from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal on lubbockonline.com

No matter how many times you ask him to do it, legendary Texas singer-songwriter Robert Earl Keen just won’t sign your wall.
“It’s like you’re putting your stamp on some kind of …you know signing your own death certificate,” Keen said.  “I just won’t do it.”
It’s not that he’ll be mean about it or anything, but every time he hits a venue or radio station, it never fails that somebody will ask him to put his “I was here” autograph on their wall of fame.  As Keen tells it, when you see some of the names on the walls, you begin to wonder what ever happened to them and their careers.  It’s just bad luck, said Keen. 
While signing a wall may be bad luck for him, putting the Keen brand on a bar isn’t.  As a matter of fact, it actually gave him an idea for a song that he eventually ended up singing with Billy Bob Thornton.
Keen said a bar owner in Denver was the reason for the track, “10,000 Chinese Walk into a Bar,” on Keen’s latest album, “The Rose Hotel.”
“I thought, well, I don’t sign walls, but I can sign a bar, I guess. ‘But write something clever’ the guy says to me. So I wrote “10,000 Chinese walk into a bar.’”
A few weeks later Keen was trying to figure out a great way to begin a song and that’s when the idea hit him about the bar.
When it comes to inspiration and writing his songs, Keen said there really isn’t much of a

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