Modern Music

Brian Keane gets to have it both ways.

For starters, he’s playing keyboard and singing harmony with the Randy Rogers Band, whose past three albums have all hit the top 10 on the Billboard country charts.

But at the same time, he’s building a solo career to get his own material out there.

The Randy Rogers Band will headline the bill at 7 tonight at the Lucky Mule, with Keane providing support as the opening act. Tickets are $17.

Although he’s enjoyed some modest success as a solo songwriter, Keane’s biggest, tell-your-grandkids-about-it moments have come as a sideman with the Rogers band.

Appearing on “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno, for example.

“It was surreal,” Keane said. “You load up early and then you wait all day. Then we played for 3 minutes and 47 seconds and we were out the door. We were at the airport saying, ‘Wait. Did we just do that?’ “

Touring behind its new, top-selling album “Burning The Day,” the Randy Rogers Band also is selling T-shirts to raise money for tsunami relief in Japan. Members’ tour route makes multiple swings through Texas after the Abilene visit, including an April 28 date in Stephenville and a June 17 show in San Angelo.

Meanwhile, Keane has gotten some solo attention on the back of his latest single, “I’ll Sing About Mine (The Tractor Song),” which tore up the Texas Regional Radio charts earlier this year.

The song plays as a slightly tongue-in-cheek takedown of Nashville songwriting clichés. And it comes from personal experience.

Keane and fellow songwriter Adam Hood were commiserating about a couple of tunes they had penned for Nashville performers: a rich person who wanted to sing about being poor, and a New Yorker who wanted to sing about living in a small town.

But their grumbling spawned what’s become a mission statement for Keane, who grew up in rural South Carolina: “Let them sing about their own life, and I’ll sing about mine.”

Whether it was a hit with other Nashville songwriters is up for debate, but Keane is used to “ruffling feathers,” as he mildly puts it.

His last hit was a little ditty called “She Left Me for Jesus,” after all.

“If you listen to the lyrics, it’s really a pretty innocent song,” Keane said with a laugh.

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