The Black Dog And The Wandering Boy

Description

When his father died in 2021, James McMurtry went through his belongings and found a pencil sketch of himself as a child. “I knew it was me, but I didn’t know who had drawn it. I had to ask my stepmother, and she told me it looked like Ken Kesey’s work in the 60s. The Merry Pranksters, Kesey’s itinerant band of hippie activists and creators, often stopped by to visit Larry McMurtry, his wife Faye, and their very young son James. He held on to that drawing while working on a new album, The Black Dog & the Wandering Boy, his eleventh. It is a collection of roughly hewn story songs and richly drawn character sketches that have elements of Americana — rolling guitars, bar harmonies, traces of banjo and harmonica — but sound too sly and intelligent for such a broad category. Funny and sad often in the same breath, it adds a new chapter to a long career that has seen a recent resurgence as younger songwriters like Sarah Jarosz (who plays on the new album) and Jason Isbell (who took McMurtry on tour) cite him as a formative influence. McMurtry’s characters face similar reckonings, though theirs are harder, sadder, and arrive at the end of life rather than the beginning. Sometimes they find salvation, like a calling or a good memory; sometimes they drown, like that lawman from south Texas. Even the songwriter himself doesn’t always know what will happen or what will inspire him. “You follow the lyrics where they lead. If you can get a character, maybe you can get a story. If you can set it to a verse-chorus structure, maybe you can get a song.