Singer-songwriter James McMurtry takes the stage at the Pour House Jan. 30 — but his reputation as an artist precedes him.
On the dozen or so albums he’s released since his stunning 1989 debut, Too Long In The Wasteland, the Lockhart, Texas–based musician has shown an incisive eye for detail and a mastery of lyrical character studies. And he’s just as comfortable chronicling the down and out and the heartbroken as he is describing the mature comfort of longtime love in an increasingly cold world.
On his latest album, The Horses and The Hounds, McMurtry tells a slew of new stories — portraying a mentally unbalanced man who shoots his best friend for no good reason, a homeless truck driver living in a series of motels, a husband with a flat tire and an angry wife — all in 10 songs of spare, barbed-wire rock topped off with McMurtry’s sour-patch vocals.
In conversation as in songwriting, McMurtry is economical, which can often be mistaken for gruffness. And while it’s true McMurtry, son of famed novelist Larry McMurtry, can be taciturn, he has no objection to the machinery of promoting his music. He really just doesn’t give a damn.
“I just found out that I don’t need to worry so much about that stuff, and it’s better if I don’t,” McMurtry said. “If I pander to the crowd, they’re going to smell it. They can smell bullsh*t, and they’re not going to believe it coming from me.
“I just do my thing,” he continued. “I don’t have the energy for the other stuff. And it’s not that I’m particularly hostile. It’s just that I can’t let anybody’s idea of who I’m supposed to be govern who I actually am.”
Good advice for us all, perhaps.
McMurtry does believe in touring hard, however, and he and his bare-bones backing band have been playing The Horses and The Hounds live for awhile now, which McMurtry said has helped the songs grow.
“They always evolve when you play them live. Parts emerge, we jam a little bit and then you find something that works and you stick with it and work on that.”
And the good news for McMurtry fans is that he and the band are also playing new songs for the first time in awhile, all of which will be on McMurtry’s soon-to-come new album The Black Dog and The Wandering Boy.
“The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy are two of my father’s hallucinations,” McMurtry said, a sentence that begs for elaboration, but he added only, “I didn’t really write it about him; I just made another character.”
Most of McMurtry’s songs start on the road, where he can hone them until they’re ready to be crowd-tested.
“I start with a couple of lines and a melody and just see where I can take it, or where it can lead me,” he said. “I don’t start out trying to make a point, because if you do that, you’re going to write a sermon. And I don’t take a new song out there unless I can sing it without cringing. That’s usually a pretty good indication.”
McMurtry is also refreshingly clear-eyed about his audience, which shouldn’t be surprising. They’ve latched onto songs like the rollicking “Choctaw Bingo,” confident strolls like “Walk Between The Raindrops” and the dark prognostication “We Can’t Make It Here Anymore,” and he’s happy to play them live — but he’s not bothered much if they don’t respond to his other songs.
“There are songs that work for me that don’t touch an audience,” he said. “And there are others that they really connect with. The thing about a song is that the listener wants to hear him or herself in it. It’s more about the listener than it is the writer.”
Help keep the City Paper free.
No paywalls.
No subscription cost.
Free delivery at 800 locations.
Help support independent journalism by donating today.
