McMurtry tours with rich characters, gritty tone

Nobody talks to James McMurtry about his live guitar sound.

That's understandable. Responsible journalism requires addressing the other stuff, like the fact that the Austin-based singer-songwriter is the son of the great Texas novelist Larry McMurtry and the fact that a certain literary quality permeates James McMurtry's lyrics, which sketch characters more often than they tell stories.

Actually the songs are more like short stories than story songs. More often than not they offer selected freighted details and moral ambiguities rather than tidy lessons or cheap jokes. But we're not here to write about English literature, although McMurtry admits that his lyrics are important to him.

He says his process took a hit when Apple upgraded the iPhone Notes app; there was something about the virtual yellow pad and the comic font that fit his style. So now he has had to adjust to the cleaner interface.

"I usually write the lyrics and a melody together," he says. "Then I have to go back and redo the chords. I often write 'em where I can't sing 'em."

Yeah, we've got to cover the the talk-singing thing, a growl drone that seems to have gotten a little oilier and more supple with age, a voice that registers joy and resignation in the same deadpan four and a quarter note territory. (Think of a more tuneful Lou Reed, or as Jason Isbell recently tweeted, "Lynyrd Cohen.")

McMurtry's new album, Complicated Game, is one of the best records released so far this century. There's not a weak song and there's none of the political polemics of his George W. Bush-era work (though McMurtry's allegiance still lies with the 99 percent).

This is what country music could be if it realized its potential for illuminating the anxieties inherent in the everyday lives of everyday Americans.

The new album is nominally the reason McMurtry and his band are touring -- they play Little Rock's Rev Room on Saturday, although he allows that things have reversed themselves over the past 30 years or so.

"It used to be you toured to promote a record," he says. "But now we go in and make a record so you guys will write about our coming to town and people will want to come and see us play live. To give us a reason to go out and make some money."

That's a point he makes in just about every interview, that the days when a musician could live off record royalties have been vaporized by the digital revolution. But making a living on the road doesn't really seem to disappoint McMurtry. You get the feeling that's where his work really is, in the clubs and bars, rather than an isolation booth in a recording studio -- to go up on stage and shake the air in front of drunks and acolytes, some drunk acolytes and a few oblivious human beings who've wandered in off the street hoping to drink, dance and/or connect, and to do his best not to disappoint them.

McMurtry recognizes that, ultimately, he's in a service industry.

The near unanimous critical acclaim for Complicated Game has introduced some nervousness. McMurtry has been booked into larger venues; for the economics to work they've got to fill up those larger clubs. So he's on the phone talking to reporters, hoping to drum up some business. He agrees that he apparently has a solid constituency here, but that doesn't mean he can take folks for granted. He has to put on a show.

McMurtry is an interesting guitar player, one of those guys who might not have a whole lot of theory or blazing technique but who makes up for it with taste and acumen. He's more John Lennon than George Harrison. McMurtry has a rich sonic vocabulary, a grittiness that will surprise anyone who thinks of him as an acoustic strummer. He plays 12-string Takamine and six-string Guild acoustics on stage, but is just as likely to fire up a Paul Reed Smith electric or a Telecaster he pushes through a Fender Vibrolux amp. He uses mainly cowboy chords and relatively simple blues figures, but he has ample game. (He started his career playing guitar for Kinky Friedman, although he always had it in mind that he'd write and sing his own songs.)

I haven't heard his band since he promoted his longtime guitar tech, Tim Holt, to full-fledged band member. Holt's a guitarist -- and more.

"He's our multi-instrumentalist," McMurtry says, noting that Holt is handling some of the keyboards that Benmont Tench (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) supplied on the album. The other band members are drummer Daren Hess and bassist Michael "Cornbread" Traylor.

There's a delicacy in the music of Complicated Game one doesn't usually hear on a McMurtry record. Along with the keyboards, there are some Irish pipes.

"They emailed them in from Ireland," McMurtry says, "I don't know [the musicians'] names, but those guys were good."

There's also some button accordion. Danny Barnes and McMurtry's son Curtis -- a gifted singer-songwriter in his own right -- add some banjo. There's a male choir on one song.

"We just work out what's essential about the song, and play that," he says. "I ain't taking a banjo on tour."

Style on 04/28/2015