James McMurtry Readies New Album ‘The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy’
One of America’s greatest living songwriters previews his first album in four years with the release of the title track, inspired by his father, Lonesome Dove author Larry McMurtry
By David Browne
Talking about his forthcoming album, his first in four years, James McMurtry is as no-nonsense as his songs. “It happened like all my records happened,” he said in a statement. “It’d been too long since I’d had a record that the press could write about and get people to come out to my shows. It was time.”
That moment fully arrives on June 20, when McMurtry, one of the most respected singer-songwriters of his generation, releases The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy, his first studio LP in four years. Produced by indie/roots music veteran Don Dixon (R.E.M.’s Murmur and Reckoning, the Smithereens’ Especially for You), the album features eight new McMurtry tracks, two covers, and musical backup from guitarist Charlie Sexton, singer Sarah Jarosz, and McMurtry’s own band.
Heritage, tradition, and the past have long haunted James McMurtry’s work, and the same applies to the new album. Connected to his father, the late novelist Larry McMurtry, the title song takes its name from what he calls “two of my father’s regular hallucinations toward the end of his life.” (Watching the “squares” go to work in the morning, the title character observes them boarding commuter buses, “jammin’ out that old Weird Al song and they ain’t got time for us.”) “Annie,” featuring a vocal harmony and banjo from Jarosz, chronicles the aftermath of 9/11.
The album, steeped in McMurtry’s rough-hewn Americana, also includes a nod to one of McMurtry’s inspirations with a cover of Kris Kristofferson’s “Broken Freedom Song.” “Kris was one of my major influences as a child,” McMurtry said. “He was the first person that I recognized as a songwriter. I hadn’t really thought about where songs come from, but I started listening to Kristofferson as a songwriter and thinking, ‘How do you do this?’”
And in another nod to the past, the album cover is based on a rough pencil sketch of McMurtry by Ken Kesey, Larry McMurtry’s fellow student (and frequent rival) at the Stanford Creative Writing Program in California. “I knew it was me, but I didn’t realize who drew it,” McMurtry said of the illustration, which he found among his father’s possession after his death in 2021. (His father married Kesey’s widow Norma Faye Haxby Kesey in 2011.)
In a more contemporary touch, “Sailing Away” finds McMurtry recalling “opening for [Jason] Isbell in some cavernous room” and reflecting, “I won’t forget that chorus like I did the night before/When I was trying to remember did I lock the front door/And have I any business being in this business anymore.”
McMurtry will also embark on a tour this summer, which ties in with the new release. “A song can come from anywhere, but the main inspiration is fear,” he said. “Specifically fear of irrelevance. If you don’t have songs, you don’t have a record. If you don’t have a record, you don’t have a tour. You gotta keep putting out work.”
The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy tracklist:
1. “Laredo (Small Dark Something)”
2. “South Texas Lawman”}
3. “The Color of Night”
4. “Pinocchio in Vegas”
5. “Annie”
6. “The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy”
7. “Back to Coeur d’Alene”
8. “Sons of the Second Sons”
9. “Sailing Away”
10. “Broken Freedom Song”