Robert Earl Keen’s countdown to Christmas, December 18, 2019 – Houston, TX @ House of Blues

For the past seven years, Robert Earl Keen has been forging a new holiday tradition with a run of irreverently themed Christmas shows. On December 2nd, the Texas singer and songwriter will kick off his eighth year of concerts with a gig in Greenville, South Carolina.

As on tours of Christmases past, this trek — the Countdown to Christmas Tour — will feature its own unique theme: Lunar Tunes & Looney Times, a nod to the 50th anniversary of the landing on the moon. Keen, who sang about a voyage to the Earth’s satellite in the Stryker Brothers song “Charlie Duke Took Country Music to the Moon,” will play tunes about the final frontier, the planets, and the Space Race — along with the centerpiece of the holiday shows, Keen’s fan favorite “Merry Christmas From the Family.”

The troubadour told Rolling Stone in 2018 that he could never perform on a stage in December without singing that track, originally off 1994’s Gringo Honeymoon. Aware of his obligation, he and his band looked for a way to distinguish their Christmas tours. “Pretty much all the people were waiting for that one song,” Keen said. “After a while, we got to thinking: ‘We got to do something more than this. We got to have more fun ourselves.’”

In a release, Keen says the 2019 Christmas shows, which wrap up December 30th in Fort Worth, Texas, will include “fan favorites and unearthly covers from his band members.” The Austin band Shinyribs will open.