A Dry Scary Blue

A Dry Scary Blue is Austin-based math professor and troubadour Sean Keel's debut commercial release, a collection of raw, starkly evocative emotionally complex songs in the Townes van Zandt tradition. The record, a collaboration with multi-talented producer Gabriel Rhodes, might remind you a little of Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, even Flannery O'Connor; but really, if you've heard anything that punches at this weight and sounds a whole lot like it, it probably means someone more mainstream (a very easy standard) had the good luck to hear Keel and the good sense to rip him off. Keel is not your ordinary outsider. Nearly 60, the long-time University of Texas professor, is well-known in the world of research mathematics. But this record will be his first blip on the pop-culture radar. A Dry Scary Blue introduces a distinctive, wholly individual singer-songwriter who, despite living in a legendary roots-music mecca, has honed his craft far from the public eye. Keel's raw, evocative compositions invoke a long and honoured tradition of iconoclastic, emotionally complex Texas songwriters, while never sounding remotely like anyone else. A Dry Scary Blue is a series of story songs set in the bent-down beauty of Keel's beloved Texas hill country, or the Minnesota farmland of his youth, and suffused throughout by the slow ache of beautiful things fading away. They're matched by spare, rough-edged arrangements that drive his lyrics home. Keel's words have genuine power. In this business exaggeration is the norm. It is difficult to overstate the beauty of these songs. The producer is the multi-talented Gabriel Rhodes. The son of famed singer Kimmie Rhodes and step-son of the influential DJ Joe Gracey, Gabe is alt-country royalty, having worked with a wide assortment of artists including Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Emmylou Harris.