American singer and songwriter Robert Earl Keen is especially popular with traditional country and folk music fans, as well as the college radio crowd and alt-country fans. The artist has released fourteen albums so far, the most recent of them being The Best of Robert Earl Keen released in 2007.
The 2006 album entitled Live at the Ryman: The Greatest Show Ever Been Gave was the 4th live album and 13th overall, from Keen. The record was released via Koch Records in mid-July 2006 in the US and 6 days later in the UK.
Robert Earl Keen managed to strike an unusual balance between raucous barroom fun (like in "That Buckin' Song") and sensitive story-portraits (like in "Corpus Christi Bay"). The two types of compositions in Robert’s output were unified by a sense of humor that influenced the early material of what would become known as alternative country music.
Robert Earl Keen made a splash with his debut album, entitled No Kinda Dancer. The artist moved to Nashville during the heady experimentalism of the ‘80s but he soon decided to return to Austin. Robert was inspired by the picturesque Texas landscapes and residents that inspiration is seen in his 2nd album, West Textures. After that CD came Gringo Honeymoon that merged Robert's story tracks with the emerging sounds of alt-country, where guitars were laid down by Austin musician Gurf Morlix. The latter produced albums for both Robert Earl Keen, Lucinda Williams.
In 2001, after the artist signed with the Lost Highway label, the album Gravitational Forces was released. Two years later, Keen recorded his 8th studio album, entitled Farm Fresh Onions, and The Party Never Ends: Songs You Know from the Times You Can't Remember, which is a compilation of the singer’s Sugar Hill days. His next releases were 2005’s What I Really Mean and 2006’s by Live at the Ryman.
