas song would give me fourteen years on the Road of Christmas Shows.
Episode four sixty with Robert Earl Keane, a Texas country legend, a Texas country giant. He put out a record called Western Chill back in June, but now they digitally released that, but now non digitally like a hard copy. You can get a CD or vinyl. There's also a ninety two page graphic novel inspired by the album, so check it out Western Chill. Robert Earl Keane thought it was super cool that came over the house. He brought his guitar. I thought he was going to play something, and I was like, no pressure to play here, we don't want you, and he was like, okay, cool, So he didn't play. But I always feel that people feel they need to bring an instrument and play, which is not the case. They'll last sometimes like should I bring guitar? Should I play something that we don't have to? We never want any to feel like that, And I feel like he would have for sure pulled out and started playing. But I think we got what we were looking for, not only with a really cool interview about his poetry, et cetera, but when he started reciting just from memory, and I'm not going to say what it is, there's a certain part of history that he knows every single detail, to my mind was blown. So, Robert Earl Keene, I hope you enjoy this. I'll stop talking so you can hear him here on the Bobby Cast. Do we do remote covid like the show?
Like the show when when covid hit, did y'all do some remote?
We at first, because you know, nobody was really allowed to do anything, so we definitely and it sounded like garbage. But if it wasn't for COVID, like Zoom, would not be what it is. It wouldn't have given us the ability to do so much more. Now, I agree, Yeah, so yeah, but yeah, And I'm very familiar with the podcast you've been doing it. I don't know if it's five years though, Maricana Podcast.
Right, Mariicana Podcast?
What why did you start that podcast?
Well, Claire was one kind of dragged me, kick in and shrink screaming into it because I did a I had done a serious XM show for a little while, and I realized how much work it was, and I said, you know, this is a lot of work. We can do this, We can do this. So, uh, I thought, well, you know, one of the things that happens when you're like, you know, touring musician, is you really isolate yourself from all the rest of the music. People think you see music all the time, but you know, you every once in a while you walk up the side the stage and watch some man they players to watch the support act, and I was just completely disconnected with the music of the time. And I started thinking about that. I thought, well, this is a good way for you know, to educate myself about like what's going on. And so we started and uh, it went pretty well right off the bat. We've got to use the studios at Texas Monthly for about two months and that was that was really good, and people would want to want to go to Texas Monthly, you know, because it's just that that magazine. So we had a we had a really good start, and then uh, we just we just kept it going. We had some bumps along along the way and bump, what's up? I mean, you know, like there's some time lags on things like that and not being able to like hit it like you know, every month or every two weeks or whatever we had going on.
That's a big part of how hard it is to do a podcast is consistently doing the podcast. You know, with me, I'm doing the national radio show five days a week, I'm doing this podcast once or twice a week of a sports show. But of all of that, it's not always creating content. It's like just being able to be there and schedule and do right.
Yes, absolutely, what did you learn?
Because again, you're somebody spent their entire career like writing and creating, but now on a different mediu I'm like, what'd you learn? Well?
I learned that I was too narcissisistic to ask a lot of questions, So I better need to learn how to listen to people and ask ask, you know, the right questions. And also I started out with like, you know, notes and notes and stuff, and then I realized that, you know, I would be looking in my notes and I wouldn't be looking listen, and so so I just I finally just kind of threw the notes away and do, like what we're doing here is just talk and you know, sometimes you stumble in some real magic. Sometimes it's it just goes on. But you can continue to do that as much. I mean, you know, thank God for editing and things like that, you can just take out some of those slow parts.
And also thank God for technology that you know, you can get a kit and you can do a podcast at a kitchen table.
Right.
No, it sounds good and as long as what you're saying makes sense, people are still people are happy with it.
Absolutely. That's that is the thing is some of the consistency about it. It's like not only just timing but sound as well.
What'd you do today today?
I barely got up in the morning.
I think, have you had a whole because my expectation with you, I lived in Austin for twelve thirteen years.
Did you really? Yeah?
So that to me is like my relationship with getting to know you and knowing you while you didn't know me. You know, that whole creepy fan thing. But I lived in Austin for and you're part of the fabric there still, and so I don't know your relationship with Nashville now, so I would just expect when you're here you were just like doing lots of press.
We filled up our day yesterday yesterday and then this morning was really a catch up day. Was just trying to see what else is in front of And we're doing this you know show on Knoxville on Saturday at the Tennessee Theater. So the band and all those guys are flying in to mar so we're just kind of getting ready for them.
I mean to have a lot of stuff to talk about that I've as you said, like, I made some notes on stuff, but I don't always get to them because I like to listen to what you're saying and kind of go And you mentioned the band and without notes if I mess up some of this, just to correct me before you tell the story. But so I have your the new project right a song called Waves. Okay, one of your band members wrote this song, and it feels to me from listening to you knowing you and my Texas version, but then going and doing a bit of a deeper dive, that you're you're very band oriented. Even though it's your name up front, you're still very much band oriented, which is not always the case. So you have a member of your band that wrote that song Waves, and it's on the record. I don't see a lot of people doing that.
Why that The point was, I wanted to do something that was different than a lot of other people. And I am very banded orient and really I've always paid. They have a salary based on the amount of shows and stuff, and and we had insurance and retirement program all the way back into the nineties, so I was. And also when I got into this, when I started getting into a band thing, Bobby, I listened to other musicians at that part, I did listen to I listened to other musicians and they would say, well, you know, we don't ever get to play on the records, and we you know, we get pushed aside. We get the lousiest hotel rooms and stuff. And I thought, well, you know, why can't you get those things? And then well, you know people don't want to do that. Well, I mean it's in some ways, it's just like a regular business. And if people are crying for certain things that they need or they feel like they need, then I saw no reason that you couldn't go ahead and start it that way. Fortunately I did start it that way, because backing up and trying to catch up with it is really difficult. Because then all of a sudden, you're counting your pennies and stuff going. Yeah, So I was, so we got to we got to the COVID thing, and I kept everybody on Saturday and on insurance. And then after about two months, I realized that we, you know, we were all still well, and I have this place out in the country, so I said, let's come on out here and rehearse. So we rehearsed for a little while, and then I had this lightning bolt moment when evening, like when the sun was going down, the moon was coming up and the stars all shining, and I wrote this song Western Chill, and then I wrote four more songs that same night that all fit in there. So so when they came back the next time for the rehearsal, I said, here's what we're gonna do. We're going to do this thing where we're going to do it's all band inclusive. You guys bring your songs, I bring my songs. We all sit around and jam like we were doing like if we were on the porch or you know, like just meeting each other and just jam. And so they were going real skeptical. They were going, so like, we bring our songs to you and then you learn them and you sing them. I said, no, man, you you sing them. We're doing them your way. You can. You can produce this song anyway you want to do it. But we're all in on this, and we're all gonna talk about how to make this work, and it's all going to be under this one umbrella, the Western Chill umbrella, and hopefully everything fits. And sure enough, I mean, you know, the guys brought these songs. You know, all of them wrote, and so they brought these songs that were just, you know, just fit. I keep using this analogy. It was like a giant jigsaw puzzle that every piece was really easy to put in. You just got blunt and there you go, and here's a jigsaw puzzle. So we put it all together. There was only one outlier. The bass player writes a lot of songs, and he he was the biggest basketball fan in the world, I mean huge, just basketball all the time. That's all he thinks about other than music. Here's music, here's basketball. So uh so he says, I think, I don't know, you might not like this one. This is this is not really that Western Hill, But I think we can make it that way, and he wrote he sang me a song called why Why because yeah, Leonard left the Spurs, and yes, yes, it was like why. And after he finished, I said Bill that that's a really great song, but I don't really feel like it fits the format.
Hilarious, what a funny name to why like a sad song?
Oh yeah, he was broken hearted.
Did you have any mentors when you were a young writer artist?
Uh? You know, Guy Clark helped me out some. I mean, a guy was kind of late to the party. But as far as that goes, because I went and toured for Guy in Town for about on and off for about eighteen months, and it was it was really good. So I got to see them and get that that. But a guy was always a little skeptical of like what I was doing, which is kind of just always the way it is anyway, but uh, you know, and then one day he just was like, man, that song and that song, that song, I'm gonna take you around and he took me around to some different publishers and he got me to play some stuff for people and stuff like that. So yes, definitely him. There was a guy that I was in a play with called oddly enough, back when I lived in Austin called Nashville Road. So I was Jasper Joe Douglas, the singing dishwasher in this. And the guy who was the prologue to that was a guy named j. D. Hutchess, and he was from Barnesville High and he and and JD probably had more influence on me anybody, because he was just a hillbilly genius, you know, just one of these guys that just soaked up all this information. Was brilliant, could do anything, any kind of art, he could play any kind of instrument and uh so he lived with he was not he was terrible with money. So he lived with me for about a year. We lived together, and he was really you know, instrumental and just like at writing songs and just you know and taking time off and the whole thing. Was just a really wonderful human being. So I'd say that would be He wasn't really He had a band called the Hutcheson Brothers when out of California, like in the early seventies, but didn't have much luck. Anyway, he was a great guy and he and he taught me a lot.
Did you do you find that any of the artists now use you as that kind of mentor or have used you as that because they looked up to you and then you you did kind of a guy did like you showed an appreciation for the works. They felt like they could lean on you a little bit.
Yeah. I have some good connections with the UH, specifically that the UH, the Texas artists like Cody Canada and UH say, Randy Rodgers and I made a record together. It was kind of a disaster, but we still made a record together. And then it was under the Striker Brothers. It was like some kind of we made up this big yarn about how we were in prison and nobody knew where these tapes were, and we found these tapes. It just all fell apart because everybody knew who the hell we're who were as soon as we opened our mouths, you know, I mean you could hear it, right. So that was the deal. And then but I get on you know, people asked me to be on part of their deal, and so I'm connected with that. But I'm really connected with the Nashville thing as well, because I've been part of BMI for like, I don't know, twenty five years, and I always go to the songwriters thing down there in Key West. We just got back from that a few weeks ago. And they used to have a thing called Country and the Rockies that I did. So I know a lot of songwriters here and I've written with a lot of them. And also had a deal a few years ago where I just had a little publishing deal where they people to me that they knew really liked my stuff, you know that, like Brent Cobb or somebody like that, and and just you know, lots lots of different people, uh we and I wrote some really good songs with them. So I got a really good connection all the way through there. And people do and I do. I find that people will track me down.
What was the first version of your writings poetry was the short stories, like even as a kid poetry.
I started writing poetry when I was about eight years old, and I wasn't ever a good student, but like when you had poetry week in like elementary school or in middle school, all of a sudden I got thrown to the head of the class because it was like, you know, I could write really solid poetry and my poems would be in the hallway. They'd put them up and stuff, and then I'd ended up in these like ap English classes. Well I was I only wrote the poetry was really really good. My prose is terrible, so so i'd be I'd be under water, you know, with these classes they put me in. But the poetry was one of those things that just came, you know, it just came to me. It was a gift.
How were you exposed to any sort of literature or poetry to be doing that at eight?
My mother read all the time. My mother, my mother sat on the couch. She'd get up out of the bed about midnight. She'd go sit on the couch and read till about four o'clock in the morning and sleep another two hours and then go to work. And uh she she used to pay me a quarter to memorize poems, you know, And so so I memorize these poems and and consequently I just I also I found I had some teachers four fifth grade, sixth grade that found out that I like to read. So they would point me to some books that had more substance, you know, you know, not just Therinkle in Time or something, but you know, something substance. And I just devoured those. Those were those were great. So you know, the written word to me is is a standard bearer for every thing that we do. It just you you know, you need precision, you need clarity. That's how you get it.
So there was a literature background in your house because your mom was a reader. What was your mom and dad? Were they still together? And what did your dad do?
My dad was an engineer.
Okay, So when did you get when did music become part of something you could stick with the poetry? What age did that start happening?
About eighteen?
Did you have music in your house consistently.
Well, other than records? My mom loved country music.
So yeah, and who does she listen to when you think back?
She loved Roy Acuff and like those people from the forties, you know, even even Bill Monroe and Joe Grass stuff then yeah, and Jimmy Rodgers, you know, the father country music. Who you know whose last house was in Cerville, Texas where I live, you know.
So the bluegrass like flattened scrugs, you know, and their body work. I know, I would say a decent amount of it, but I think people would mostly know it in the in the popular vein as the Beverly Hillbillies, oh yeah, you know the song.
Yeah.
So but what was your relationship with bluegrass and did you flat scrugg Was that for you?
No?
Bluegrass came when I went to A and M. So I was so so I started playing when I was when I got to A and M when I was eighteen, and uh so what I what ended up happening was I learned some country songs by myself, and then I just started filtering into some people that played music, and in general, it was all acoustic. It was all about it was all just about like singing bluegrass or gospel or something like that. And we really did have this porch out there on Church Street. It was a block off the campus, so people came and parked there, and then there are a lot of musicians that came there and they would say, well can I jam with you? And they'd come over there and jam. So all that bluegrass just kind of came to me almost because I was you know, I knew, you know, Rocky Top or something like that, but but all that bluegrass, and then I got to be just a huge fan of bluegrass.
I was.
I was a huge fan of Normal Blake, whom hardly anybody knows but the fact was is he kind of put it all together because he was a great, great flat picker and he wrote a lot of songs. You know, do you.
Feel like it made you a better musician instrumentalist to have to learn bluegrass? That is a very difficult type of music to have to just keep up with.
Very difficult and I and I'm not and I wasn't built for it. I'm too slow. But I want to say, he used to you know, you got you got all this good, great technology now. But the fact is, it's like I used to put my foot on the LP like this and slow it down so I could so I could learn that the notes, and I just got dandy down down like that kind of thing. And I just never could get that, like, you know, that lightning speed that people had. But so I got to be a pretty good rhythm guitar player. And regardless of what, you know, where my voice sits in the world, Uh, I you know, I lyrically, I can sing almost any song without like they get about it too much.
You know, where did you get your first guitar?
My first guitar came from my sister. Uh. When I went to a and M I found out that I was, you know, not the student that I thought I was, and I was struggling. I was also really bored, and I went back home. I don't know, Ma'm thought drug got into A and M and H and there was this old Alvarez classical guitar is all kind of beat up, and that was my sister's guitar. So I thought, well, maybe I can figure this out. So I went and strung it up. Got this book that's called the Ten Greatest Country Songs in America, and I wrote and I learned nine of them because one of them was the Happiest Girl in the Whole USA by Donald Fargo. So I didn't think that fit in my repertoire. Actually, you know today it might be kind of fun to do so anyway, so I learned those songs, and like I said, and then I kind of filtered into with these other people. And then we made this band, you know, the Front Porch Boys, and we had we had so many different people come in and out of that band. It was like American Aquarium or something. It's like a lot of people of people come in and out of that band.
With like you talk about poetry and your mom saying, hey, let's memorize some poems. And then you being around even just being around bluegrass musicians, you have to elevate a bit, but you just hang right. Sure, those two things together, it feels like that was the can you memorize anything? By the way, did that was that really good for your brain at that age to memorize poems? Did it help you later? And then just hearing your music over time, like I can feel a bit of bluegrass influence. Even if you're going I don't play as fast, I can still feel a bit of it. I feel like those two factors, which you really had no control over, your mom saying please memorize poetry and you being exposed to bluegrass really influenced the artist that you are. Absolutely the fact you can memorize that is such a valuable great to have.
Well, it's it is good and it's and it's one of those things that it's helpful in a lot of ways, Like I re memberiz soliloquies from Shakespeare and when I'm going to when I'm going to sleep, when I can't go to sleep, I just start going. Now is the winter of I just continue to make the door summer mother and I just keep doing it and then I'll fall asleep.
You know, that's your What I do is I just go through and the list my favorite Arkansas football players. I'll literally count them down. Do you do Shakespeare? I do like nineties football. Are you an A and M sports guy at all?
I don't do much sports, but I am part of the A and M system. I'm big in the Association of Former Students.
Yeah, I saw you got the big, big award there. They've only given that away to like have a certain few.
Yeah.
Do you feel like when did you speak at that when they give you the award?
H huh?
Do you feel like you have to? Like I don't know, because that when I did it, I felt like I had to be a little more proper than I normally am.
Definitely, did you Yeah, Yeah, you're kind of under the gun. Even if you want to go I want to be the coolest dude in the room, it kind of you have to shave that back a little bit. Yeah. I felt that.
I was like, I don't really like to be me, but if I'm just me, that's cool in all, but like I need to elevate it a bit. Yeah, you know, you have this songbook to play a long book. The songbook that's that's in this project. It just makes me think of that when you say that that's how you started. Yeah, as you bought a book book. Yeah, I bought a book to teach you how to play well.
Well, I'm not I'm not real adventurous about going to track people now and get them to show me something. So I'm much more of a reader than a like a communicator.
What's your relationship with Nashville and has it changed over the last three decades. Uh?
What has changed is when I first we lived here eighty five eighty seven, and when I came here, I was just frightened to death. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have really any connections. I was like a zero there and always had this kind of you know, rumbling in my stomach when I just drove it in because it would I'm not I'm not big on anxiety, but I guess that's what I was experiencing a lot, you know, and I had and I had a hard time getting in the whole. I didn't even really get in this system. We finally left but but but it was but after that, I used to say, like, I feel like sometimes I can get out there on the road and just be killing it and doing really great shows, and I come to Nashville and I feel like Superman landing on the planet Krypton, and all of a sudden, all my strengths starts sinking away. And but lately, in the last year or so, since I since I've made my exit and thinking more about like doing that, that's all gone away. I'm really I'm like, is this the happiest I've ever been being in Nashville?
Why do you feel that is? Are you limiting some of the Ah, it's not even an expectation. Are you?
But are you are?
It doesn't matter as much too, because you know who you are. You're comfortable with your your art now more than ever.
Absolutely. Yeah, That's that's really the most That's the biggest part of it is because if I wouldn't, if I really gave a damn about all all of this, really or really sensitive, I would have gotten out a long time ago. But I'm pretty bull and I you know, I do believe in myself, and now I got to a point where, you know, you know, I've done all these things and I'm still an outlier. But man, it's totally okay because I like being an outlier. I like I like doing stuff. It gives me a freedom to write whatever I want to write, do whatever I really want to do. And sometimes, you know, I get like the big forbidden zoned from some people because they just they liked, you know, the conventional. But in general, people have, you know, opened up their doors to me. I've got lots of lots of ways that i can get around doors if I can, if I get in.
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When you were going to college, what was your idea of what you would be doing with your life before music happened.
I have no idea. I really just went. You know, it's like I didn't have a real plan as a matter of fact. The way then I went to A and E. M like, So I'm driving around with my friend Duckworth's rest red nineteen seventy two Maverick and with the plaid seats and everything, and he's turning the corner and he's got a big old folders can full of snuff spit and just about that time, I said, where are you going to go to college? He goes, I'm going to go to A and M and he whips it around and the whole thing spills over my laugh and I'm going Jesus. I said, okay, well I think I'll go. I think I'll go there. I don't know what that bit, but it was like exactly what happened.
I was a sign. Yeah, it was like a jippit.
Yeah.
How long were you there before he left?
I was there a good six years, you know, easy in college station. Well, I got kicked out twice. So one time, one time I had to go back to Blynn, which people junior college are h yeah, they call Blendergarden a lot of times. And I always told him when I graduated from Blynn, I got a T shirts that says ignorance is Blenn, you know. So I was like, I had this old joke thing going about Blynn. But I got kicked out and went to Blen. So that was That was in Brian. But the next time I roughnecked every summer summer on ol Riggs. And so when I got kicked out the second time, I just went back to orig and I worked for about six months and got my money back and then went and begged them to let me back in. I mean I literally literally gave this counselor one hundred dollars bill and a bottle of Jack Danielson said let me in back in this place please, and they let me in. So I don't know if that that made a difference.
It didn't hurt though, it did not if you didn't get it back then it didn't hurt.
Yeah, so it's good.
Yeah, you kind of alternative country to me, at least that's what I felt like, like, like not even an alt defined alt country, because there's a version, there's a real life version of that. I'm make an old country, right. It always felt like you weren't purposefully you weren't out like I'm going to be different. It was almost like you're different and you wanted to do what you wanted to do. It just so happened to be different, Like I feel like you were purposely fighting the stream, but I felt like you were just going down your own stream. When did you feel like that that was the way to do it, because most people are just going to go along and try to do what is being done so they can be successful. What was your point where you go. I just have to be me or I'm not gonna make it.
I don't know about the third time somebody said I can do it, right, Yeah right? Tell me when when first?
Why would they say that? Though, like what we do, I don't know.
I would play on my song and they kind of shake their head. And I had when I first got here back in eighty five, they, you know, I had people tell me the best advice I can give you is just go back to Texas and do whatever you're doing. And I was like, that's not what I'm here for. I'm here for something else I want, you know. So I just wouldn't. I just wouldn't listen to them, you know, just and like I said, I don't know why. I'm pretty sensitive about that, but I I this was my thing. I wanted to do it, and I and I, you know, I believe in myself and i'd stick and I stick with it. And I'm big on commitment, like you know, we're talking about the band earlier and stuff. I'm big on commitment of saying, am I going to do this? I'm going to do it. And sometimes it might take a few years to get it done, but I keep going.
You've mentioned something that I is a parallel to that. Something within me is I'm extremely bullheaded and confident and at the same time I am wildly sensitive about things too. It's an odd juxt position like that, right, It's like, if you're creating, it's weird to go, I'm creating this, yet I'm not gonna be sensitive about what anybody says about that just doesn't like how do you balance that? How do you stay out of your own head and have more of the push forward than that? I don't know. I'm pretty neurotic. That's what I deal with.
No, No, I agree. I struggle with that all the time, you know, because uh, you know, you live your life and you do find out that you make some really bad decisions at times. You're but that that's not this is not a bad decision, but bottom line, you know, going back to it's it's the word, you know, It's like, it's the bottom line. I can still just back up and memorize my soliloquies and write more poems and things like that. I haven't really I wrote a song the other day and it's the first song I wrote about a year. But in that period of time, I've written a hundred poems.
And where do you write them by hand on paper?
Or do I write them on my phone? This is because I'm too bad with paper, I'll lose it all. And so I got where I just trained myself. Okay, I'm going to do this on my phone. So I've got them all on my phone. There there's a few on paper, but in general they're all.
Is most of your songwriting, taking your poetry and turning it into song or or not. You're just writing songs straight.
The thing about poetry and the reason that I turned to is because I just I have to have that outlet, I have to have that great about it. So I wrote the poems. But I found out that there's this great freedom in writing a poem instead of like trying to attach some music to it, and so it gives me. It liberates me even more so because I can just talk about anything. I mean, like a good example was I wrote this poem about I was out by this lake and people kept telling me about this giant alligator gar that wasn't supposed to be in this lake, but somebody had slipped it in there at the nighttime, and that like it was eating up all the little fish and you had to be really careful, like it was the Boogeyman. And so I just turned this thing into this big thing about this lake and this alligator guard at the bottom leke, and then basically you get down there and it's the devil. So just like you know, you can't cram that all of the song, really, I mean you could, I guess Charlie Daniels could maybe.
But do your poems have to rhyme?
No?
Do most of them rhyme?
Most of them? Probably?
Yeah, I'd like those. I'm simple. Yeah, I like my poems rhyme. Well, I think it makes it went back to memorization. I think it makes it easier for another person outside or memorize them or really get the whole point, because when you do free form, you know, it's a lot of times it turns into the laundry list and you don't really do that.
Do you ever go to rhymezone dot com and you can't find that rhyme?
Oh yeah, I've done that. Yeah, sure, I've got.
To rhyme zone dot com. Be like cat and then it's got like five hundred dat nat sad, And I'm like, what can I fit it because if I'm writing like a comedy song and I'm like, well I need something in the rhymes a bucket and I can't use the one I want.
To do, I have one of those. So I did I have a song that's called that.
As a matter of fact, how many people do you think found you? Learned you from the Road goes On Forever? Wait a percentage? That's how I found you. The live version, which I didn't know was like also the main version. I was like, and this, dude, and I think I saw you at a cl like like I have a history. I have a history of like watching you play and listen to your music. But I was like, dang, those live records are this good? But then that was the version when you recorded that? Or did you know that? Did you have a feeling that that song was gonna be the one that pop so hard?
It's a really good question about it, because I really don't know. I can't assist my own songs early very well. I mean when I wrote that song, I thought, you know, there's up tempo, cool, got you know, some drama in and stuff like that. But I didn't know do that. I didn't know like that Christmas song would like give me fourteen years on the road of Christmas shows I had. I just have a hard time. And I'll say this by contrast, there are songs that I think are really great and they never catch fire. People know, they don't hear them. But I love them and I think they're great, and I keep doggedly trying to go, you're gonna like this song if you listen to it, but it just doesn't happen. So I don't really have any idea of what really is a hit. For some reason.
Do you have songs that were poems that you were like, I got to turn this now into a song?
Uh, something like that. One time, I did the exercise where I wanted to write a song that had absolutely no rhyme at all at all, So I really pretty much wrote it as a poem and then but the end goal was to make it in the song, so then I then I added the music, so that was that's about.
But nothing rhyme the whole song.
Nothing.
How'd that do?
It's great, It's fantastic. As a matter of fact, I got this guy, guy Baptiste Homan from France to sing it in French while I while I narrated it in English with the music and he's you know, that great French thing. It's just it makes it so sexy when he sings it, you know, and I'm under there, you know, with this under and the girl did this and this, and it's so fantastic. So yeah, it was. It was I've never really played for anybody. It's just somewhere and you have it.
Because I didn't know what you said.
I I just I never number one I wanted to do with it. I just it's kind of it kind of doesn't fit unless you were like this, do some kind of deep cutstick. But it's beautiful.
The I have the box set, so I have the whole the whole thing beautifully packaged. Yes, a lot of different things. There's a DVD, there's a song book. I was talking, there's just a lot. There's a lot there.
Why that it started, it just became that. It was like we started with just music and recording, and we did record the DVD at the same time we recorded the audio, so that all matches, uh, And after that, you know, it was like, well, we've got to have a songbook because this is all new content and people should see that. So we did the song, but and then I think Clara Roa started talking about like somebody was doing a graphic novel, and I said, well, that would be fun to do. So we started to get into that, and that was the one that nearly killed us because I never that's it's a lot of work.
A lot of work, a lot of people drawing of it.
Yeah, I didn't, you know, I didn't draw that. I hired that out. But I managed the whole thing, in the storyline and everything. But I even had to get a guy, a dialogue guy to write the dialogue because because I couldn't be as I wasn't as clever as this guy was. He was really clever. So I got so I had the storyline, the whole visual concept, but I had to get that somebody I can't draw that well, So no.
I get that I wrote a kid's book and I can't draw it all. And you know, you have to go and find somebody who kind of represents what your texture is, which is a hard thing to do. I would say it would be as if you were an artist, and not talking about you, but any artist who writes songs but finds a song that they didn't write but still speaks for them like that's rare that that can actually happen. But I have friends are really great songwriters, but sometimes there's a song that pops into their world that they didn't write, and they're like, this represents who I am and it's odd. And I felt that way with finding somebody who to draw my words and thoughts. Sure that this person has to draw what I'm feeling and how what I'm saying, And that was a more difficult process than I would have thought.
Yeah, yeah, it's grabbing that feeling. That's that's that's the magic.
There. You're going and you're doing more shows, but you're not retired. I guess I never thought you were retired.
Well, I retired. I'm retired really from touring. So I don't have a bus. The band that I put together is the same band that I have, but it's just because I was. It's going incidentally, they were. It was I'm lucky that they still have some space in the calendar. And then but you know, the thing is was the the grind of touring, you know, just getting off a tour and then preparing for the next tour and never stopped. It never did stop. I mean, it's just like, kept going, kept going, and I just got to a point where I thought I was wearing everybody out. So I didn't think in terms about like this taking a year off, you know, and that kind of thing. I always wondered why those people take a year off. They're like twenty five years old and they said, no, I'm going to take a year. OFFICE said, that's because you don't have any man. Don't tell me that. I mean, you don't have to take a year off. But I don't know why. That didn't really cross my mind. I just thought at that time, and I did feel a certain amount of burnout going on with me. I just felt like I was blazing through a lot of stuff. I wasn't really phoning it in, but I was. I was. I was definitely a little bit muddled, and I really felt like I was losing and I did not want which is the irony ears like, I'm still beat up, but I did not want to be one of those people that are all beat up and you know they're pushing them up on the stage or getting the ladder for them or whatever they're doing. I wanted to go in the best I could go out, but well, I came in, you know, and that was really part. That was a big part of the decision.
Are you looking forward to the shows? Yeah, like with genuine excitement. That's cool. Did you get to revisit that feeling that got you started, made you successful and gave you longevity? Because it does it doesn't go away. But if you eat wonderful steak every day, it eventually just becomes steak. It doesn't matter what it is. If you do it all the time.
It just becomes normal, right sir.
But to be able to get that again has got to be exciting.
No, it's really good. It's you know, I'm so glad that I did kind of get off my high horse about I'm not going to do anything because the couple of shows that I've played since we did this had just been you know, they've been in this huge boost. And I also realized that there was a certain amount of just adrenaline going on there that like as soon as like it got two days or two days before a show and or day a couple of day after is always kind of a little bit of a letdown. But up to the show, I just got this huge boost and I feel better than I ever felt like two years, you know, like, oh man, I feel so good, And it was all just because it's like I know what I'm doing. This is a place where I know what I'm doing and I'm gonna and I'm ready to go with it. You know.
So you ever say the wrong place on stage?
Oh? Yeah? Yeah?
Did you ever start? When did you start writing it? When I would tour, I'd have to write it like I do comedy, stand up comedy. After eventually I got smart and wrote it down, because you know, two or three nights in a row you're traveling, you kind of forget. You're just going on back doors and places you can easily forget. When was that? When did that bill go off? For you? Like, I should probably keep this around where.
I can see where I am, somewhere in ann Arbor. I was in ann Arbor and I got up and it was just kind of a showcase Steve Neil and I got up there and I said something like, you know, hello Gary, Indiana, and I just as you can't do that again. But I don't write it down like you do, Bobby. What what I do is like if I realize that it's gonna blank out my brain, I just go, but it's great to be here.
General.
Yeah, Vegas, Vegas. That could possibly be.
Yeah, I obviously I'm not the one that invented this, but I would put it on the set list. But then I would make it like part of the set list, so if whenever somebody got the set list, they would think I was making it special. Yeah, you know, if I'm in Boston, wow, this is his dot. No, I just need to remember that I was in Boston because again, and you would know this more than I do, it's not it's fun and it's amazing in it For me, it's fulfilling, but it's not that glamorous because again you're just going on back doors and you're killing a few hours in between soundcheck and the show in a bus or and not a lot of glamour, not a lot of people. You know, people, it's a grind.
No, I tell people. You know, you that bus there, you think it's like luxurious and cool, and it does look nice inside, but basically it's a traderhouse on wheels and there we're just rolling down the highway in a traderhouse. So don't don't get all knocked out about the whole idea.
You know, yeah, it is fine. But anything you're in all the time also is like that steak.
Yeah.
And the first night back in a bus because the touring for me is like country touring. Uh, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Friday, Saturday, the first night back in the bus anytime, and I'm in a bed and they hit the road. The side wrote, I never sleep well the first time rumbull strip scare the crap out of me. Can you sleep on a bus?
On and off? I'm not always good. I'm not one of those guys that just like, oh now I can sleep. There's people that can't sleep in real life and they can sleep on a bus.
The Bobby Cast will be right back. This is the Bobby Cast.
Do you have anything from any other friends or contemporaries that they like, Hey, I want you to have this hat or this guitar or something special to you that you've you've kept either at your house or anything like any memorabilia type stuff.
I got a hat from just being at hats. I got a hat from Bill Herne, who's out in Santa Fe and he's a long time musician. He's been like he plays at the Lafonda and these little hotel rooms and stuff, and he has he has about one percent sight born like that right. But he's a great singer, a great, great flat picker. And I've been friends with him a long time. And he gave me a hat with a it's a it's a what they the crease would be. They call it a gus. I used to call it atom mix. But it's creased down this way and goes slopes down forward, and it has this big band around it and it has all these little icons of stuff, you know, there's the road goes on forever and and Christmas stuff and it's about that. Why it's a beautiful hat. So that's that's when I like, you know, I keep up there right on my dresser. So it reminds me, like, you know, I got some really good friends out there, and this music that's cool there.
What do you what do you do? What do you have that is non musically or art related at all? That it's kind of a safe place or a disconnect? Is it fishing? Is it?
Oh?
I q Q dogs?
I know I have a great dog. I've wrote his English Cocker Spaniel and uh I've been working like last year with a trainer training him and even uh the trainer had to move from Lakey, Texas to Kansas, and I even took him up to Kansas and stayed stayed a while with his family, and uh, you know, he showed me a lot of the things that he does. And I always thought the whole dog thing would be just a huge pain in the ascid. It is really hard and a lot of work, but it's kind of worked that's really satisfying. And like like I say, I got this really great dog and he's he was born to find birds. I mean, he's our here. He came fully fully equipped except for just the fundamentals about sid stay and hear that kind of thing.
But we had good bird dogs. We had a great quell dog. There were point for it felt like hours. Yeah, just point he'd identified them. Yeah and just hold just whole.
I don't know how people get those dogs to do that.
And we had a couple that weren't as good, but that was like the so everything was always compared to him. And then we had a great duck dog and duck dogs. Yeah, I don't want to get wet, you know, lab black lab like identify before I even hit I did it, gone boom, bring it back before we could actually fight about who shot it, because you know, everybody, everybody shooting up. But yeah, we had really those two dogs. But all of their discipline, you know, obviously translated into like their normal life. They were great freaking dogs.
Oh right, yeah, no, no, that yeah, they're all around great dogs. I mean, you know, I had some labs, but and and I had one English Cocker spander. He could care less about a bird, but he's a beautiful dog and a nice dog. But uh then I got Roady, and Roady's he's all of it. He's he's a great dog. As a matter of fact, I got so sick about a year and a half ago that I just thought I was gonna be a bit. And I give him credit for saving my life because he would I would be out there by myself and he would come and just lay with me, and then like when I'd fall asleep, he'd run out and chase the cats for a while or something and go eat. And then as soon as I just even made a stir like I was going to get up, Boomi's right there. He's like, like, thank you, Roady.
That's awesome. I want to talk about let's Valet because we were talking about Western Chill before you came in and just talking about the project and what it is. But I do want talk about Let's Valet just because the story that was kind of attached to it is, like I said, I don't know. It felt to me like there's some mystery guy in a luchador mask named Taylor walking you around town, getting you in back doors and places.
So it's actually a Taylor, soone.
See, that's why I'm asking. I felt like it was a guy in a wrestling mask. I didn't want to know who he was. So that's in Nashville. So walk me through that story.
Okay, So I was, I was. It was CMA week and I was doing some stuff for being mine. They sent me out to do some red carpet stuff and I was a fish out of water for sure, And so I knew this this lady Taylor, but she volunteered to come take me around and do this, and she was great at it. I mean she just slip in there, slip out, you know how it is. It's like you're pushing you in. You got to talk to this guy. No, you can't talk to this guy. And so she was she's getting us through. And we got downtown down there on you know, Broadway in fifth right by the Rhyman so and it was just packed. There were no parking spaces. And I said, what do we do, Taylor? And she said, let's valet. And I said, man, people have told me that I should write a song about their grandma who's always cooked cookies or something, or they used to have a tiger in their backyard and that would make a great song. And I always go, this is a terrible da and but and I said, but let's Valet. That's a song title. I don't know how it's gonna play out, but it's a song title. As soon as I write it, I'm gonna you get the co write on this one. She's okay. So so I wrote the song and then I a couple of weeks later, I ran into I had one line that was kind of clunky, and I ran in my friend Dean Dylan, who's just mister you know everything and writing. He's a Stephen Somnheim of country music basically, and and I said, well, can you help me with this this line? You can go oil robber dull. Let me hear a little bit of the song. So I've just played him a little of it and he's just like, well, here's the line and that's it. So it's a three way co right between Dean and Taylor and MEA.
Final two questions out for you. Are you a photographic memory?
No, No, I have. I have a great memory for numbers.
Do you see them differently? It's in what way my wife sees words differently? She can when she speaks it, or someone speaks to her every words written out in front of her in a conversation, so she can spell words backwards for wow, like she has.
Well I want that, yeah, me too.
The problem is when I get we get to have a disagreement and we're arguing about who said what. I know, either she's absolutely right and I can't prove she's wrong, or if she's making it up, I still can't prove she's wrong because she always has she just has she kidding. Yeah, some people when they play an instrument, I don't have this. They see different they see numbers or they sell in colors or so how do you how do you think your version of numbers is different than like mine, where I'm not very good at numbers, Like how do you see them?
Number numbers do just flash up in my head and like if someone you know somebody? I know all the president's birthdays. I know, I know tons and tons. Wow, those birthdays, I know them in an order.
You know every president's birthday. Enough for me to fact check that statement right now. Hey, Mike, we looked us up. Got him up right now, so I can name any president, even the most obscure president. By the way, he has no phone out. This was not set up ahead of time.
Will you McKinley, it's the twenty ninth of January.
Mike, will you please tell me William McKinley's birth today, twenty ninth January. This is crazy. I gotta do one more. I can't believe that you can do this. This is wild. Okay, okay, okay, how about what's the most absolute most obscure president. Okay, I'm just gonna go with Garfield.
Garfield is the nineteenth of November.
Okay, mikey it is the nineteenth of November. When when did you know? And how did you use this to your advantage? This is like a superhour. It's like if Spider Man never used his webs. Like, this is crazy.
I just, you know, I knew, I knew numbers, and and I'm you know, kind of I'm not like academic about presidents, but I do like the presidents. And I thought, well, you know, I could just memorize all these guys from George Washington all the all the way through Biden and and I you know, I bet I could do it. It didn't take me very long at all. So I just I just memorized them. I used to have I could. I can snatch onto the year every once out, but the year is a little bit harder.
What about do you know? So then you know every president in order? Huh, that's crazy. I don't even like challenging him because I just believe him. He just crushed nailing two president's birthdays. Holy crap. Well, final final question, how much do you want to write from here out?
I want to write music music.
Yeah, that's a good question.
I don't have a real good answer for that, because I want to. I want to. My prose has gotten better. Like I said it was bad, my prose has gotten better. I enjoy it more. I like, I like writing these poems. And this kind of frightens me. Bobby is like somebody told me that what Spotify gets six hundred thousand songs a month or something crazy, And then there's a hologram in Japan that has one hundred and seventy five thousand downloaded AI created songs, and it's just like, well, where do you find the place and all of that. So it's that's a discourag for me, you know. But I mean, I'm me, so I'm going to have my own take. But I'm just in the wash of everything. I just don't know if it's all going to be washed out. I mean, I do I do cotton to this idea is that I am an artist and it's really my job to keep exploring that and keep walking into that unknown. And so that's what keeps me going as far as writing songs, but as far as like having a plan on it. Herbert Hoover, Herbert Hoover is the tenth Well, that's that's a split because he's well, there's some people say he's eleventh of August. Man, he's the tenth of August.
Okay, Well, let's fact check that first. I'm listened to the tenth of August.
Okay.
Why why is there the disagreement?
When he was I don't know. I ran it into a book that there was because he was an orphan.
This is the coolest party trick I've ever not the orphan part, the part you nailing that. This is the coolest thing that's ever happened here. I'm just throwing dates at you. I remember my birthdays. Robert rol Keene again. Go to Robert rol Keen dot com, which we mentioned earlier Western Chill June seventh. You may hear this months after June seventh. That means it exists right now, and it's got so much in it. It's box set in box set form twenty twenty three, the CD, the vinyl, the graphic novel, which, by the ways, about one hundred pages. Yeah, that's significant. Yeah, my kid's book was like twenty one pages. That's nothing. You've heard of what you did, the play along sing Along songbook, the DVD. Just been a big fan, Thank you for a long time. Was introduced to you when I was like twenty two and moved to Austin and was like, you don't know Robert Rokeana And I was like I don't, And then very quickly you learn who Robert Rolkeina is. When you live down there, so it's really cool. Thank you for coming over and spending some time with me, and I wish you the best of luck with this project.
And whatever else I'm memorizing. Taft Oh, William Howard tafting the fifteenth of September. There's only two virgos in the in the whole presidential deal.
Here's the other one LB of course. All right, thank you, Robert, that's funny.
Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production