Review: Robert Earl Keen’s “Ready for Confetti”

Robert Earl Keen’s 16th album “Ready for Confetti” is a musically adventurous, almost joyous-sounding album that lives up to its playful title.
Keen has said he approached this album differently, writing on the road for a change and encouraging lots of feedback. It worked. “Ready for Confetti” is a diverse, yet focused collection, packed with memorable songs.
Fron the upbeat title song to the reggae-flavored “Waves on the Ocean,” Keen sounds like a man having fun making music and experimenting with new sounds.
On much of the album, he sounds hopeful and happy – except when he’s clearly not.
“The Road Goes on and On” is a double-barreled assault on Toby Keith. It wonders what Keith will do when his “sycophants” leave him and charges that “You lost your grip on that flag you wave, but you wave it right or wrong.” It’s tough stuff and very entertaining.
What inspired the song?
Keen told the Austin American-Statesman: “It’s been some stuff that has happened over the years, but the last thing was that single off his last record (“Bullets in the Gun”). I never pay any attention, but my phone exploded with e-mails and texts about the song; People were saying, how come he took your song and why didn’t he come up with his own song?
Melodically, it’s not dead on top of it, but cadence-wise and story-wise, it’s taken out of (Keen’s song) “The Road Goes On Forever.”
… I wasn’t about to sue him, so I thought I’d answer in kind. I just wanted to say, stop with the nonsense. So I wrote him a song. It’s no different than Kitty Wells or Hank Thompson singing “(It Wasn’t God Who Made) Honky-Tonk Angels” or classic literary characters like Alexander Pope or Jonathan Swift answering people. You answer them in the way you know how to best answer. There’s a precedent in literature and music for doing that, so that’s what I did.”
Keen revisits “Paint the Town Beige,” one of his best songs, with a new and simpler take. He also covers Todd Snider’s “Play A Train Song” and closes out the album with the century-old “Soul of a Man.”
“Ready for Confetti” is one of Keen’s most engaging albums, and that’s saying something. 16 albums in, the music’s as fresh as ever.