According to the one-sentence bio on James McMurtry’s Facebook page, he’s been “Steadily Shedding Fans Since 1989.”
Actually, he hasn’t. The Texas singer-songwriter, whose blue-collar anthems like “We Can’t Make It Here Anymore” inspired American Songwriter to call him “a prophetic, if ornery, political voice,” continues to sell out concert venues, mid-sized theaters and, of course, the occasional saloon.
And then there’s television. McMurtry was the featured guest on a 2022 episode of “Daryl’s House,” where he performed with backing by Daryl Hall (of Hall & Oates fame) and his band. He also performed his Song of the Year-nominated “Canola Fields” during a PBS broadcast of Austin City Limits’ 2023 Americana Awards.
Earlier this year, the Texas artist embarked on his latest national tour. With decades of experience under his belt, he knows how to travel on the cheap, sometimes with a four-piece band jammed into a single van.
“We make our living off the road,” said McMurtry in a mid-May interview. “Record sales are minimal now, and they don’t generate hardly any revenue. So, the main commercial value in a record is it gets you guys to write about us. That way, people will know we’re coming to town and they’ll go buy a ticket. And when the draw starts to fall off, you’ve got to make a record. So you’ve got to book a (recording) session, then you’ve got to finish these songs by the time the session starts. It’s like that. It is work.”
Actually, McMurtry has said even the three albums he made at the outset of his recording career for major label Columbia Records — 1989’s “Too Long in the Wasteland,” 1992’s “Candyland” and 1995’s “Where’d You Hide the Body” — didn’t recoup the funds the label invested in the projects. But they did put McMurtry on the music map and helped him to begin the touring routine that continues to this day, with a dozen studio albums from which to build his set lists.
This latest tour will find McMurtry performing fan favorites alongside tracks from the aforementioned 12th studio album, “The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy,” which is set for release on June 20. It includes a few songs that allude, in varying degrees, to the current state of the nation.
That’s especially the case with “Second Sons of Second Sons,” which doesn’t pull any punches. “All camoed up and standing tall, building bombs and border walls,” he sings. “As all collective conscience falls away, and they wave those stars and bars, is that really who we are?”
The title track, on the other hand, leans toward the other end of the spectrum. It’s a personal and poetic ballad with a character who reflects McMurtry’s father, the novelist Larry McMurtry, who in his final days had dementia-induced hallucinations of a boy who never ages and a black dog that never bites.
“He just sits on the floor at the corner of the bed, watching for the things that hunt,” sings McMurtry. “They oughta both go away when I take my meds, but they don’t.”
The album closes with a cover of Kris Kristofferson’s “Broken Freedom Song,” a character-based song that would have a profound influence on his approach to songwriting.
“When I was a kid, I wanted to be Johnny Cash,” McMurtry said, “but I didn’t really put much thought to where his songs came from or how they were created.”
That changed when McMurtry was 9 and his father gave him a copy of Kristofferson’s first album. That record first made him realize that storytelling could play a major role in songwriting.
“I wore holes in that record,” McMurty said with undisguised enthusiasm. “And when Kris came through Richmond, where my mother and stepdad lived, they got tickets for us to see him. And he just seemed to be having such a good time, he and his band. I thought ‘That’s what I want to do’”
McMurtry has been encoring with the song at recent shows, which combine a sampling of new tracks with fan favorites.
“We do ‘Choctaw Bingo’ every night,’ he said of one of his best-known songs. “And now we pretty much ‘have’ to play ‘Canola Fields,’ because that’s the one people connect with. When it gets quiet in some of those breakdown verses, I can hear them singing it. They’re singing softly under their breath, but collectively, you can hear them from the stage.”
All of which makes the song that much more gratifying for McMurtry and the fans he never sheds, even if he’s reluctant to admit it.
“I keep putting out new work so that I’ll stay, in some sense, relevant,” he said. “I can’t just go singing my old songs, because then I’d turn into a tribute band to myself, right?”
