How Satellite Radio Led Me To A Moving Evening With James McMurtry

             I’m no music critic by any stretch, but like anyone else I enjoy a good concert. I’ve seen a bunch, certainly not as much as other music lovers I know, but enough to have enjoyed some wonderful live music experiences. I had the privilege of seeing James McMurtry in concert in Louisville Friday, and I left with a reaction to a live show I hadn’t had before. I was moved, deeply moved by one of the best songwriters out there today.

            Most people have not heard of him. I’m sure most reading this blog will have missed out on him so far as well. More have heard of his father, novelist Larry McMurtry ("Lonesome Dove," "Terms of Endearment," "The Last Picture Show.") James plays a type of music that is difficult to categorize. Some call it Americana, some call it alt-country, some say roots rock. It’s a genre with a lot of great artists who don’t recycle the same three love song verses or sing about how they are proud to be a half-educated redneck, so country radio has nothing to do with them. They aren’t really country anyway, mostly, and don’t really want to be. After all, no Nashville artist would pen lyrics like this from McMurtry:

Ruby said "You're gettin' us in a world of hurt.
Down below the Mason-Dumbass line the food gets worse.
I can't go back to Tennessee
that NASCAR country's not for me.
Go on, if you think you must."

Wilco, Sun Volt, the Bottle Rockets (and their brilliant mothership, Uncle Tupelo) along with the Old 97’s, the Gourds and Lucinda Williams fall into this category. Thank goodness for satellite radio.

            James McMurtry’s songs tell stories. He has a lot of his father’s gift for writing, and he’s combined that with fine guitar playing as well. The lyrics of his songs weave tales of the working class of America, and carry an impact that can make you stop in your tracks. He has an ability to create full characters in songs, people you can picture, whose struggles you can feel and with which you can empathize. One of his best is "Choctaw Bingo," an epic song McMurtry says he sings in his church, which jokingly referred to as the “First Crystal Methodist.” It has no chorus but contains brilliant story of a trip to a family reunion. By the end, you know of his uncle who married an Asian girl and cooks meth and moonshine while scamming people in real estate deals, a football coach with a declining team and an interest in weapons, another who was involved a serious traffic accident with details down to describing the town and intersection where it happened. This isn’t a short story remember, it’s one song.

            His slower tempo songs contain heart-wrenching lyrics that can easily double as true poetry. It was interesting to hear the hall come to a hush as the crowd stopped jawing, checking their cell phones and downing their bottles of beer so they could concentrate on the story being told. “Ruby and Carlos,” a tune about a May-December romance was one of these, and in the pauses you could hear a pin drop as McMurtry sang about the travails of two people damaged by hard living and war. As he sang “Ruby and Carlos, with just him on guitar while his backup band took a break, I saw a woman standing nearby. Her eyes were closed, her head tilted slightly up, taking in the story like you take in a warm breeze that smells like a welcome rain is coming.

The aspen trees were turning gold up top
The talk was buzzin 'round the beauty shop
"Wasn't he barely half her age.
Well that's just how they do now days.
We should all had been so lucky."

By spring she'd had the run of the free born men
Ruby turned 50 in a sheep camp tent
her body still could rock all night
but her heart was closed and locked up tight

Potato fields all muddy and brown
the gossip long since quieted down

And after one more Coggins test
Pouring coffee for the county vet
Pictures on the ice box door
of Carlos in the first Gulf War
Black-eyed brown and youthful face
smiling back from a Saudi base

He looks out the window and it starts to sleet
Laying on a friend's couch on Nevada Street
Lately he's been staying high
Sick all winter and they don't know why
They don't know why or they just won't say
They don't talk much down at the V.A.

And Ruby's in his thoughts sometimes
What thoughts can get out past the wine
He feels her fingers on his brow
And right then he misses how
She looked in that gray morning light
She never behaved like they all do now
He sees it all behind his eyes
and his hands go searching but they come up dry

And half way in that wakin' dream
Carlos lets the land line ring
He never guessed it was Ruby calling

            Other songs cried out against the loss of jobs and the growing gap between the rich and poor. Some of these songs were more political, like the angry “We Can’t Make It Here Anymore.” Others make their point more subtly, such as the sublime "Lights of Cheyenne," a song of an older married couple falling apart due to a lack of work and an abundance of worries. It’s another one that makes you stop short, and I saw several audience members literally wiping tears from their eyes as he reached the end of this song sung from the perspective of a woman working extra to make up for her husband’s unemployment, and his inability to deal with it.

And you've kept all that
meanness inside you so long
You'd fight with a fence post
if it looked at you wrong
Well the post won't hit back,
and it won't call the law
I look at you right,
or I don't look at all

Now take a crumpled up
soft pack and give it a shake
Out by the dumpster on a cigarette break
With one eye swelled up from
the back of your hand
And the other eye fixed
on the lights of Cheyenne

And it's warming up nicely
for this time of year
The creeks are still frozen but
the roads are all clear
And I don't have it in me
to make one more stand
You know I never much cared
for the lights of Cheyenne

I’m aware a lot of this sounds depressing. I suppose I highlighted some of the darker parts so far. Still, there were up tempo songs as well, like "Just us kids," about going to California with a dream and ending up with something good even if it’s not what you thought it would be originally. If that’s not real life I don’t know what is.

After the show McMurtry came to his small merchandise table and signed CDs and posed for pictures. While plenty of the fans smiled and some of the women giggled when talking to him, many times I heard something rare for situations like that. People thanked him for writing those songs. They thanked him for putting down in writing something they had lived. Country music on the radio pretneds to sing about real life, but in truth Nashville country isn’t realistic at all. It is at best trite and frequently flat-out artificial. These fans wanted to thank a songwriter who got it.  That kind of feel for real life is rare, and it is appreciated.