Robert Earl Keen was still in high school when Willie Nelson and Jerry Jeff Walker ruled the Central Texas outlaw country scene in the early 70s, and by the time he started playing his own singer-songwriter gigs around Austin a decade later, the crowds had moved on to blues and punk. He tried his luck in Nashville for a spell but never did catch on there like his old Texas A&M chum Lyle Lovett. So, just like Willie before him, he came back to Texas and started his own damn scene. He hit the road with legendary songsmiths Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, playing the role of the new kid with promise (fortunately with the songs to back it up). Critics and fellow songwriters took a shine to Keens smart, literate storytelling, and, somewhere between his 1989 sophomore album West Textures and 1994s Gringo Honeymoon, tons of college kids realized his more rowdy fare provided the perfect soundtrack for a wild and crazy hot Texas night. Quite a few of those kids ended up picking up guitars themselves, and before the end of the 90s, Keen was the unofficial godfather of a brand new Texas outlaw country scene that continues to thrive today. But even though lots of young guns have built very successful careers out of copping Keens high-octane, Road Goes On Forever fervor, few of them have mastered the finer art of consistently turning out such fine albums as 1993s A Bigger Piece of Sky, 1998s Walking Distance and 2005s What I Really Mean that sound just as good (and often even better) after the party actually does end.