You can learn just about everything you need to know about Texas in a two-hour Robert Earl Keen show. You've got your songs about gunfighters, trains, fishin', Mexico, barbecue, beer, white trash and roads that go on forever. You'll rub elbows with rednecks, city hipsters, bubbas and scads of college students (predominately Texas A&M Aggies but a goodly number of UT Austin rivals for variety). You'll leave with your ears ringing with the refrain of hotter-than-hell pedal steel guitar and fiddle sawing that would put the Devil and Charlie Daniels both to shame. Best of all, you'll feel like you're part of the family, a bonafide Texan even if you hang your hat in New York or even -- dear Lord -- Oklahoma.

Although Keen is best experienced on his home turf, years of persistence have allowed him to make significant inroads into the rest of the country. Keen now finds himself the prize in a nationwide fraternity and sorority bidding war -- the winner gets a private Keen show at their school. Funny thing is, his just released seventh album, Walking Distance, steers almost completely away from the sing-along anthems that make him the toast of the college set. The heart of the album is a three-song suite as breathtakingly beautiful as a Texas flatlands sunset, showcasing Keen's songwriting gift that's long enticed the likes of Nanci Griffith, Joe Ely, Willie Nelson and old college chum Lyle Lovett to cover his songs. But he does throw a couple of bones to rabble-rousers in his audience: a sequel to his beloved "Merry Christmas From the Family" and a number called "That Buckin' Song" that contains the immortal lines, "That buckin' mother bucker will buck you on the ground." Yippee yi cy yey!

This album is all about the quieter, more reflective side of your music. Then you've got "That Buckin' Song" which is like a drunken uncle crashing family prayer time. Will there always be joke songs?

I can't seem to get away from it! (laughs) It's like an itch I can't scratch. It's like sometimes you're writing songs and you need some sort of comic relief for yourself. I don't ever want people to think I'm taking myself too seriously, because I'm not. I certainly have some points to make, but I'm not didactic in nature -- or if I am, I really want to keep it under wraps.

When you're playing a really beautiful song and some yahoo yells "Road Goes on Forever!" right in the middle of it, have you ever come close to yelling in frustration?

I haven't ever screamed to the crowd. I'm against it, because when I've seen it as an audience member, it just never comes off good. You think, 'What's wrong with him?' Because they don't know what's going on right down in front. But I have gotten off the mic and kneeled way down one inch from someone's face and yelled, 'Shut the f--- up!' And then step back and say, 'Thanks very much, I appreciate it.'

All these years down the line, would you say you're more of a bitter, jaded type or a devil-may-care type of guy?

I fight being jaded all the time. I love music -- all of my best memories have to do with musical experiences. But at the same time, I see people say things that they're going to do with their career, or hear them say they're going to tell people that it's going to be this way, and I want to just jump out and say, 'Don't do that! You're cutting your own throat! They're not going to listen to you, you're not going to change the world, you've got to work with it.' And that's where you get jaded -- you find out you don't change the world, you have to work within the world that you're walking in.

So what's your fondest musical memory?

I went to see a John Vanderburg concert one time when I was in college. He's probably the best white blues guy I ever saw. I'd seen him play in front of six or seven hundred people opening for someone like the Talking Heads. And this time, there were about ten of us there. And he just wailed! And I was so excited, I went back home and met some friends, and somebody played the harmonica, somebody played the guitar, and we were all in the backyard, out in the dirt just banging on guitars with all this dust around us and laughing our asses off. It was great, just being supercharged by the music.

How important is it to you to break out outside of Texas?

Well, I just don't know. It goes back to the bitter and jaded question. Sometimes you see that, and it's just such a trap. And then sometimes people are trapped with these bizarre audiences that maybe they don't want. I mean, my God, I'd never want to have, like, LeAnn Rimes' audience -- that'd be too weird, to just have little hillbilly girls running all over the place. But as far as saying what kind of audience do I want or how big do I want to get, I don't know. I'll get as big as I can get, and then I'll quit. When it gets too big, I'll stop.

You graduated from Texas A&M. Why do Aggies get ribbed so much?

God, it's a funny thing. That all stems from the whole army part of A&M -- it's always been sort of a military school. I think that's kind of where it comes from, that goofy regimentation. And of course UT was always cooler and everybody was always having a little bit more money. But as far as the Aggie jokes? A&M is the third largest university in America; it's got every kind of thing that you could possibly want. It's out-dated.

Still, what's your favorite Aggie joke?

Oh, the one about the Aggie who finds a guy drowning out in Lake Travis. He pulls him out, saves his life, and it turns out it a rich old man from the Middle East, and he says, 'I have to repay you, it's part of my custom. What would you like me to buy?' And the Aggie says, 'I always wanted a Mickey Mouse outfit.' So he bought him the University of Texas.

RICHARD SKANSE