It’s one thing to write songs about jerks. It’s another to fully inhabit them, willfully and convincingly becoming an unlikable narrator. That only works if the songs are enormously likable. And Austin singer-songwriter Curtis McMurtry once again strikes that balance […]
“How are you adjusting to the new regime?” Curtis McMurtry asks with more than a hint of a snarl in the spoken-word opening of his new album, Toothless Messiah. It’s less a question than an accusation, and the songs that […]
Welcome a new generation of Texas troubadour, and not just because of the familiar surname. On the self-released The Hornet’s Nest (out February 24), Curtis McMurtry quickly distances himself from the “son of James, grandson of Larry” expectations, through the […]
When Curtis McMurtry released his debut album, Respectable Enemy, in 2014, there were at least traces of his father’s influence, punctuated by Curtis’ cover of one of James’ masterpieces, the spare, heart-wrenching “Gulf Road.” But on Curtis’ new album, The Hornet’s […]
Curtis McMurtry has a famous father, whose father is even more famous. But it’s his mom who turned him on to “anything that wasn’t white dudes with guitars.” “That’s still great music to me,” clarifies McMurtry, himself a white dude with […]
