ON ROBERT EARL KEEN’S new live album, No. 2 Live Dinner (Sugar Hill), the chants of his adulators sound like those of a crowd swooning over a prizefighter on his way to the ring: “Robert Earl Keen! Robert Earl Keen!” The Bandera resident wants to be taken seriously as a songwriter, and he deserves to be—he writes long, complex songs of considerable artistry—yet on the new album, the audience’s whooping and word-for-word singing all but drown him out. Like his Texas A&M University pal Lyle Lovett, Keen cut his teeth on the progressive-country sound of the seventies, a casual blend of country, folk, rock, blues, gospel, and Western swing, and seeing him at age forty you think: This is the new Jerry Jeff Walker. But…
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