James McMurtry has never been a member of a glee club. With his perpetual scowl/inhospitable countenance, he looks like the kind of guy that snacks on desert scorpions and whizzes snake venom. There are no artist orchestrated crowd hand clapping moments or dance step instructions at a McMurtry gig. Whiskey trembles when approaching his lips.
OK, enough of that cheez whiz. I first saw McMurtry approximately a year ago at Lola’s Saloon in Fort Worth. That was a full band performance and he has a good one. Any unit that includes a bass player named Corn Bread can surely work a solid groove. This Friday night gig in Dallas was a solo acoustic set. Extended acoustic sets typically have a noticeable deficit in the oomph department and this night was not the exception. While McMurtry is a talented guitarist, he showed on a few numbers he can be much more fluid and versatile than he generally is, he clearly wants his musicianship to be subordinate to his lyrics, not competing with them. The similar tempo for a number of his songs became a negative in a set that went too long at an hour and 45 minutes, often significantly delayed between numbers for guitar tuning.
An interesting facet of the solo show versus the band performance was that the acoustic format demonstrated how much McMurtry has been inspired by Dylan as both a singer and songwriter. On “Hurricane Party,” from the 2008 album Just Us Kids, McMurtry’s phrasing and delivery was so much like Uncle Bob’s that I expected him to grunt “hunnnnnnh” and toss in a harmonica solo. The unreleased “How Am I Gonna Find You Now” was played at the same runaway train pace as “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”
McMurtry has an interesting style as songwriter, not using traditional song structures and choruses. Often, the song builds to a title that’s simply a tagline or verbal hook. Given his literary pedigree (his father is Pulitzer price Winning “Lonesome Dove author Larry McMurtry) he can write songs like short novels, but he consistently does his best work on lyrics about economic hardship and these songs are why he is an important artist. On “Down Across the Delaware” and “Ruby and Carlos,” McMurtry illustrates the crippling emotional impact that financial issues can have on individuals and relationships. On “We Can’t Make it Here,” the highlight of the evening’s set, he tackles structural income inequality in a way that hits the listener on both an intellectual and on a visceral gut level. Not to get too heavy in a property is theft kind of way, but we live in an age where we are constantly being fed misinformation from corporate and institutional structures thanks to capitalism’s endless pie eating effort to consolidate wealth. McMurtry is one of the few musicians with both the intellectual honesty and inherent skill to reflect how the culture of greed impacts the have nots.
Halfway through the show, McMurtry spun the roulette wheel and landed on “Choctaw Bingo.” Having driven through the state of Oklahoma a dozen times in the past year, that mind bending, local color ode to meth amphetamine commerce and familial lust has somewhat become my personal theme song. I can’t think of a better one. However, don’t go looking for that “Pop’s Knife and Gun” place in Tushka. Sadly, it doesn’t exist. But he did add a new verse about a relative that spent since months at the Red River Rehab clinic for cocaine addiction. James McMurtry is a talented man that can homestead eternally at the intersection where poverty and white trash intersect.
Grade – B
Setlist:
Down Across the Delaware
Red Dress
Rachel’s Song
Hurricane Party
You’d a’ Thought
Choctaw Bingo
Ruby and Carlos
How Am I Gonna Find You Now
We Can’t Make It Here
Restless
Levelland
Encore:
These Things I’ve Come to Know