i have been listening to rek for about twenty years. hailing from texas, he has been recording since the mid eighties and is generally regarded as another in a long list of great singer songwriters from that state. to get a good taste of his work, i would recommend ‘gringo honeymoon’ from 1994. this is an interesting departure for him, as he puts down the pen and does all covers, and paints them all with a serious bluegrass tint. not really known as a bluegrass musician, he does a great job of putting together a solid lineup to help him seek his desire to create this project, including lyle lovett, sara watkins, natalie maines, and peter rowan. from a rolling stone review:

“I wanted to show the nuance in bluegrass. It’s not just all in G, playing as fast as you can,” Keen says, motioning his hand up and down as if he were quick strumming the guitar. “And I also wanted people to hear how cool bluegrass music is. I didn’t want to be the torchbearer for it because I’ve never thought of myself as a great singer, certainly not a bluegrass singer, but I really did want to have some kind of rebirth and put it out there so people would go, ‘Yeah, this is great music.'”

he certainly wasn’t worried about catering to the “grassholes” or bluegrass purists when he started to put together Happy Prisoner, but he did want to show the breadth of a genre to people who mistakenly think it’s all about one specific sound. or to those who think bluegrass is something akin to mumford and sons. there’s flatt & scruggs and bill monroe on the lp, sure, but there’s also contemporary songs like richard thompson’s “1952 vincent black lightning,” all picked to show a dynamic spectrum that isn’t often given a spotlight.