Texas songwriter James McMurtry brings Florida stories to concert at The Moon
Droll singer James McMurtry is a complex man who turns out cutting, precise story songs yet will write himself off as a “beer salesman” because he prefers to play his music in establishments that have bars.
“I just feel more comfortable in those places,” McMurtry, 61, matter-of-factly said.
McMurtry’s idiosyncratic career path may have left the pop-music audiences baffled or indifferent but his faithful followers, most of whom will be at The Moon when he visits for a concert on February 15, can’t get enough.
They know McMurtry is one of the best songwriters of his generation. Up there with Randy Newman, Richard Thompson or John Prine. Noted fussy critic Robert Christgau singled out McMurtry’s searing song “We Can’t Make It Here,” all about forgotten war veterans and the quiet rage of the working poor in America, as the No. 2 song of 2005.
“Can’t Make It Here” did not crack the commercially ranked Billboard Hot 100, though.
“I’m pretty wordy with my song lyrics,” McMurtry said. “That’s one of the reasons (I’ve never had a Top 40 hit). But writing hits are a different thing from what I do.”
Amen.
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North Florida connection
McMurtry may hail from the heart of Texas near Austin, but he knows this colorful corner of the Florida Panhandle well.
McMurtry’s loping, catchy song “Forgotten Coast” is all about North Florida’s peculiar hideaways. It even namechecks Port St. Joe and Wewahitchka. The video for the tune includes shots of McMurtry driving a vintage Ford Falcon along Alligator Point, stopping in Carrabelle, and hopping a ride on a fishing boat in Apalachicola Bay. Rolling Stone magazine called the video the “perfect Visit Florida postcard. At least until the Percodan and wine make an appearance.”
Well, that is typical McMurtry.
In the fast-paced, relentless “Ft. Walton Wake-Up Call,” from his most recent album “The Horses and the Hounds,” McMurtry follows a bickering husband and wife as they pass through such familiar locales as Apalachicola, Sopchoppy and a “roadside stand selling tupelo honey.”
“I used to run around there (North Florida) for a while,” McMurtry said. “I had two friends who lived down there, and they would take me around St. George Island and Apalachicola.”
Creativity runs in the genes
If anyone is looking for a songsmith who writes about love and romance, McMurtry is not that guy. Most of his songs have a lived-in, jaded, slightly worn quality. Starting his music career in 1989, McMurtry has mostly written tunes told from a character’s point of view. They are like capsulated short stories – sorta.
“My father (novelist Larry ‘Lonesome Dove’ McMurtry) couldn’t write short stories.” McMurtry said. “He preferred long fiction. He said it was easier. ... I write fiction, too. They are called my songs.”
The opening lyrics to “Choctaw Bingo” are quintessential McMurtry: “Strap them kids in/ Give ‘em a little bit of vodka in a Cherry Coke/ We’re going to Oklahoma to the family reunion for the first time in years/ It’s up at Uncle Slayton’s cause he’s getting on in years/ You know he no longer travels but he’s still pretty spry/ He’s not much on talking and he’s just too mean to die.”
The nearly nine-minute long “Choctaw Bingo,” a road-trip rocker first released in 2002, has become a staple of McMurtry live shows. An article in Slate magazine in 2009 said its blunt depiction of Middle America qualifies it to become the new National Anthem. McMurtry just shrugs when asked about the song.
“My medley of hits – ‘Choctaw Bingo’,” McMurtry dryly added.
Still, the man knows how to craft characters.
His song “Copper Canteen” from 2014 starts with the memorable opening lines: “Honey don’t you be yelling at me when I’m cleaning my gun/ I’ll wash the blood off the tailgate when deer season’s done.”
In “Childish Things,” written in 2005, an elderly aunt keeps her Holy Bible near the telephone in case she needs a quick quote. The recent song “Canola Fields” from “The Horses and the Hounds” features “the second-best surfer from the Central Coast” as a supporting player.
“I had been carrying around ‘the second-best surfer’ line for a while and I knew I wanted to use it,” McMurtry said. “Usually, I get into songs with a couplet – two lines and a melody. And then I think, ‘Who said that?”
Whenever McMurtry can sing the lyrics from a character’s viewpoint “without cringing,” he knows he has a keeper.
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Putting on the dress
When McMurtry is not on tour he performs live every Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the famed Continental Club in Austin.
“I’m their artist-in-residence,” he said.
In conversation, McMurtry is much more comfortable talking about Old Town canoes, bow fishing, the “Seussian machines” used to harvest canola fields in Western Canada and drag shows.
When he and his band hit the road last May for a series of live gigs in Tennessee, a state that had recently passed an anti-drag show law, McMurtry donned a red dress for his encores. Opening act BettySoo, who will also open the evening of songs in Tallahassee, wore a tux and a painted-on mustache to join McMurtry’s act of civil disobedience.
One patron at the Knoxville stop was apparently offended by McMurtry’s stage gear (one fellow songwriter dubbed him The Old Rugged Cross-Dresser) and went outside to flag down a police officer. The policeman essentially shrugged when he was told about the drag incident and did nothing.
“That policeman is the real hero of the story,” McMurtry said.
McMurtry’s drag protest ended up in the pages of Rolling Stone and on TV’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
“I hadn’t been on TV since I did ‘The Letterman Show’ in ’89,” McMurtry said with a pleased tone in his voice.
The drag-ban law was eventually shot down by a federal judge who ruled it as being unconstitutional, but McMurtry said he wanted to make a point.
“Fascists always single out a group that they think everyone wants to gang up on,” McMurtry said. “Drag performers are an easy shot. … The other thing about drag shows is those things will fill a club. They help the owner pay his rent and his payroll, so when I need a gig next month, the club will still exist. If I don’t stick up for the drag queens, who is going to stick up for me?”
James McMurtry is one wise beer salesman.
Mark Hinson is a former senior writer at The Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at [email protected]
If you go
What: James McMurtry in concert with opening act BettySoo
Where: The Moon, 1105 E. Lafayette St.
When: Thursday, Feb. 15. Doors at 6:30 p.m., show at 7:30 p.m.
Cost: $25 and $30; visit moonevents.com
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: James McMurtry's songbook of characters lands at The Moon
