James McMurtry's novel gift
May 31—It sounds like a tautology, but what James McMurtry is saying is undeniably true. The folk rock troubadour has made his living as a singer-songwriter for 35 years and through 10 studio albums, and although his lyrics are rich and picturesque, he says writing prose feels like a chore. A song, however, is a different animal that uses different muscles.
"The thing about a song is it has to be sung," says McMurtry of crafting his lyrics. "You're writing for an instrument. It's not like poetry, which can be spoken or just read. You want to write lines you can sing well. You don't look for tricky consonants that are going to choke off your air flow or tongue-tie you."
McMurtry, who will perform June 7 at the Tumbleroot Brewery and Distillery and on June 8 at the KiMo Theater in Albuquerque, has a long history here in New Mexico. He had a small role in Lonesome Dove, the 1989 TV miniseries that was written by his father (and the late famed Western writer) Larry McMurtry, and he fondly recalls filming here on ranchland near Galisteo and Angel Fire.
The Texas native says his father — who won the Pulitzer Prize for the Lonesome Dove novel — didn't like the way the TV version turned out, and as for his own part, he says he didn't really think about being a part of TV history at the time.
"We were all in our 20s then," he says. "We just liked sitting on a horse all day for SAG [Screen Actors Guild] scale."
McMurtry got his first guitar at age seven, and his mother, Jo, taught him how to play his first few chords. Although both his parents were academics — his mother was an English professor and his dad wrote novels and films that were nominated for several Academy Awards — he says he was never intimidated by pursuing a creative path of his own.
details
James McMurtry (And His Band)
7:30 p.m. June 7
Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery
2791 Agua Fria Street
7:30 p.m. June 8
KiMo Theatre
32 Central Avenue NW, Albuquerque
$30-$40
"My father made his living as a screenwriter, mostly, and as a novelist. He'd already broken the mold in terms of creative aspects," he says. "It wasn't like I had to fight anybody to do it. It seemed natural to me, but I never wrote prose or scripts. I listened to Kris Kristofferson and John Prine and people like that; that just kind of warped my brain in that direction."
Right around the same time as Lonesome Dove, McMurtry got his first big music break. His dad was making a film with John Mellencamp, which allowed McMurtry to slip him a demo tape. Mellencamp wound up producing McMurtry's first album, Too Long in the Wasteland, in 1989. Even from his early days, McMurtry shared his father's gift for writerly economy and storytelling — and not much has changed in his approach over the years.
"I was just trying to get the damned song," he says. "It's still what I'm doing."
McMurtry plays harmonica in addition to guitar and has been known to get on the fiddle or piano to flesh out a track. Occasionally, he says, he can live with an idea for several years before he completes it. But most of the time, a song will come together organically.
"I get the words and music at the same time or it generally doesn't happen," he says. "I get a couple lines with a melody and try to build on it. I'll try to get a character out of it; I'll think, 'Who said that?' And I'll try to envision the character who's narrating it. From there, if I can get it into a verse-chorus structure, I might get the whole story and get a song out of it."
Even at that point, he says, a song can surprise him. He can think up a new line that fits the meter and the rhyme scheme, and then all of a sudden the song takes a new shape or perspective.
One of his most explicitly political songs, "We Can't Make It Here," released in 2005, refers to the hollowed out economy of inner-city industrial America and the people who live in it. McMurtry says he started writing the song while Bill Clinton was president and released it when George W. Bush was president, and the song was true to both eras.
It wasn't about either leader and wasn't supposed to reflect his personal politics, although he says in retrospect, he still agrees with it.
"I've written political songs that happened to come out that way," he says. "I didn't set out to be a protest writer, per se, but that will work its way into anyone's songs. The time you live in and the feelings you experience, some of that is political. It's very strange to hear people say, 'Keep politics out of music,' because how are you going to do that? That takes away Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, and it takes away Toby Keith. Be careful what you wish for."
McMurtry says if you put too much of your heart into lyrics, you risk it sounding like a sermon and turning off the listener. Sometimes, you have to come at a story from a perspective that isn't really your own.
"You always want to stay in character, even if you don't agree with the narrator," he says. "I have a song [titled] 'Carlisle's Haul,' which is from the point of view of a kid growing up in a commercial fishing town where they really hate the government because there are regulations on fisheries. Myself, I think we've got to have those regulations or we're not going to have any fish. But I'm not trying to pull my living out of a bay or a river or an ocean."
McMurtry's latest album, The Horses and the Hounds, was released in 2021, and he's been touring off and on since the pandemic. When he's home, he plays a weekly show at the Continental Club in Austin.
"I see some of the same faces, but I see a lot of different ones, because Austin is a tourist town now," he says. "People go there now because they think it's a music town and there's a Disneyland aspect to it. But that's not unique to Austin. Beale Street [in Memphis] was the first to have that happen."
The veteran artist, who turned 62 earlier this year, says that his set list reflects songs from throughout his career. He's written new songs and has studio time reserved and hopes a new album will come of it.
His bassist, Cornbread, is the newest member of the band, and "he's only been playing with us for 13 years," McMurtry says. Drummer Darren Hess and guitarist Tim Holt have been with McMurtry even longer.
"It's the availability quotient," he says of playing together for so long. "And being able to stand each other in a van for thousands and thousands of miles."