Nearly four decades ago, John Mellencamp was asked to produce James McMurtry’s debut album, 1989’s Too Long in the Wasteland. “You’ve got to understand that the last thing I want to do is go into the studio and work on someone else’s record,” Mellencamp explained to a writer for the Los Angeles Times. “But this kid is such a wonderful writer. He’s just 25, but he writes like he’s 50 … like he’s seen so much.”
McMurtry is now 64, and he’s seen so much more. Last year he released his 11th studio album, The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy, to widespread critical acclaim—including from Texas music legend Robert Earl Keen, who declared it “a masterclass in honest, character-driven storytelling.” And in June, McMurtry was listed as No. 65 on the “Reader Top 100 Greatest Living American Songwriters” by The New York Times Magazine.
McMurtry has also logged countless miles driving from one spot on the map to another—finding fans wherever they may be, singing songs that sound like they come from a weathered veteran of the road. Straddling country, rock, and Americana, McMurtry composes deceptively plainspoken stories in which his characters don’t mince words. The songs are blunt assessments reflecting life’s meager realities.
The wonder of it isn’t that McMurtry draws eager crowds who listen to his songs that sound like four-minute dramas; it’s how he can get them to dance to those same austere observations with hand-waving, boot-stompin’ melodies. But as Mellencamp pointed out, McMurtry had seen so much before he even got started.
He was born in 1962 in Fort Worth to soon-to-be-world- famous novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry, author of 1985’s Lonesome Dove, and university professor of Shakespearean studies Josephine “Jo” Scott McMurtry. The family soon left for San Francisco, then to northern Virginia where McMurtry spent his formative years. He returned to Texas at age 22 with songwriting ambitions. While living in San Antonio, he was named a 1987 winner of Kerrville Folk Festival’s New Folk emerging songwriters competition. He moved to Austin in 1989 with a first album deal in his pocket and stayed until the spring of 2019.
Now residing in Lockhart, McMurtry says he may end up living there a while—but don’t expect him to always be home. “At this point, things get scheduled, and I go there,” he says.
Texas Highways: You drive so much each year for performances. How are the Texas highways looking these days?
James McMurtry: They’re pretty good. It seems like I spent my whole life on 281. When my dad and I drove to Archer City from Houston, we’d go to Huntsville [via Interstate 30], get on 6, and pick up 281 at Hico for that stretch through Mineral Wells and Jacksboro. When I lived in San Antonio, I’d go up 281 to see my aunts and uncles and cousins. They all live around Archer City. I still go deer hunting up there.
TH: Your father was friends with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Do you remember riding the painted bus—famously named “Furthur”—around your fifth birthday?
JM: We rode it from the house on Quenby Road to the Astrodome and back. Ken had a barstool set up in the middle of the aisle and he’d look out through the plexiglass bubble they’d mounted in the roof of the bus. Hermit was my favorite Prankster because he had a big knife on his hip. Hermit turned out to be an FBI informant, so you gotta be careful how you pick your heroes.
TH: Was it your mother who first taught you to play a few chords on the guitar?
JM: Yes. It would have been about the time we moved to Virginia, when I was 7. My mother and stepdad also took me to see Johnny Cash at the Richmond Coliseum that year. He was my hero at that age, so it stuck with me. The Kris Kristofferson show in Richmond in 1971 was really more pivotal because I saw those guys up there having such a great time. That’s when I realized that this is what I wanted to do.
TH: How did you end up playing Randolph Miller alongside Cybil Shepherd in the 1974 movie Daisy Miller?
JM: Because of my father we knew people who worked in films. I didn’t have to do a screen test or anything. We went to New York and hung out with director Peter Bogdanovich a little bit. He sort of assessed whether or not he could get a performance out of me, which he did. Larry went for the filming in Italy and Switzerland, but he was trying to write Terms of Endearment and felt his characters weren’t talking to him in Europe. He went home, and my mother came for a while, and then my stepdad came over. After filming I went back to school like everybody else. Apparently I did get another offer after that, but Larry turned it down. I had missed too much school already.
TH: What kind of music were you writing and playing when you were named one of the winners of the New Folk emerging songwriters competition in 1987?
JM: I didn’t really have a category of music then. I was just a solo acoustic musician. I didn’t know enough people to form a band. I was looking anywhere for an audience. When I first heard about Guy Clark hosting one of the ballad trees in Kerrville, I got there in time to play him a song.
TH: What was the song?
JM: At the time it was called “Small Town” [renamed “Talkin’ at the Texaco”], and it was the first one that I was ever confident enough to play in front of people.
TH: You’ve been playing Austin’s Continental Club regularly since 2002. Have you played there more than anyplace else?
JM: Yeah, that’s my home gig. Any time we’re home we play there, full band once a week, and after owner Steve Wertheimer opened the Gallery upstairs, I started doing a weekly solo residency. It also serves as good rehearsal for the road. We pull songs out and see what works with the band, and it’s good practice for my solo tours.
TH: After living in and working out of Austin for 30 years, why did you move to Lockhart?
JM: Austin got too expensive. Lockhart is still within the Austin sphere. A lot of the service industry kids in Austin were living up there and got priced out too, and they came down here and started opening bars and restaurants. So it’s a cool little village now. It’s not strictly barbecue.
TH: Your social media posts often show you driving to the next show. Do you like driving?
JM: I’ve always enjoyed driving. I cannot do without it, really. But you go down the road enough and your joints and your spine kind of compress and everything hurts if you do it all the time. During lockdown I had this strange feeling and that strange feeling was my back not hurting. Since the touring started back up, I find I missed the motion.
TH: Your son, Curtis, was born soon after your debut album released and now has four albums to his name. What’s it like being his dad?
JM: I’m proud of Curtis. He’s way ahead of me in songwriting. He’s got a lot more musical knowledge and a broader mind. I tell people I had about five minutes between being Larry’s boy and Curtis’ dad. It wasn’t a bad five minutes.
