Robert Earl Keen's Uprising with Randy Rogers Band and Reckless Kelly

&On Sunday November 11th, we attended Robert Earl Keen's Uprising with The Randy Rogers Band and Reckless Kelly at the Bourbon Street Ballroom in Baltimore Maryland. This was the last show of a two week swing through the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, which included a stop at the The Birchmere which we intentional skipped for this show. Should have gone to both. Reckless Kelly started the night playing a 40 minute set. The Braun boys are sure entertaining with front man Willy and multi-instrumentalist Cody impressive on the fiddle, mandolin. He even brought out an electronic mandolin when the band broke out into The Who. And as usual, David Abeyta was great on the guitar - and let's not forget Jay Nazz on drums and Chris Schlek on bass. Of the two, this was the only set where I didn't recognize all the songs. Can't even remember if they played "Nobody's Girl" or "Vancouver". And as is usually the case, I still haven't heard them play Drink Your Whisky Down" at a live show. But a great start to the evening.

The Randy Rogers Band trotted out next and started with several crowd favorites, "Kiss Me in the Dark", "This Time Around", and "Tonight's Not the Night" to name a few. Amazing how two different bands can sound so similar. The one difference with this show from others I've seen was that Rogers seemed to take more center stage. Fiddler Brady Black was present but seemed to keep to one location instead of moving around. But another great performance - can't believe we saw the first two bands in the same show - and then again Robert Earl Keen was still to come.

And this was a typical Keen performance, little new material and practically all old favorites. The one new song, his tribute to Levon Helm: The Man Behind The Drums. The old stuff, I mean all: Corpus Christi Bay, Furnance Fan, The Road Goes On Forever, All I Have Is Today, Walkin' Cane, Blow You Away, Gringo Honeymoon, Feelin' Good Again.. There were many more I can't remember right now - he played a long time. He even sang "Merry Christmas From The Family" as a solo encore. The real encore, Willy Braun and Randy Rogers joining The Robert Earl Keen Band onstage. Wow. Made the hour drive home well worthwhile.

Videos of Reckless Kelly and The Randy Rogers Band are available at the MyJoog YouTube Channel.