Thirty years into his career, Texas singer-songwriter Robert Earl Keen decided it was time to revisit his roots. For “Happy Prisoner,” his new album, Keen assembled a crackshot bluegrass band and recorded 15 standards of the genre, including “Long Black Veil” and “Wayfaring Stranger,” with top-shelf guests Natalie Maines (Dixie Chicks), Lyle Lovett and Peter Rowan.
Keen’s durable voice, which lands somewhere been a field holler and bullfrog croak, is the real star here; shrewdly, he kept the band together and hit the road, which brings him to Hartford’s Infinity Hall on Saturday, Feb. 14, at 8 p.m., with special guest Bonnie Bishop.
