Even if you don’t know the name Robert Earl Keen, you probably know REK. The Houston-bred troubadour has been covered by everyone from George Strait, to supergroup the Highwaymen, to slightly less super group the Dixie Chicks. Since his 1984 debut, No Kinda Dancer, the acoustic guitar-driven, craggy, sad-sack country rambler fare has established the Lone Star State picker as a songwriter’s songwriter. It’s as gloomy and plaintive an album as anything this side of
Townes Van Zandt, and as underrated a dose of tears-in-beers balladry as most John Prine.

Robert Earl Keen plays the House of Blues on Saturday, November 23 at 8:00 p.m.

Time, and such success, has inevitably softened some edges. And 2011’s Ready for Confetti, his latest, comes in far easier to digest packaging, with pop-ish production, and modern radio rock leanings. But Keen’s language is descriptive, vivid, and despite the dating of lines like “you’ll have to Google that” and mention of “earbuds,” the man has a timeless knack for easy shufflin’ country and memorable hooks.

He’s generally at his best on the story songs—the mournful, boozy “Corpus Christi Bay,” the epic five-minute crime spree track “The Road Goes On Forever”—the latter of which feels like the tale telling of late era Dylan, with novel-sque details, humor, and the dusty charm of Peckinpah. And like Bob himself, Keen’s technically far from being the world’s greatest singer. But you don’t go see him to hear all the right notes, or pretty wails, but to take in the humor, the yarns, the twang, of a bona fide miles-covered raconteur. And, really, you go because, “the road goes on forever, and the party never ends.”