White Room, Waylon Jennings and Robert Earl Keen

About a month ago I was driving to the office listening to Outlaw Country on my satellite radio. When I heard Waylon Jennings covering White Room, I almost drove into the bay. I have heard a lot of unusual tunes on that station, but this was way out of the box.

I love the music of Waylon Jennings and I love White Room. I was lucky to hear Cream play it live at the Spectrum in Philadelphia on November 1, 1968. It has always been one of my favorite Cream songs. I never thought I would hear Waylon Jennings play White Room. Two very separate events in my life crashed together when this came out of my radio. It totally blew my mind.

Hearing White Room made me think about the years at Floyd's Hotel. White Room was always our concert shout out. No Free Bird for the hotel staff. It was always White Room or Whipping Post for us. This was a very special song at the time. Listen to Waylon's take on this classic Cream song from an album called Waylon Forever:> WHITE ROOM

In an even stranger coincidence, I found out recently that my good friend Robert Earl Keen opened his show at Bonnaroo with (You guessed it) White Room. When I asked Robert: "What's up with that?" He told me that he and the band decided that they needed a little heavy rock in the set to get the attention of the audience at the big shows.

I have seen the video of the song from Bonnaroo and it is excellent. Rich (guitar) and Bill (bass) are really up to the task on the song and REK does a pretty good job on vocals for a Texas singer songwriter. It is a great version that shows the versatility of Robert Earl Keen and his incredible band.