Robert Earl Keen’s farewell tour comes to Tampa Theatre on Tuesday

They say that the road goes on forever, and yet everybody’s favorite Houston-bred singer-songwriter, Robert Earl Keen, is ready to call it a day with a farewell tour that stops at the historic Tampa Theatre on Tuesday.

One minute,Keen opened for Kris Kristofferson in downtown Clearwater in January 2020, and the next, he’s preparing to join his buddy in retirement. While no one knows for sure if the 66-year-old is going to stop recording and writing, you might as well pretend he is when he stops into Tampa Bay for this show which somehow isn’t fully sold-out.

And if you care anything about country music, you’ll get to the show early to see Kelsey Waldon, a Kentucky songwriter who’s injecting the genre with new ideas buoyed by a classic sound that’s poised to make a lot of noise when she releases her new album, No Regular Dog, on Aug. 12 via the late John Prine’s Oh Boy Record label (there’s even an ode to Prine, a former Gulfport resident, on the record).

This article appears in May 26 – Jun 1, 2022.