Robert Earl Keen – The Rose Hotel
4 out of 5 stars
by Sweet Annie Rich

The Rose Hotel

Robert Earl Keen has been a driving presence in Americana for the past 15 years, at the very least, and his latest offering “The Rose Hotel” only further cements his place in the alt-country pantheon.  While none of these songs are the next “The Road Goes On Forever,” it’s an album of solid Keen material that’s bound to become part of the drunken singalongs that are his live shows.

It’s certainly not a new outing for Keen, but at this point in his career straying too much from the beaten path would detract from his essence as an artist.  The title track is exactly what an opener should be – it’s catchy, mid-tempo, with an infinitely singable chorus.  But as always with a good Keen song there’s an undercurrent of sadness that keeps the twang authentic.

It’s this turn of phrase that keeps Keen fans coming back for more and makes even the most die-hard anti-country advocates stop and listen.  “Throwing Rocks” starts out like any other lazy good-time song but immediately turns on itself halfway through, going from rollicking love song to rolling story of revenge.  As such it’s a standout on a disc full of solid songs.

Keen pays tribute to his forebears appropriately, covering Townes Van Zandt’s “Flying Shoes” with a chunky bass line.  “The Man Behind the Drums” is a pure meta-country ode to Levon Helm.  It’s a refreshing sense of humility that Keen possesses in regard to these legends, as if he realizes that some put him on their level but knows in his heart of hearts that he can only look up to them.

Some songs don’t quite hit the emotional apex.  “Goodbye Cleveland” ought to be every bit the weeper, but something about the way Keen stretches out the words of the chorus just makes it another candidate for rowdy singing along, which is exactly what this song shouldn’t be.  Some songs are played for the laughs, which is always fun, but “10,000 Chinese Walk Into A Bar” still doesn’t seem to reach the funny bone quite like previous gut-busters (“The Great Hank” comes to mind).

As a whole, “The Rose Hotel” is fun, relaxed, and at turns surprising.  Keen’s attitude is best summed up in the song “Something I Do,” which with a chorus of “I kinda like just doing nothing, it’s something that I do,” encapsulates the easy and familiar feeling that fans have come to know and love.

It’s been quite a few weeks in coming, but Sweet Annie Rich has finally gotten her act together and cut the audio of her interview with Corb Lund on October 3.  Corb provided quite the interview with a lot of his back story and put on an entertaining show later that night at the Berkeley Cafe.

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Several WKNC DJs have been featured on Goodnight Raleigh, and Sweet Annie Rich has now joined the ranks.  Check out this small glimpse into WKNC’s Saturday mornings!

Dear, dear Americana Blues & Company listeners.  This is Sweet Annie Rich here, back from a summer-long hiatus and announcing here that I have returned to the glorious Triangle area to fill your ears with sweet, sweet tunes once again.  I’m sure that DJ Caid has done well in my absence (he even wished me a happy twenty-first birthday, I heard, and I would like you all to know I had not imbibed nearly as much as he implied).  “Oh, Sweet Annie,” you might ask, “where have you been all this time?”

Dearest listeners, if I told you I’d have to kill you.

Rather than meet certain death and wondering at my past three months’ whereabouts, I suggest tuning in this Saturday, August 8th.  I’m back on the air, folks, and I’m gonna be here for a good long while once again.

In the same vein as La Barba Rossa (because hey, I see the dude every week and it turns out we have similar wacky mindsets), I think it’s high time to get a look at (of all things) religion in Americana music.  It’s an undeniable element that in some way has some root in the creation of all these songs.  Whether it’s about getting religion, losing religion, changing religion, musing on religion, or losing your girl to religion (you think I’m joking)… one just cannot deny that the presence of a higher power is integral to American music.

One of the first and most obvious places to go looking for religion is in the heart of Americana: the Appalachians.  The European immigration to the Appalachia region was in itself from deeply religious stock – think Scottish, Irish, Scots-Irish, English, Welsh.  Add to this mix the relative isolation of living in a mountainous region in the 18th century, and you’ve got a class of people who are going to have a strong sense of culture and preservation.  History lesson aside, this is still a region where music and religion make their most explosive collide.  Take, for instance, the Stanley Brothers.  The most familiar example is the song “Angel Band,” though not every song of theirs is so optimistic.  There’s an element of darkness and haunting that lurks at the edges of these songs that makes this sort of music so unforgettable.

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In the same vein, more modern artists in the mountain music tradition are bound to include at least one song or one reference to religion – usually through a filter of the harsh reality of mortality, or featuring the Americana artist’s other favorite otherworldly being: the Devil.  The Devil and Death are the prominent elements of religion that you’re going to find in these updated takes, such as this tune by Gillian Welch.

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And then there’s the issue of losing one’s religion, and trust me, the Americana giants were doing it long before Michael Stipe was even born.  Sometimes we know why the singers of the songs lost their faith, and sometimes we’re plunked down into the middle of their particular crisis without a frame of reference.  In either case, the end result is something vaguely longing and wistful – there is a sense that something is missing even when there’s an outright refusal to go back to the old religion.  Johnny Cash, who was known best for shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die, is no different.

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Of course, if nothing else, sometimes the entire point of this music is to almost create a new type of religion.  In the end many times it’s the songs that’ll change you – why else do you think there are always people who reverently speak of a song that changed their lives or at least gave them some sense of meaning?  Americana naturally has this same power.  In his biography of Gram Parsons (titled Hickory Wind), Ben Fong-Torres spoke of the times that Gram would sing hallelujah, and if you didn’t have religion before, you were bound to have it after.  When a genre has such deeply spiritual origins, it’s not so hard to believe that sentiment.

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gram parsons

As the lovely host of Americana Blues & Company here at WKNC, I am frequently asked two questions when I try to explain my show to someone:

1. Wait, your DJ name is Sweet Annie Rich?  But that’s not your real name…
2. What is Americana?

To answer the first question, I must say to you: Gram Parsons.  If you do not know who he was, look him up.  It will make answering the second question much, much, MUCH easier.

Secondly… Americana is a LOT of things.  It’s not simply country or bluegrass or rockabilly or what-have-you.  It’s an amalgamation of the genres born right here in America (hence “Americana”), and, to quote the late great Gram Parsons himself: it is Cosmic American Music.  It is where all of the purely American styles come together to create the true spirit of music.  It is pure and transcendent.

For a primer in Americana, here’s a video which contains the old (a Gram Parsons song with Emmylou Harris, who is ubiquitous to the genre) meeting the new (Ryan Adams singing the part Gram used to sing) to keep this transcendent spirit alive and going: