REK at the Aztec

Robert Earl Keen at the Aztec Theater in down town San Antonio.

The Merry Christmas from the fam-o-lee Xmas extravaganza.

Usually fun and there was a new twist. Like other Capricorn entertainers I know, the live show needs to add an extra element to make it more amusing, worth the price, and worth slogging all around downtown to get parking then to get to the show.

Weird crowd, too, with no clear demarcation between generations, appealing to both young and old. Although, next to me, seemed like a number of the youngest folks spent some extra time at the bar in the lobby.

Sounded like the chords for “O Tannebaum,” but the short attention span theater, songs for a snap chat generation lyric was simply the line, “O Sisyphus,” repeated. At the end of the minute-long show, REK paused, “There’s more, but it all goes downhill from there.”

Briefly before, Camus in reading notes. Book images — visual proof.

Yeah, get the joke?

Having to explain a French Existentialist joke to a date is a little weird, but it does — originally — draw from standardized Greek mythology.

Book I’m currently reading, called News of the World, it has — maybe a hundred pages in — a main character who might be called a grumpy old man. In my mind, as I’m reading the book, I just keep seeing Robert Earl Keen as the image for that character.

REK is starting to really look like the The Most Interesting Man.

Merry Christmas from the family is a holiday tradition, and well-worth the visit. The new album, a double album, also excellent.

He did several songs on it, but in particular, Shade of Gray. Older tune, but recycled, and with new eyes and ears. It’s on the new album, but looks like it’s from the 1997 Picnic album.

One purported purpose of art is to make sense of a crazy world. Originally, the song’s story is about the the bombing of Oklahoma City, and resisting domestic terrorism is a part of what art helps us understand, or cope, in some capacity.

New eyes and ears, makes more sense.

We live and die by shades of gray.

No. 2 Live Dinner – Robert Earl Keen

Live Dinner Reunion – Robert Earl Keen