A Brilliant Adventure

On his album Live in Aught-Three, James McMurtry introduces “Max’s Theorem” with a quote from the Communist-leaning gentleman in small-town Texas for whom the song is named: “A good old boy can become an intellectual, but an intellectual cannot become a good old boy.” He then launches into a short, blistering critique of President George W. Bush, whom he firmly believes has infringed upon this absolute truth by purposely mispronouncing the word “nuclear.”

But what if, like McMurtry, you’re born as both good old boy and intellectual?

Bred in Texas and Virginia, McMurtry was sent to an all-boys boarding school (attended by a lesser-known Bush brother, ironically) before heading back for cactus at a state college in his dad’s current hometown of Tucson, Arizona.  Stoic, lanky and hirsute, he  hunts, fishes, drives a pickup truck, speaks and sings in a deep drawl, and is as brilliant a songwriter and guitarist as his famous father, Larry, is a novelist. In short, McMurtry’s the sort of man most guys wish they were more like.

Factor in a quarter-century-long career as a touring musician, and McMurtry can speak credibly to a variety of cultural circles. Never before has he put this unique social dexterity to work more adroitly than on Complicated Game, his first studio album in seven years, which comes out on February 24 on the label Complicated Game (As for naming the album after his new label, McMurtry explains, “We were initially messing around, trying to fool people into thinking I owned the label. It didn’t fool anybody.”) While he’s long been based in Austin, Texas, where he plays a regular nightclub gig every Wednesday at midnight when he’s not on the road, McMurtry writes what he sees through the windshield. And here, he takes listeners on a road trip of unprecedented geographic and emotional scope.

Sonically, however, Complicated Game might be McMurtry’s most even-keeled, restrained album, which is somewhat surprising—albeit far from disappointing—given that it’s produced by Louisiana swamp-pop champion C.C. Adcock. With the exception of the dizzyingly verbose “How’m I Gonna Find You Now” (Choctaw Jr., if you will), there’s not a rocker among the album’s 12 tracks, which heavily favor acoustic guitars and are inflected with banjo, piano and other rootsy instrumentation.

Lyrically, the album is wise and adventurous, with McMurtry—who’s not prone to autobiographical tales—credibly inhabiting characters from all walks of life. “Long Island Sound,” with its expertly utilized Irish pipes and accordion, is told from the perspective of an Oklahoma transplant who’s moved his family to New York’s shoreline suburbs and revels in the comfort of his white-collar life. McMurtry got the idea for the song during a traffic jam on the Whitestone Bridge while his son, Curtis—who contributes banjo and backing vocals to several tracks—was about to graduate from nearby Sarah Lawrence College. The protagonist is the sort of guy who’s happy to buy his buddies a round of drinks, something McMurtry concedes he “almost never” does.

On the opposite end of the East Coast economic spectrum is the touching “Carlisle’s Haul,” which is based on an illicit fishing trip off Chesapeake Bay that McMurtry tagged along for in real life. “Basically, somebody needed money and it was off-season, so they ran out into the river at night,” he recalls. “They did it on incoming tide, I remember. They had these long, skinny boats. We stood elbow to elbow with these crabbers, and dragged [the haul] in hand over hand.”

Staying east for “You Got to Me,” McMurtry tells the story of a middle-aged man who’s returned to the scene of an unforgettable weekend of youthful passion for a late September wedding. While the track’s “subway tokens” instantly point to New York City, McMurtry insists that the song could be set in “any of several Northeastern cities with cobblestones and subways and row houses.” He popped the kernel of the song 20 years ago when the image of a paperboy entered his head, and from that he’s spun a poignant yarn about trying to rediscover freewheeling romance, in life and in love. It also bears the distinction of being perhaps the only song by a popular artist to use the word “impervious” in its climactic line, and the fact that it features Ivan Neville on harmony vocals and Benmont Tench on piano and organ makes it one of the finest ballads McMurtry’s ever recorded.

McMurtry also ventures to the upper Midwest, opening the album with “Copper Canteen,” which beings with the unforgettable line, “Honey, don’t be yellin’ at me when I’m cleanin’ my gun.” From there, the Wisconsin-based narrator goes on to threaten that if she keeps nagging him, the bridge-tender’s widow might welcome his advances. “I was going across one of those drawbridges, and there’s a festival Pat MacDonald does every year in Wisconsin called the Steel Bridge Songfest. That’s where I first heard the term bridge-tender,” McMurtry says of how the premise took hold. “They like their drinking in Wisconsin, so there are plenty of bars for bands to set up in.”

While his characters are mostly made up, their situations are frequently real—and McMurtry has consistently championed the plight of hardworking rural folk who’ve seen the soil shift beneath their feet. Occupying a middle ground between Jason Isbell’s heart-wrenching “Dress Blues” and the more buoyant “Tour of Duty,” McMurtry’s “South Dakota” tells the story of a soldier who’s just returned from war, only to contemplate re-enlisting after he realizes how bleak his prospects are back home. 

The song isn’t as direct and forceful as McMurtry’s working-class anthem, “We Can’t Make It Here,” but it’s every bit as effective. Of its genesis, McMurtry says, “My dad called me up in October 2013 and asked, ‘Did you hear about the tragedy?’ I said, ‘Which one?’ He said the blizzards in South Dakota that put all those ranchers out of business. It puzzled me at first, because my father hates cows; he even hates horses. But he still has an affinity for ranching people. That was the seed of the story. I don’t know how I came up with the soldier character, but I like to remind people that we’ve still got soldiers over there getting shot at.” 

“The only soldiers you see in mainstream media are at halftime on football games and during Walmart commercials,” he continues. “Walmart likes to crow about how many veterans they’re hiring, but it’s for nothing. I see a lot more flags flying and ‘Welcome Home’ banners in rural towns; there are an awful lot more rural kids in the service, because what else are they gonna do? There are no jobs.”