Sugar Hill Records
1993
Bigger Piece of Sky
About This Album
Arguably his finest record, Robert Earl Keen's A Bigger Piece of Sky is a transitional album for him -- he begins to evolve out of the terrain of his organic small-town Texas songwriting comfort zone and to walk the knife's edge between a more expansive meld of roots rock, honky tonk country, and Western back-porch folk. Keen is an inheritor of that particular brand of songwriting that Jerry Jeff Walker established in the 1970s, where the good times and wandering life of a minstrel are juxtaposed against a small-town view of a confounding world. Produced with crisp attention to detail by Garry Velletri, Keen's songs observe the smaller details in a private life, whether that life remains in the same place mentally and physically or, because of some mercurial and difficult-to-place event, slips over the line into forbidden territory. Both kinds of songs are here. The album opens slowly with "So I Can Take My Rest." This is Keen at his very best. He records loneliness, uncertainty, and the vulnerability of a man at his limit, one who seeks only simple solace in the evening to get through another day. The acoustic guitars, whispering snares, and organic bassline drift and drone, propelling the singer to disclose his fear and need.
Track List

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