It's peachy for Keene: musician's musician Tommy Keene releases a new CD of irresistible pop. And as a bonus, he comes out.

Since that fateful day when Maryland native Tommy Keene stopped dating women and "jumped over to the other team," he has never hidden his homosexuality. In the early '80s, before he ever signed a big record deal, he regularly made the scene at Washington, D.C., cruise bars like Badlands and Lost & Found. Over the past two decades he's issued 10 albums--including his latest, Crashing the Ether (Eleven Thirty Records)--yet his personal life has gone oddly unmentioned.

"Nobody in the press ever just came out and asked, and everyone around me always knew," says the Los Angeles--based rocker with a shrug and a grin. "It's never been an issue.

"I was never flamboyant or eccentric--like Elton John--so I guess lot of people didn't think I was," he adds.

Since his Places That Are Gone topped the 1984 Village Voice EP of the Year music poll, critics have slavered over Keene's trademark mix of ornate '60s-style guitar pop (think Sgt. Pepper's, the Byrds) and rootsy alt-rock la vintage R.E.M. But even during his major-label tenure at Geffen Records, he never achieved the kind of breakout success that prompts nosy folks to peek between bedroom blinds. "It's only when you get to that upper echelon of celebrity that people want to know what you do," he demurs.

Of course, his handlers hardly encouraged him to shout about his love life from the rooftops either. "I remember an A&R guy at Geffen coming up to me, out of the blue, and saying, 'Now, Tommy, it's OK to be bisexual ... it's not OK to be homosexual.'" And his relationship with Mr. Geffen himself?. Friendly, but strictly business. "I'm not his type," jokes the handsome brunet. "He likes blonds."

Yet to savvy fans who could read between the lines, clues to Keene's leanings have always been present. Take the woozy "Warren in the '60s," one of the standout tracks on Crashing the Ether and the best song about Mr. Beatty since "You're So Vain." "I used to dream about him," Keene admits. "He was so incredibly handsome circa Splendor in the Grass, right up to Bonnie and Clyde. Girls wanted to sleep with him, and guys wanted to be him." Or, in Keene's case, a little of both.

Although he remains essentially a cult figure, Keene is highly revered among fellow musicians. "I've been on the peripheral edges of the glamorous life," he says. Enthralled by his 1989 album Based on Happy Times, the Gin Blossoms recruited him as an opening act during their mid-'90s heyday. More recently, college-rock legends Paul Westerberg (the Replacements) and Robert Pollard (Guided by Voices) have each asked the multi-instrumentalist to tour.

With another album (a collaboration with Pollard) due later this year and his 15th anniversary with his longtime boyfriend just a few weeks behind him, Keene is only optimistic about the future. "Remember the board game Life?" he says. "That instilled in me at an early age: Don't end up in the poorhouse. But the older I get, the less I worry about it."

Reighley is the author of Looking for the Perfect Beat (MTV Books).