Pages tagged “james mcmurtry”

[Above: Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell perform at the 2007 Americana Honors & Awards Show]

Strap on that acoustic guitar and tie up that bandana, y'all. It's time to start planning for the 9th Annual Americana Music Festival and Conference, which takes place Sept. 17-20 in Nashville, and will feature everyone who's anyone in the Americana genre. The Americana Music Association recently announced the initial list of performers, but promises that many more will be added before September. The vanguard includes Jim White, The Belleville Outfit, James McMurtry, Paul Thorn, The Snake The Cross and The Crown and The SteelDrivers.

More slings ’n’ arrows from master of dark social commentary

If we ever appoint a sarcasm-slinging cynic laureate, James McMurtry’s a shoo-in. On Just Us Kids, he continues skewering our current gang of good ol’ boys with the same venomous barbs he threw on Childish Things. “God Bless America (pat mAcdonald must die)” contains the couplet, “That thing don’t run on french-fry grease / That thing don’t run on love and peace,” punctuated by harmonica from comrade-in-irony mAcdonald (Timbuk 3), and “Cheney’s Toy” is even snarkier. But it’s the ache of “Ruby and Carlos” that reveals McMurtry’s sensitive brilliance as a chronicler of quiet desperation (though even here, he can’t resist a jibe about “the Mason-Dumbass Line”). McMurtry produced this record, and allowed himself some much-needed melodic stretching room; the chorus of “Just Us Kids” almost has a “Girls in their Summer Clothes” lilt, and keyboardist Ian McLagan turns “Freeway View” into a runaway goodtime rocker. But don’t fear that our sourpuss will get happy anytime soon. It’s not like Utopia’s imminent—even after Cheney’s toy has left the building.

James McMurty's new album, Childish Things, is the singer/songwriter's first studio release in over three years. The record contains a mix of cover songs and McMurty's own material, including the controversial protest song "We Can't Make it Here." McMurty will tour the remainder of 2005 and into next year in support of the album.

Texas singer/songwriter James McMurtry is back with his first studio album in more three years, Childish Things, due out Sep. 6 on Compadre Records. In 2003, James McMurtry joined forces with the Houston label to release Live in Aught-Three.

The new album features ten new McMurtry songs as well as covers of Peter Case’s “The Old Part of Town” and the country standard “Ole Slew Foot.”

The son of acclaimed author Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove, Terms of Endearment), James' first album, released in 1989, was produced by John Mellencamp and marked the beginning of a series of projects for Columbia and Sugar Hill.

McMurtry will tour the U.S. for the remainder of 2005 and into next year in support of the album. He will appear at the nationally televised Farm Aid concert in September.

“I used to think I was an artist … come to find out I’m a beer salesman,” croaks James McMurtry to a lively Nashville crowd in his dry-as-dust deadpan, never shying away from his role as one of the most legitimate stepchildren of the outlaw movement. Such is the life of a genuine Texas troubadour, and McMurtry has never cut an ambiguous profile in that regard, his seven albums reveling in the kind of smartly evocative and slyly probing songwriting that characterized a generation of down-and-out bards. And as any troubadour worth his salt lives and dies on the stage, it’s only appropriate that he have a live album to document his authentic muses in their naked glory.

Live in Aught-Three captures one such moment (actually, a number of moments spread out over four shows). Having inherited his father screenwriter Larry McMurtry’s eye for cinematic detail, he’s a master in shrinking a fully fleshed narrative down for the small screen of the story-song, making the stage—with its attendant vulnerability—the perfect setting for his craft. Here, first and foremost, McMurtry serves the function of storyteller, the lurching blues stomp of “60 Acres” and the uneasily biographical “Levelland” breathing with a deep humanity and believable authority, touching on something both tangibly immediate and unsettlingly universal. As always, his Nick Cave-via-Kris Kristofferson phrasing lends his songs an even greater sober confidence, rendering the smart wordplay of “No More Buffalo” and the agitated guitars and threats of retribution coloring “Red Dress” all the more direct and cautionary.

As his best work has always had the effect of seamlessly pasting listeners into the setting of his impeccable illustrations—so as to draw them away from him as creator—it’s here that we get what might be our first real glance of ‘McMurtry the person,’ as opposed to ‘McMurtry the persona.’ Whether inhabiting the role of thoughtfully redolent redneck, admiring the American expanse with a detached and queasy reverence, or as the self-effacing sage with the jaundiced eye and lascivious smirk, his ability to command the stage with little more than the power of his words places him among the best songwriters in his idiom.

Frequently criticized for getting stuck in one sonic gear on his studio albums, McMurtry stretches out here, as Aught-Three’s 14 tracks allow him ample room to explore the different moods comprising his admittedly single-minded oeuvre. Even if his range as a musician and arranger isn’t nearly as considerable as his depth as a writer, he uses such limitations to his advantage. He moves with extraordinary ease from the sad, fragile acoustic lilt of “Out Here in the Middle” to the rumbling garage blues riffage of “Choctaw Bingo.” In fact, the lack of polish provided by the live setting finally puts McMurtry in a setting that intuitively feels right, allowing the characters in his songs to emerge even more clearly under the guise of his stage persona.

Still, he tends to get lost in the slow simmer of reverb-driven electric guitars, and it’s an amazing testament to his power as a songwriter that he can get away with stretching so many of these songs out over six minutes without sacrificing the listener’s attention.

It’s not hard to see why McMurtry’s work remains largely unknown outside Texas troubadour aficionados and similarly-minded singer/songwriters. While his talents are fairly immediate in their presentation, the full effect of his artistry does require the attention of an observant listener, and some might not be able to see through his general lack of commercial polish to discover the more subtle appeal of his songwriting. Somewhat paradoxically, the lack of polish on this recording makes such nuances stand even more starkly apart from the commonplace trappings of his music’s artifice, making it obvious why everyone from John Prine and Joe Ely to John Mellencamp and Dwight Yoakam have counted themselves as fans. James McMurtry is the rare songwriter whose actual work trumps the inferred credibility of the company he keeps.