Robert Earl Keen returns to Tucson for post-'retirement' gig

Robert Earl Keen had planned to take his “I’m Comin’ Home: 41 Years On The Road” farewell tour for a spin around the country for most of 2022, then settle into a life of writing and recording, with a few one-off shows close to home in Texas.

But it didn’t quite work out as the Americana/country singer-songwriter had planned.

When it comes to this whole quitting thing, “I’m failing fantastically,” he confessed.

He took some time off, but then he faced some financial obligations and personal life disruptions that lured him back out there. Once there, Keen discovered “I really missed performing.”

“I tried woodworking, but that wouldn’t work. And then I tried synchronized swimming, and I didn’t enjoy that because the rest of the band wouldn’t synchronize with me,” he joked during a late June phone call from Texas to talk about his show at Rialto Theatre on Saturday, July 12.

“I realized that performing and writing songs, those are the two things that I’m really good at, and everything else I’m just abysmal.”

Saturday’s concert is Keen’s first in Tucson since his fall 2021 post-COVID show at the Rialto, a makeup for his March 2020 concert that he pulled out of when the World Health Organization declared the global pandemic. Keen was one of the first artists in the country and the first heading to Tucson to cancel a date because of COVID-19.

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He comes here in the midst of making “Wailing War” with noted Memphis producer Matt Ross-Spang; he hopes to finish recording this summer and release the album in early 2026.

It’s Keen’s first studio record since 2015’s “Happy Prisoner: The Bluegrass Sessions” and comes three years after he and the band released “Western Chill,” a compilation of his and his band members’ songs that they recorded during the pandemic at his Snake Barn Movie Ranch Studios.

Keen said he took time off from making studio albums after becoming discouraged with the overall industry.

“I made records real consistently, every two to four years from the first record I ever made in 1981,” he explained. “And then somewhere in about 2012, I felt like I wasn’t getting any attention. The sales plummeted. Interest was really low. I had a hard time even getting my name on the back page of some kind of radio promotion thing, you know. I lost a lot of heart.”

But once he started talking about quitting and slowing down, his phone started ringing.

“Just seems like one of the things that I did by ‘retiring’ was I piqued a lot of people’s interest,” he said, including the Grand Ole Opry, which invited him to make his debut in March. “I have a lot more knocking on my door these days.”

Keen’s concert Saturday at the Rialto, 318 E. Congress St., begins at 8 p.m.; Kolton Moore & the Clever Few open the show. Tickets are $43.50-$76.30 through rialtotheatre.com.