Keene Brothers
Blues and Boogie Shoes
2006, The Fading Captain Series
Ask me for my favorite of the three albums that Robert Pollard released on the same day in May of 2006 and my answer will vary depending on that day’s pollen count and how I feel about my gut microbiome.
Each record is a different camera angle, a different lighting scheme, a different movie from a different section of the video store (we still had some of those in 2006).
Turn to Red is my favorite when I feel light and, at age 48, like I have many decades ahead of me. It’s weathered music that rocks with defiance.
All That is Holy appeals to my introverted side. All that I want to do anymore is sit and think. And when I sit and think, I end up thinking about God and death and eternity and the ancient world and all things unfathomable.
Blues and Boogie Shoes sounds best to me when I feel every hour and minute of my age and I’m happy to just still be here right now. Tomorrow, who knows? Might get hit by a truck.
The Keene Brothers are seasoned. There are decades behind these sounds. There are major label promises that didn’t work out, great albums that never got their due, and a lot of living behind these sounds. There’s a lot of beauty just for the art behind these sounds. You can hear that.
Tommy Keene and Robert Pollard sound good together. They’re two melodic giants, about the same age (Pollard is eight months older) and at this point doomed to be mavericks.
I can’t explain why Tommy Keene never went over big. No one can. There’s no rational reason for why his “Places That Are Gone” wasn’t a monster 1980s hit that we’re all sick of hearing today and why scuffed copies of albums such as Songs from the Film and Ten Years After aren’t in every decent record collection. Then again, I could name fifty songs like that and fifty albums like that and fifty artists like that. The only thing that the world loves more than a great pop song is ignoring most of them when they happen. What matters today is that Keene kept going, kept working through a vision, and kept behaving like an artist.
In 2017, Keene died much too young. 59. Heart attack.
Watch your heart, folks. I take magnesium, fish oil, and nattokinase supplements and I usually order the grilled chicken instead of the fried. Is it working? All I know is that I’m not dead yet.
Still, I won’t call Tommy Keene’s story a sad one. He left behind plenty. Ageless summertime guitar tones, melody for days, records that reward you for sinking into them with your eyes closed. Tommy Keene is not dead. I’m listening to him right now.
The beauty of his collaboration with Pollard is that Keene is completely himself. This is his music and Pollard wrote the songs on top. The last thing I want to hear on Pollard’s many collaboration records is stuff that sounds like Guided by Voices. I want to hear him stretch his talents into new places and mix with other personalities. The crisp melodic flower beds and guitar propulsions on Blues and Boogie Shoes are pure Keene. Consider it a companion piece to his also-lovely Crashing the Ether, released this same year. Or any Tommy Keene album, really. Listen to all of them. Sink in. Close your eyes. The man is consistent.
Blues and Boogie Shoes is major. It’s all sparkle and swoon and guitars that remind you that power pop is supposed to be, you know, powerful. It’s music that sounds like it should be everywhere. As much as I love songs such as “Death of the Party”, “Heaven’s Gate”, and “You Must Engage”, I’ll never feel that I’ve truly heard them until they randomly pop up on FM radio while I’m out cruising on a warm night in a better world.
That’s not going to happen though (I never listen to FM radio these days, for one thing), so the album itself will have to do and I see no problem here. It’s a beautifully sequenced collection of heart throbs and perfect movie lighting.
Opening track “Evil Vs. Evil” is the one moment in which Keene’s music comes off like a nod to Pollard’s style and that’s only because it’s fifty seconds long. It’s blistering, but you might forget about it when Pollard’s best song of the year, “Death of the Party”, starts up afterward.
“Death of the Party” is a prom night classic. Or it should be. Track two. Pollard didn’t want us to wait for this one and I won’t judge you if you cry. Keene considered his music here to be a throwaway. He sent about thirty tracks to Pollard, who surprised Keene with his choices. To Keene, this moody piece with perfect guitar ring and creamy keyboards was one of the lesser lights of the batch, but Pollard ran with it and turned it into maybe his greatest song for cathartic slow dances. Art. It’s complicated.
My cover band, Red Holy Shoes, who only perform songs from Pollard’s three May 2006 LPs, didn’t play “Death of the Party” one night and the crowd at The Rusty Nail beat us up in the parking lot afterward. We won’t make that mistake again.
The rest of the album could be nothing but kazoos and bagpipes and I’d still be impressed but it’s not. It maintains the high. It shoots for the moon.
“Beauty of the Draft”. Gorgeous, even if the lyrics seem to be about sports stuff that I don’t get. I want to bathe in Tommy Keene’s guitar sound.
“Where Others Fail”. This is Pollard slipping us a complex emotion via a killer pop hook. “Accept your fortune where others fail”. Don’t feel bad about your success while other talents don’t make it. It’s a survivor’s anthem. You could apply it music, but also to life. When someone my age or younger dies of natural causes, I tend to get freaked out, but maybe I should instead appreciate that I’m still around. That seems like the wiser response. Maybe I’ll be grown up enough someday for it.
“Island of Lost Lucys”. We need a soft one after that and here it is. Pollard singing “They’re not even worth their weight in tears/ But they sum the years/ When no one came around” over Keene’s delicate guitar and ghostly keyboard is something you need in your life.
“Lost Upon Us”. Another scoop of the very best vanilla ice cream. The drums are synthetic, but that’s fine with this 80’s kid. Tommy Keene sounds like he’s composing a film score and Pollard confidently becomes the star of the movie.
“Heaven’s Gate”. It kicks off side 2 with a bang and appeals to my death preoccupations. “There’s far too much singing at Heaven’s gate”. Yeah, I bet there is.
“The Naked Wall”. There are about eight potential singles on Blues and Boogie Shoes and this is one of them. It’s pure shiny melody. A big bucket of it kicked over.
“The Camouflaged Friend”. Yes, hit me with an instrumental. I need it. The highs on this LP are so overwhelming that a cool down track is a must. All guitars, no drums or anything else. Just Tommy Keene helping to make the world a little more pretty.
“You Must Engage”. I hear this as one of Pollard’s songs of encouragement. Do something real and make some art while you still can. Do it right after you’re done blissing out to this song, at least. “You mustn’t wait/ You must engage/ Use all your rage”.
“This Time Do You Feel It?”. Pollard sings “This time do you feel it?/ Doing the starman thing/ Gazing at perfect stuff”. Yeah, I think I have done that, but it’s been awhile, I mostly gaze at imperfect stuff these days. This is a beautiful song, but you can hear the album winding down.
“A Blue Shadow”. Our circus act of luscious music, perfect melody, and abstract words has to end sometime and it does so under a blue shadow. Tommy Keene’s music is like an ocean tide of power pop goodness. It pulls back and then crashes forward. Meanwhile, I think that Pollard’s words are about the music business. It reflects on the stupid stuff that once got him and Keene to play along in another time, back when the rules were different. The big promises, the smooth talkers, all of the crap that has nothing to do with art. “Too much visuals/ Contracts and residuals”, Pollard sings like a man who’s found a better way.
When the record ends, my head is full of dying neon lights and songs that always sound to me like wise old friends. They may not be in the mainstream, but they are in the bloodstream.
May of 2006 wouldn’t have been the same without them, at least. Pollard was the weirdest guy in indie rock that month putting out three LPs and daring you to like all of them. Or not.
It was never a problem for me, though. Isn’t it normal for music freaks to walk up to record store counters with a bizarre stack in their hands? I used to do it all of the time when cheap old vinyl was my reason for living. Maybe one week, Black Sabbath, Dionne Warwick, and Django Reinhardt. Maybe the next week, Curtis Mayfield, Waylon Jennings, and Martha and the Muffins.
A weird rocker, a bewildering demo given a post-production goose, and a pop masterpiece is a pretty cool combo in my book. Did I appreciate and understand them all instantly that same day? No, but that’s okay.
I had time.