There’s a big race down in Dallas.
Don’t you wish that you were there?
You can bet your bottom dollar
On that iron grey mare.
Won’t you bet on Stewball? – She might win, win, win.
Bet on Stewball  – She might win.

There weren’t any big races in Dallas on Saturday; just a starter handicap, a couple allowances and a bunch of maiden and claiming races. Elsewhere, there was the Arkansas Derby, but that was in Hot Springs.

The big feature at Lone Star Park was the Robert Earl Keen show after the day’s race program.

Coincidentally, the last time I saw Robert Earl was at a racetrack in Fredericksburg. That was at an ancient quarter horse track with wooden stands and two dollar beers. Lone Star Park, on the other hand, is a much newer state of the art racing facility; even if it does, at a distance, look like some drunken hillbilly’s idea of an Arabian pleasure palace out in the middle of a Grand Prairie swamp.

It’s also a pretty decent venue for a concert when they book a worthwhile act. Of course, those are few and far between. The night before Foreigner was scheduled to play some of their boring dinosaur rock but I’m pretty sure the tornadoes and hailstorms that swept through the area Friday night squashed that one.

At least it didn’t rain Saturday and Robert Earl managed to draw a sizable crowd despite the bitterly cold wind. Judging by the beer spray flying through the air and the beer cans and bottles littering the grounds and the whiskey bottles being passed around and the general rowdiness of the audience, the cold probably didn’t bother too many people there.

After an opening set by Oklahoma’s Eli Young Band, Robert Earl kicked things off with Stewball, from his all acoustic The Live Album. It was the all too obvious choice.

So was the Texas Rangers ball cap he wore.

The sound at Lone Star is surprisingly good in certain places. They set up the stage at the edge of the track facing the main building and the simulcast pavilion and it creates a perfect little acoustic chamber in a couple of spots.

Plus it’s really loud.

Robert Earl has the whole live show thing down (4 of his 14 commercial releases are live records). And Saturday’s show was much enhanced by Danny Barnes of Bad Livers on banjo. Songs like Stewball, Gringo Honeymoon, Five Pound Bass, Long Chain, and even Road Goes On Forever sounded better with a little banjo treatment.

Of course there was a lot of audience sing-along as well. Songs like I’m Coming Home, Feeling Good Again, and The Buckin’ Song are just made to be sung by an audience. And a mostly drunk audience is even better.

I was hoping for a sloppy track Saturday after the Friday night storms. A lot of times a wet, muddy track turns the odds upside down and you can win big on longshot horses that wouldn’t have a chance in hell otherwise.

That didn’t happen, but after losing the few meager bets I did place, I got to down a few and see a great show with a sloppy audience so it wasn’t a total loss after all.

Think “The Road Goes On Forever” or “Merry Christmas From The Family”.  They’re both practically anthems in these parts.  And they both also feature a certain kind of Texas-centric atmosphere that he’s made into a trademark of sorts.

Among the current roster of Texas artists, Keen pretty much stands out as the top dog – and he’s been a major influence – if not the major influence – on a generation of artists who’ve followed in his tracks.  Charlie Robison, Jack Ingram, Slaid Cleaves, and their ilk all work in the shadow of Robert Earl.  Among his contemporaries, he’s more affable than Lyle Lovett, more pure than Pat Green, less political and intense than Steve Earle, and more fun than Guy Clark.

After a couple of records that may not have lived up to a lot of long-time fans’ expectations, his newest album, “What I Really Mean” on Koch Records Nashville, returns to the kind of songs that have made REK something of an official state treasure; cautionary tales, lovelorn ballads and those observational accounts of outlaws and eccentrics- all sung in that instantly recognizable baritone with just the right amount of twang.

There’s the opening track, “For Love”.  With its easy-to-sing-along-with melody, a crucial element in any classic REK concert song, it’s a pretty standard example of a song that would fit on just about any of his albums. 

While “What I Really Mean” features a number of songs in this vein, it also ventures into more experimental territory. The second track, “Mr Wolf and Mama Bear,” is as peculiar a story-song as he’s ever written – and from there on the record emerges as his best in a few years.

“The Great Hank” is a stand-out – with its slow paced delivery over acoustic and pedal steel guitar – he tells the tale of seeing Hank Williams singing in drag in a Philadelphia bar.  My favorite line:

“And he told her about how he’d been a big star,
But now country music was full of freaks.
He sat there
In the TV glare,
Mascara streaked his cheeks . . . ”

Is it a dream or a hallucination or just an unusual take on a strange experience?

Ironically, considering the title, “What I Really Mean” poses more questions than answers.  Other highlights touch on various themes like the darkly mysterious “Long Chain,” with its vaguely bluegrass feel – a plucky banjo and mandolin mixed in with electric guitars, or the classic country heartbreak of “Broken End Of Love” and “Dark Side Of The World” and the hopeful longing of “The Wild Ones.”

Another adventurous track, “A Border Tragedy,” combines a banjo with a mariachi band, a fading radio signal and clever lyrics, then brings in Ray Price to close with a chorus from “Streets Of Laredo.”  It sounds pretty implausible but he makes it all work nicely.

It’s that kind of weirdness that really stands out here.  He somehow constructs his characters and storylines with an appreciation for the bizarre that never ventures too far out to left field.

“What I Really Mean” gets better with each subsequent listen and on a whole stands with REK’s best records.  Not that it’s perfect – that’s not actually Kenny G playing alto sax on the title cut, even though it sure sounds for all the world like it is – but it’s pretty close.

It’s nice to see Robert Earl put out a record like this.  It’s a reminder of why he inhabits the place in Texas music that he does and, while it lacks the superficial polish of most mainstream Nashville “product,” it could also be the record that cements his place in the larger landscape of popular country music.

And that couldn’t happen to a more deserving artist.