James McMurtry

road during this Delta era. That's a little different. I mean, this is a solo acoustic tour, but rather than staying in hotels like we used to, or staying in airbnbs, so we don't have to be in elevators and hotel lobbies. And basically, you know, we find a central location and just base out of there for a few days. So you know, right now, we played Albuquerque last night, be going up to Santa Fe today and coming back after show, and then tomorrow go up to Taois and play a

show up there. And what kind of venues the two show is, the Big Barn Dance and the kick Carson Park. All all of these shows on this run have been outdoors except for Phoenix, and Phoenix was was a little strange to start because I had I thought I had required, uh, mask and facts only and they were checking backs cards. But you know, we looked out there right before the

show and nobody's got a mask on. So I talked to the management and they said, well, we can hand out masks, and said, well please, and so they did, and all but two people masked up. And how do you know the two people weren't you just saw him in the audience. They the management told me about them. There was anything they could do at that point. It's Arizona. I don't really understand. Also, yeah, they weren't told when they got there that they had to have mass on,

so I can kind of see. But it's very strange that, you know that artists can't require safety protocols. And we used to be able to require non smoking shows back before smoking bands went into effect, and a lot of promoters didn't like that because they wouldn't draw as well, but eventually that became the norm. You know, you don't see smoking shows much anymore, except in tobacco growing states. So how hesitant, if at all, were you to go

on the road? Quiet hesitant? And then I canceled everything beyond Hoos. I was supposed to fly from Albuquerque to Atlanta in a couple of days and getting the rent car and go driving around the southeast and up as far as actually up as far as Detroit and back around. But I couldn't get any of the venues to honor my safety protocol, so we just dropped it. And your safety protocol was vaccination and mask. Yes for indoor shows.

I want to see you. I want I want to vaccinate, vax cards and masks, you know, as much as you can. I mean, I so you gotta take them off to drink. But you know, I want everybody working against the virus. I don't want to feel like I'm out there working for the virus, drawing people together where they're going to

get infected. And you know it. Austin opened back up a few months ago, and immediately we started getting breakthrough cases among musicians, mostly because they'd be inside in these little clubs and you know, a crowd of people, some of them vaccinated, some of them not. And if you're a singer or a drummer or in some bands, anybody, any musician, you're breathing down to your toes. If there's any you know, a viral load out there, you're gonna

catch quite a bit of it. And you know the vaccines, don't you know, they're not a hundred percent protection against contracting the virus. They tend to keep you out of the hospital, you know all that. Most of the musicians I know that that contracted COVID. You know, they had

mild cases, uh meaning weren't hospitalized. But the problem is, you know, the crowd spreads it amongst themselves, and maybe they're vaccinated and they get my old cases, but they take it home to their kids who can't get vaccinated. And now you know, we're seeing kids in I see you, especially in Texas where they don't allow mask mandates. You know, Houston has something like fifty kids. And I see you, and the whole state's running out. I see you, Beds Now.

You live in the Austin area, right, I live in Lockhart, third, thirty miles due south of the Austin Airport. I haven't been there. What's Lockhart like? Well? And this pretty cool little town. I mean ten years ago it was a kind of a dried up farming town, you know, boarded up storefronts on the square and you know, mostly agricultural base. And that they got a new guy on the Chamber of Commerce, and they wanted to revitalize the town and he told them, well, first thing you need to do

is start issuing liquor licenses. You can't be a dry county anymore. And expected right, and so they did. So, you know, a lot of young people started moving down from Austin because they couldn't afford it anymore. And they're starting businesses. There's you know, cafes and bars with sidewalk service, that sort of thing, and it's kind of it's starting

to thrive. It's and it's interesting how you know, the locals that have been there a long time, they they kind of accepted us because you know, they have an economy now. And how long have you lived there? I moved there in twenty nineteen, February of twenty nineteen. So you moved as part of this arts exodus? Shall we say? Well? Yeah, my my landlords passed away a while back and their errors finally got the place out of probate and they

offered it to me. I was runing. I was actually running both sides of a duplex because I figured out I could write off one side for rehearsal and storage, and it worked pretty well, but you know, there was no way I could buy it. You know, the ground under it was worth three fifty grand and the building itself was a tear down. So how am gonna get financing for that? You need a developer with a pile of cash if you're going to sell something like that.

But they were nice, they didn't They didn't run me out. They gave me time to get my act together and find a place I could buy. So you own in Lockhart? I own in Lockhart? Yeah, what kind of place you go? That's just a little house in a little subdivision that sticks down between a grain field or maze field rather and a couple of pastures. And uh, it's actually across the pasture from the Lockhart Airport where they do flight training, and there's a Cessna plane that circles around all day.

We call it the Incessant Cessna. It took a little while to get used to, but it's just part of life now. So how big a house? How much property? Oh? Virtually no property? I think you know, quarter acre, lot um square feet something like that. Well, you know, I always wonder I'm a lead night person and wherever whenever I live close to people. I always upset them. I'm up too late, the music is too loud. Have you encountered any of those issues? No, Um, we're pretty quiet.

I don't. I don't, you know, I don't. I don't crank up an app at home very much. I do that in rehearsal spaces. So so far, I haven't. They only I did to annoy him. My neighbors, because when I first moved down, there had five cats and they're all outdoor casts. We had to cage them up for a while, and they had been feral cats, but they sort of moved in and we got them fixed and all we're down to three. I'm not sure what predators.

And I think an awl got the last one because I found al feathers across the street, and I don't know what got that other one. The coyotes don't come into into the neighborhood like they will in an urban area because you know, rural coyotes get shot at. They like to stay away from dogs and people. When you say we who's living in the house with my girlfriend Kelly? And I know you've been married this lady. How long have you been involved with her? Twenty one years? Twenty years. Yeah,

twenty years. You lie. Now, I've been involved with my girlfriend for sixteen years and I'm not married. Why are you not married? Huh? Didn't we just I don't know that's that important to us, and it would mess with her Obamacare. Okay, you talked about living in Lockhart. You say you don't rehearse there. Where do you rehearse San Marcus? As I say, I'm Texas ignorant, we're San Sant Marcus is about eighteen miles east of Lockhart, and there's a

good rehearsal facility for good rate. And my band is scattered around in several different directions, and San Marcus is fairly essential to all of us. So that's where we go. And just plotting in my mind where San Marcos relative to Austin due south, well, a little bit south and a little bit west. Keep forgetting I thirty five kind of runs at an angle through there. But okay, now you say you're doing this acoustic tour, can you talk about your band? How many you are on the road

right now? That's just me and a tour manager right now, right So when you're on the road alone, you're being members. They're only getting paid when they're on the road with you. Well, yeah, they all they're they're pretty good carpenters. Okay, have you ever had to have a second gig since you've had your first record deal? So it has worked out for you. So, you know, Texas is in the news like crazy, and I realized Austin is like the hippest part of Texas.

What's it like living in Texas? Now? Texas is pretty crazy. You see a lot of Trump signs, a lot of don't tread on me signs, and they're always on the the richest looking ranches I ever see. They've got these big ornate you know, sheet iron gates with with always have the word ranching, and then they usually have figurines of cowboys open to something and and the cattle look like four h calves, you know, they look like they've

been manicured. And then you'll have this don't tread on me sign and you want to go, you know that yellow flag with a put the rattlesnake on it, and you just you want to go knock on the door and say, who's treading on you? Like you're doing just fine? And those are all over the countryside out there, and you know, we keep hearing that Texas could go blue. I have a friend to listen for worth it says that's never gonna happen. From your viewpoint, what's going on?

It should numeric numerically. But the thing is the Republicans have jerrymandered those districts for so long. And when I lived when I last lived in Austin, I lived in what was called the the Fajita District because it snaked its way from South Austin down through Beville and Kennedy all the way to the Rio Grand Valley, snaking us way through Republican strongholds, and Austin was cut up into a kaleidoscope like that just to keep us old hippies

from having any cloud electorally. So, you know, we read about Abbott, we read about the abortion law, we read about the voting laws. Is it just going to continue to go in that direction or is something going to change? Well, I can't predict the future. Um they're gonna try to keep it going in that direction. They're trying to turn the clock back to their version of the fifties, which which means uh, segregation and women have no rights. The part of the fifties that they don't want is the

sevent tax bracket. So if you're in Austin, is it like a bubble even though the state government is there where? Does this affect all walks of life and everybody's life in Texas? It's kind of a bubble. But I don't really I don't go into Austin much anymore because Austin it's turned into some version of California. I think we got all this high rise, multi use UH structure is going in and valet parking everywhere, and I don't recognize it even from two years ago. But Austin is known

is a legendary nightlife music town. Is that an accurate description? It was accurate until about maybe five years ago. Now it's Disneyland basically. Can you amplify that a little bit? Well, I mean it used to be you playing clubs and you get music aficionados coming in to see you. Now you get tourists coming in, sometimes on buses. They'll get off the bus and have a bunch of drinks and stand in front of the stage taking selfies and then get back on the bus. It's not about being there

and experiencing anything. It's about saying you've been there. So if you're starting out musician's lost in a good place to be. It's a little expensive for a starting out musician now. I think the way the reason it became a kind of a music mecca is because the cost of living was so low for so long. But it's not that way anymore. One might ask the question, why live in Texas? What's the appeal? Well, I still live there because my band lives there and my girlfriend works there,

and that's just just where I live. I don't know that I would move here now, and I moved to Texas right now. What does your girlfriend do for living? She tends bar And you have a son. Where is your son presently living? He lives in uh Oak Hill over on the west side of Austin, Okay. So you have a new album, you're not on a rigid schedule. Why a new album now? That's just when it happened

to finally come out. We made this record and we tracked it in June of twenty nineteen with Ross Hogarth producing, and and he's pretty busy, and that was pretty busy touring then, and so we after the tracking, we had to juggle our schedules to try to get the overdubs done. That took about the rest of the year. We were just about to finish up keyboards when California shut down and then the rest of the country shut down, and so we had to do keyboard over to his kind

of piecemeal, with various different musicians and different locations. I did a couple of sessions with Buck Allen in Texas, and Ross had some guys that were emailing tracks in and so he finally got it all assembled and mixed this past year. And I don't remember what one the August release date came about, but that's just that's what the label decided on and and now it's out. Okay, did you make the album already have a having a record deal in place? Whould you cut first and then

shop for a deal? Oh? No, I had a deal with New West Records. Um Logan Rogers, he owns a label called Lightning Rod. He did a couple of my records, and before that he was with Compoti Records and they did a couple of records. So I knew Logan. He's now a VP at New West, so he was kind of the key man on the contract. So you have a deal with them, they pay for the record. In today's marketplace, which is so different from when you started out,

What is your label doing to get the word out? Well, I assume they're doing plenty of ads and they got al Moss working at the radio, so they seem to be doing a good job. Where I think we're number three Americana this week. So you know, you started out on a major label. As they say, the landscape change irrelevant of your career. You put out a record today, an album today. What are your personal expectations? What do you want? Well, what I want is to to get

people in the clubs. And then when we when I started out making records on a major label, the business model was you put the record out and you tour to support record sales, and the hopes that you would sell enough records to recoup your cost and are enough royalties that you can make a living off the record. Well, you know, and that didn't work for me. I didn't sell near enough records. But I did get a foot hold in the touring business and learned how to tour

pretty cheap, so I can actually profit on the road. Well. As the business evolved or devolved, however you want to look at it. You know, Napster and Spotify came along. Suddenly nobody's making any artists royalties off records. Everybody's having to scramble down the road. So at that point, everybody else was doing what we've already been doing. Um so we look at, you know, as at a record. A record is is a piece of art, but it's also

a piece of advertising. We put a record out, I get to talk to you, I get to talk to all kinds of journalists. I get local press. When I'm coming to a town to play a gig, and people will know I'm coming and they might buy a ticket. That's what I'm looking for in a record. Okay, before COVID, and it's insanity, how many dates a year were you doing. I was out about half the year, and when we were home, we had a weekend gigs and regular gig at the Continental Club on Wednesdays. I also had a

regular solo thing, so we're pretty busy. Well the same since then. I had to learn to stream, so now I do a couple of live streams a week, and and it was it was pretty good money at first, and then everybody's unemployment ran out and they don't tip quite so high, but but they're still pretty generous and loyal. So I've been very lucky with the people out there. So how frequently were you doing the live streams twice a week, once on Wednesdays and once on Sundays And

what platform were you using? I use Facebook and YouTube and Twitch. For a while, I was just using Facebook. I usually have like two fifty a week or to fifty per show. At first it was somewhat more than that, and then I guess everybody got bored with my mercury. I don't know, but it's boiled down to, you know,

two fifty loyal fans and from different places. You know, Wednesday night I do at at pm Central and then Sundays I do it one pm Central because that way I still get I get the Europeans that are still awake, and I get the Californias they're just getting up. So

you have to thank globally on the net. And do you think it's the same Twitter and fifty people every gig where there's a certain number of die hards, a bunch of them, because well yeah, because you see their handles on Facebook scroll I use I use re stream, which goes multi format, so it goes out to UH, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch. Twitch has the best technical aspects, best audio, best video, and about two listeners. We're getting another we're

getting more unstable internet. UM YouTube has pretty good video, pretty good audio. But Facebook remains the most popular. I think it's because the interactive nature of it. People like to get together and shot amongst themselves. So if you're doing two shows a week on a presentation level, how do you decide what material to play? I try not to repeat UH songs more than you know every third or fourth show. So I just asked kind of rotate through my material, and I generally do one cover song

per show, usually one that I've never played before. I just started surfing the internet and trying to jog my memory. So what are some of the cover songs you've played? I did Garden Party one time. That was interesting. I wasn't and I was like that. Sometimes I'll pull up hits that I remember when I was, you know, fourteen or fifteen, UM, please come to Boston. I really like doing that. You've done so many of these, You've learned what works most when you play the well known songs

or when you tell stories. Yeah, what works for your audience. Well, depending on a live show, I don't talk so much. But on the Internet you have to. You have to sort of be kind of twisted, Mr Rogers, because you gotta tune these guitars, and everybody's right up in your face. They can they can see you, they can see your thoughts. So you gotta keep something going, some kind of pattern. But there's just some of the old songs that they

really like. They always like Choctaw Bingo level Land, Painting by Numbers, that kind of thing. So do you personally know a lot of these hardcore fans or do you keep him at arms length? Uh? No, I don't know very many fans in general, and I don't do like I don't interact on Facebook. I don't do Facebook unless I'm streaming. Um. There was a little while where I kind of got drawn into the culture, and I just don't like that. I don't like to worry about it.

I'll put my show out there and every now and then I'll post something just to see if I can get a feeding frenzy going, because for a while there, you you know, you get all kinds of trolls. That was fun. To watch. But if I'm mad enough, I'll post something. But I don't ever look at the comments anymore. I just, you know, I don't worry about what they think that much. But you're a guy who was not speaking in bland statements, and there's a lot of personal

stuff and therefore bonds fans to you. And I'm wondering if one of the reasons you might keep fans in arms lengthens, you might have had some bad experiences. By the flip side, there's a lot of acts that depend on their fans to get the word out. They literally stay at their houses. Where are you in that game? Well, I don't. I don't stay at private residences on the road.

And I'm just a little too old to be that accessible, because, uh, you know, when I was starting out and making records, we were still in the business of selling exclusivity and myth and it's more fun to sell that than than than accessibility. I don't you know, I've gotten. I got where I didn't want to go to the merch table anymore. For for a while there, I had to because we had to make little extra money and and my drummers

in the T shirt business. I wanted him to make a little extra money, And so I'd go out there and signed stuff I found that. You know, after you drive all day and then you check in a hotel, you take an hour off, you go load in, then you sound check, then you do a show, then you go out and try to talk to people, and you just don't have anything left but meanness, so quite off, and I'd get in a practice with a fan, you know, or you know, or I just let him know what

an asshole I was. You don't want to let them know that. You want to keep them in the dark on that. And so it was better if I don't go near the merch table and sign stuff because one thing, it just takes so much energy, and you need that energy for the next day's show. And you know, there there are artists like Joe really who could talk to people all night long and get up and play a great show the next night. But me, it would wear

me down after a while. And besides that, you know, everybody's got a camera now, they all got a cell phone, so they're gonna get a picture with you, And it's just it takes a lot of energy to stand there and do that and just to be nice for that long when you're already that tired. You know, the freeway can make you grumpy. How big your business is? Your merch Um, you'd have to ask my manager a merchburg. I don't really keep tabs on that. Um. I don't

like merch personally, but it's just necessary, okay. And you'd don't like merch because instance, because you got to carry it around and then somebody's got to account for it, and it doesn't it's not my craft really. Well, I guess the question I'm asking is if you don't sign and you don't sit there and talk to Fance, does that drive the numbers down? Definitely? But it's worth it to me to have more energy the next night to do a better show. Just the show is the product

I'm trying to sell. And I feel better if I do a better job, and I do a better job if I don't bother with the merch table. Okay. You know your agent is Frank Riley at high Road Touring, good friend of mine, great guy, really dedicated. So how do you plan out your tours and going on the road. You call him and say this, how much I want to work and how much is involved in terms of

the conversation. Well, um, actually, as Dave Rohan does most of the hands on work with my tours, Frank does sums that you know, he gets some good stuff coming to him. But basically, you arrange a tour, you get some good offers, you get some good money offers, and the trick at that point is to get to that

money and get home with most of it. So you'll have your anchor dates that are high dollar and then you just take regular club dates for whatever the market will bear to get you there, so you can put gas in your van, you know, pay for the lodging, and pay for the payroll um per d MS, food, that kind of stuff. You're out now with just a tour manager. How do you decide when you go acoustic and when you go with the band? It depends on

the offer. Some clubs will prefer acoustics, so they'll offer an acoustic show, and you know, so we'll do an acoustic run, which it's more lucrative. They'll you're getting the same money up front, but the overhead is a lot lower. Um that I wouldn't want to do nothing but acoustic because it wears you out. You don't get as much back from an audience and you don't have the and energy. It's like a band show that the energy is sort

of circular. You're passing it between you and the band and the audience it comes back around, whereas with a solo show it's just you and the audience. It's linear. It's like a tennis game, straight back and forth. Um, it's great in some ways. You can you can really get your songs across. But you know, you do a month of those days. It's just where you're flat out. So when you do go on the road, how many dates a week do you tend to work? We try

to work six days a week. We take Monday off for a travel day, um, because it's um, nobody goes out on Monday nights anyway, and you always travel in a van with a band. Yeah, if it's just a solo thing, then it's just right. Now. We're in my dad's old hun day As it's the best running car we got and you you go out. So how much equipment do you take? I'd take just to take a twelve string guitar, six string guitar, a couple of tuners, a couple of pedals. That's about it. Are you in

equipment geek or you know he was. There are people who have a hundred guitars, whe other people really only have one. Where are you in that landscape? I have quite a quite a few guitars. I couldn't count them. I don't think um. Then, when I tear with a band,

I usually have five guitars on stage. I thought about bringing a third guitar on his solo thing, because I gotta I gotta eight string baritone I've been messing with, but I didn't have a hard shell case for it, and I didn't want to bring it out because you know, stuff happens. And when you bring the five guitars for a band gig, what are those guitars? Main? Main guitars? A Parl Reid Smith, swamp ash special as I bolt you know it's got a bolt on neck and and uh,

you know, I've got a Jerry Jones baritone. Uh got a National Res electric and sometimes I bring Strat for a Sparry guitar. Sometimes I've got an old guild S sixty. You know, we're a weird looking things. Single pick up it sounds pretty good. I'll bring that sometimes. And I've got a Guild acoustic with a sunrise in the hole. You go on the road and you know, you say, it's kind of overbearing. Ever been in a car accident as a result of all this traveling? No, that only uh,

only real automotive mishap. I remember it was on my first tour, or I guess maybe technically second. We and we put waste Land out and we've gone out and you know, toured as a band, opening up for the Bodines and then Nancy Griffith and then the delf Wages, and we're out for about three months and then it's about to go home and suddenly the Indigo Girls. I wanted an know winner, so I took my bass player at the time, Randy Garyvy, and he also played guitar, So the two of us went out as a duo

and opened up for the Indigo Girls. And again we were jokingly termed ourselves the out you go guys. But we got down to San Francisco and the original road manager on that I managed to get deported. Actually I had a hand in that. I was rather stupid tipped off the border patrol by going back looking for my road manager who had crossed in a separate car. And as it wound up sending him back to Canada. It's from New Zealand originally, but but he had rented a

Ford Taurus station wagon. And so we picked up another tour manager in Portland because I didn't know how to settle a show or anything. And he rode with us all the way down down the coast, and we got to Eugene, and I was supposed to fly ahead, and I was supposed to fly down to San Francisco and sit in a hotel all day talking to press while the tour manager and the bass player drove that tore us down past Mount Shasta in that way, and and they got there and the phone rang and and it

was Dana, the tour enter. He said that we got a problem. This is well, what's the problem? He said, Well, the street car just rip ripped the driver's door half off the rent car, And so, well, are you hurt? He says, no, you're not bleeding or anything. He said no. So well, what's the problem, he says, Well, what do you want me to do? So, well, you're in San Francisco. So what you do is you empty everything and out of that car and you take it over to North

beach and leave it on the street. That's gonna get swept in the morning, Carl will disappear, which you did. And then somebody got ahold of Max, the original tour manager. It was back in New Zealand at the time, and and he had been planning to ditch the car anyway. He wasn't going to play a budget a drop fee on a car that he picked up in Seattle to drop in San Diego. So he just called in it, you know, to the rent car company and say, yeah, I told you it's in Space sixteen in front of

the Edgewater Hotel in Seattle. What do you mean it's not there, you know? So he called it and stolen basically, and they charged him seventy dollars on his visa card. But nobody got hurt physically. And when you're on the road, do you ever drive? I do most of the driving bass player and when I when I wear out, the bass player drives. And then if we have a night drive, the drummer drives. And how do you decide that? How do you decide you drive? Well, if it's if it's

after show, the drummer drives. I usually I do the morning shift because that's when I'm best. And then bass player wakes up, you know, somewhere between one and three in the afternoon, and stopped for gas and he takes the wheel. And how many of these are long drafts? Well, we try not to drive too long, um, I mean eight hours in a show is is max for us, and it's usually between four and six in the West

and the east it'll be shorter. It'll be you know, two to five hours because the distances are shorter back there. So you know, it sounds like a grind. And I realized this is what you do and you have to earn a living. Do you dig it? Do you like going on the road and going through this? I do once I'm out. I don't like leaving that much as it always have to work up to loading that van and getting out the front door. You know, the dogs

look at you funny kind of cock their heads. They get all silky, and you know, if you get used to staying at home, it's harder to go back out. And it has in you know, since the lockdown. I have a different view of it all, um. And it didn't take long after I canceled that first tour. I was home for a couple of weeks and I realized my joints and my bones didn't hurt. I wasn't rattling down the road in that band. You know, it's just

something about you. You hunch over that wheel, and it's that last twenty miles into town and you're trying to get in before rush hour locks the whole thing down, and it just gets really frantic. And that, you know, that talks me out pretty good. I don't miss that about the road. Now. The road is rife with people's stories of abusing drugs and alcohol just to copy. And you come off stage, you're all fired up. Takes you a long time to come down. Maybe you're traveling. How

do you cope with that? Oh? Well, I've done my share of the alcohol, and and there's places I can't go back to you because of that. Um, there's a lot of things I'm not proud of. And at this point in time, the band members, how long did these particular members been playing with you? Darren and Tim have been with me twenty four years, and corn Bread, the bass player, he's been in about twelve years. I think, Wow, Okay, let's talk about the new album. So how did the

songs come together. Was it like, oh I have an album, I got a right material, or is the collection what you've done for the previous five years. Well, I worked from a scrapile, scrap pile that I've worked on for the previous you know, thirty years, And basically what happened this time as Ross Hogarth called up after having waited a few months while I was messing around trying to finish these songs, and he said, look, we can get the Groove Masters in June. So I'm going to book

the time and you're gonna finish the songs. So I said, okay, did that work for you? Yeah? I got the songs done. Okay. So it's been you know a number of years since your last album. Were you're writing songs? Some people are would shipping all the time. They have extra stuff, they have throw aways. Other people they only have what they come into the studio with. What's your situation? I had

less than when I came in the studio with. Actually I finished a couple of those songs, uh in the roadway in and Culver City, um, just because actually yeah, I was Darren the drummer and he told me said, yeah, I want that song about glasses. You know they did that once that at sound check and it wasn't finished. But I just pulled it out and tried it. And he remembered that they get that song back out and finish it. Let's cut that. So so I sat down

and finished it. Okay do you Some people, you know, they work got word by word. Other people wait for inspiration. How do you do it? I get a couple of lines and a melody, and I just keep picking at it. Mm hmm. Over time. If I think about the lines, I think, okay, who said that? Um? So, I can envision a character, and and if I if I can get the character, I might get a story and I can put it into a verse chorus structure. And that's how I get a song. I have to be careful

sometimes those characters don't agree with me. And the trick there is to stay in character. If you you start a song and character and then you start pushing your own opinion, you're gonna break character and you'll have a sermon instead of a song. Okay. The opening track talks about a thirty year crush. Where did that come from? I just heard it in my head. You weren't thinking about somebody you knew thirty years ago. No, I'm a fiction writer. Okay, but in a world music where it's

mostly auto biographical. Two people still think that this is your story. Of course. Uh, you know, people think that Raciel's song is my story. You know, it's Raciel's song. It's not song for Rachel. Raciel is the narrator. But it signed my voice. That's the thing about being a singer songwriter. You know, Tom T. Hall wrote Harper Valley Pta, but I don't think he's sang it, so he didn't have that problem. He pitched it to a female artist. Okay.

Another song is Operation never Mind, which I'll just say is a political song. What's the backstory there? Uh, there is a little backstory there. I didn't have. A friend of mine was in the Army for a long time. He really liked it until until he got to Bagdad and got cross was with some contractors and the army brass backed the contractors over him, basically, and that's where I got. I got some of that story out of that.

But my you know, my problem with a lot of our military operations sense Vietnam is that that we don't know what's going on because we don't allow actual coverage. We don't allow journalists. And the last time I saw a real freelance, you know, television journalism at a military operation wasn't was when Reagan sent the Marines into beyrout to guard the airfield as a symbolic presence, he thought, And he didn't think anybody would shoot at a marine,

I guess. And these guys were, you know, they'd suffered some casualties early on from snipers, and at that time, YAM cameraman and reporters were just walking up to random Marines and asking them questions, and the Marines were allowed to answer, and they looked right in the camera and they said, why did you send us? This isn't our mission.

We're an offensively trained unit. You know, you're having us guard something on low grounds surrounded by hustles on a high ground, and we don't get to go out and take the high ground. Why us? Then you know, the barracks blew up that somebody drove a truck bomb into a barracks and killed a whole bunch of guys. And you know, I'm sure wine Burger and Reagan didn't look good. And pretty soon suddenly we're in Grenada, and nobody can

really figure out why we're in Grenada. And the journalists that came ashore with US forces were detained aboard a US aircraft carrier for the duration of the action. Uh, I wasn't. I was talking telling that story to Scott Simon from NPR the other day and he said, well, you know, I've covered that war, but he didn't go in with US forces. He went in through Barbados with Grenadian citizens and just kind of snuck onto the island.

So he knows a lot more about that action. But you know, but ever since then, you know, we we haven't had just you know, freelance journalism going on with and I guess the next major action. You know, in Desert Storm, we had Swarts cough Spoon feeding us the war to a press pool and a tent watching the video equips that he wanted them to see. And then now we do have in beds here that there's you know, out there with the troops and doing good journalism, but

it's hard to get to there's so many sources. Now, during Vietnam we add Walter Cronkite and some other guys, and everybody listened to them, we had a center because we only had a few channels to listen to, and everybody listened to Walter Cronkite, and that war ended when Cronkite got enough of it. But you know, now we we don't have we we don't know what's going on,

and so we can't make decisions as citizens. You know, Tennyson said from the you know, the in the Light Brigade, from the point of view of a soldier, he said, our ours is not to question why, ours is but to do or die. But as a allegedly free citizen in a free society, ours is to question why. And we're not doing that actively. We've kind of trained ourselves not to. But the flip side is we we don't know what to question because we don't have information. So

that's that's part of what that song is about. Okay, So now it's certainly a different era from the three network era. And just to flip the script, one might say that the right wing and the Republicans, they are saying they are personally analyzing the information. Therefore they're not getting vaccines. Therefore they have their take on all these things. So you know, we have the informs. It is in looking for information. We have another segment believing they found

the information. Where does this leave us? UM? I don't know. We're in a nest because everybody has their own reality. Now, you know, we've got so many sources that you know you can you can find the channel is going to give you your own opinion back and reinforce your opinion. And I guess maybe that that sells more products than actual information. And if you could snap your fingers and change America, how did you change? UM? I would educate people.

I would fund the public school system as much as possible. I would try to teach um critical thinking. I still got an unstable internet. No, I mean I remember being very frustrated as as a college student, which I was not a very good student, but I took a philosophy class and I would go in to these discussions and all anybody wanted to know was what was going to be on the quiz and the answers to it. Nobody

was discussing philosophy. You know, it's about ideas, but we're not discussing ideas, and we're not we weren't trying to learn concepts. Well, I realized now that all that was an elective that fullfilled something, and all these kids needed it to get to something so they could be engineers or whatever they were trying to be. You know, they saw it as a process towards the Yeah, economic security, financial security. You know, I looked at it as school,

and I'm trying to learn something here. Um, stilly me. Did you finish college? No? I think I became a sophomore. But you know, we don't we we don't. We don't want people to think. It's much easier to govern people that don't think. So where did you get all this insight and all this knowledge? Was it from your parents? Your mother? Your father? Well, my parents were both academics when I was young. Um, you know, Larry made his living teaching creative writing up until the last Picture Show.

You know, he had some books out, but in those days, you could keep putting out books, whether they sold or not. That the polishers would let you run five or six books at least. Um, But he wasn't selling enough books to make a living, so he taught, and then finally he co scripted Picture show and got a foothold and screenwriting business. And that's mostly how I made his living after that. Um. But you know, he was an academic.

My mother was an academic. Most of the people we knew were academics, and they got around they discussed books, and they discussed the ideas. And I guess some of it led off on me because I didn't. I didn't like to read. I still don't. I'm not a well read individual. And did you grow up your parents whole? Were you when your parents would up less than a year? I think I don't. I don't remember them being together, just be Were you raised by both the primarily your

mother or your father and my father your father? So you grew up with your father? Yes? And was he the type of person giving you lessons or he was more hands off? No, he didn't give me lessons, As I recall, he was just there all the time. So he wasn't giving you a father leaf philosophy. Um, no of it. He taught by example in a lot of ways. I mean, it's very strange, you know, to see these politicians now just fighting so hard for white power. I

would have thought that would have gone away. Um. I remember, I think it was about nineteen sixty eight in Houston before we left, before we moved to Virginia. Um, and my dad was driving. We were on Sunset in Houston. He was driving along. He was looking at this house across the street because I guess he he thought maybe he could buy a house at that point, and he

was looking at his house for sale. And he rolled into the back of a delivery truck at five miles an hour, and I flew off the back seat and hit the back of the front seat because you know, we didn't have seat belts on in those days. And well, he didn't damage the truck in front of him, damaged the car a little bit, and we all got out and and the driver was black. And that's the first time I really never saw fear on the face of a grown man. And the first policeman that came up,

I'm pretty sure it was a walking cop. They had those in those days. And big fat Dude and Larry spent twenty minutes trying to keep the cop from giving the driver a ticket, repeating over, nor, no, sir, it was my fault. He was just off to the stoplight. You know. That cop got so mad his face disappeared. He could not believe that the white guy wouldn't let him end. Take it on the black guy and a couple of young cops showed up in a cruiser and they kind of looked around a shrug and got back in.

But that big walking copies kept at it relentless for a long time, and I didn't really take all that in at the time. It took a lot of years, but to realize that that was a brave act on where he's part and that time and place. You know, I recently watched the film Magic Trip, and although you're very young, two years old, Ken KESI and his bus and Mary Pranksters come and stop at your father's house.

I wouldn't expect you to remember that scene. But while you were growing up, did your father interact with all those people that he knew from Stanford, etcetera. Well, he certainly interacted with Ken. I don't know if he interacted with Peter Beagle or any of the other people in that Stigner class, But I do remember the second time the bus came to that house. I was a little bit older. I was like six or seven then, and I took a liking to There was a prankister by

the name of Hermit that I idolized. Hermit because he wore a big knife on his belt. And one time we rode the bus over to the astrodome and back and and the cops took Hermit's knife away, and I thought that was some kind of a tragedy. Even it didn't shake him up real bad. And of course Hermit turned out to be an FBI informant who eventually got a lot of the thone in jail. So careful how

you take your heroes. You know. Wow, And since your father interacted with keys, he's a fascinating character, comes out of the shoot with a lot of success, and then he will literally say, well you can judge whether he fried his brains with drugs. What was your drugs? What was your perception of ken Um? I was about half scared of him. Yeah, very charismatic, and I liked the whole court and kind of control the conversation, and as I wasn't used to that kind of manic energy. Yeah,

our house was pretty calm for the most part. Okay, you wrote, certainly in my eyes slung in the decade we can't make it here. Is there any power in political songs anymore? Certainly in the sixties they were woven into the culture anti Vietnam culture. What do you think now? I don't really know, and I just I wrote that song.

I started it during the Clinton administration, and I finished it during the Bush administration, and I kept singing it on into Obama's years a little bit, but I don't I didn't expect it to have any kind of power. I don't know that it did either. But that was fun for a while. Well, we we work in a business. We've had success doing anything, especially in today's world where it's hard to get noticed, most people try to replicate it. After you have that success with that song, did you

consciously not want to repeat it? Did people ask you to do something similar? No? I didn't set out to write a political song. I just followed the words where they led um And then the next time. The problem was I got pegged as a political songwriter at that point, and so on the next record, I had Cheney's Toy, which was political for sure, but it was more McMurtry ranting.

It wasn't written from a character that everybody could identify it with, so it was fun, but it was largely misinterpreted, and people thought I was saying that the soldier was Cheney's toy, which I was really saying Bush was Cheney's toy. I was. I was referred to that era as the Cheney administration. I felt like Cheney was the puppeteer and

Bush was the puppet. And you know, I'd read in the New York Times that Cheney would tell Bush you're the man every you know, day to get him to pump his ego up so he'd go out and sell his policies. And as I thought for some reason people might recognize that, Well, it turns out a lot of the country doesn't read the New York Times. So so I got a little bit of a bad rap for that. But you know, I should have been more careful. You do you read the New York Times, You keep up

on the news every day. I did for a while. Um, I tend to read The Post now orson post. Um, the Time's got a little whimpy. In my opinion, the Post has rebuilt itself into a good paper once again. Can you go a little deeper in the difference of the two. Well, the Times seems to always have to, you know, hedge its bets and and try to look like they're being objective by giving the right wing a little bit of play, which the Post doesn't bother with that so much. You know, they own their liberalism a

little more fiercely. So since you really do, even though you claim not to, you really follow this closely and have a lot of insight where's it going in America? Like I said, I can't I can't judge the future, but it doesn't surprise me so much. What surprises me is that, you know, people after Tim McVey blew the side off that building, we didn't do some kind of national psychological triage because anybody that's just driven around in the middle of the country knows that that was not

an anomaly. You know, people out here have been trained to distrust the government and distrust elites whatever they call them. You know that they'll say they hate elite and then they'll vote, vote for a bush, you know that sort of thing. That this distrust of liberalism and government is deep seated and along seated, and it's it's bundled with the racism that's every bit is deep seated out here.

So you know, right now, although there's a democratic administration, the Democrats controlled we mean well, they control the Congress and they control presidency. They certainly do not control the courts. It seems like the Republicans are gained the right wing, even though smaller numbers, are gaining evermore power. They have the state governments, and that's a big deal. And that's because they can, you know, they can gerrymander these districts

where they can stay in power. But it's really strange. I mean, like they're supposed to be pro business, right, well, you haven't her Abbot back in Texas. He you know, if he doesn't like your policies, he'll come after you. And any club there that tries to do a mask mandate or a vacts mandate is immediately threatened with the loss of their liquor license. And for some reason, they where he's a precient you know, it's it's government oversight

if the Feds tell Texas what to do. But if the state of Texas tells a private business that can't have a mask mandate, then there's that's patriotism. They're fighting for your individual freedoms. And I don't understand how he can spend that to his advantage, but but his followers will. They'll just do anything to keep from doing what the Liberals do. They'll take calf medicine I have relatives who take calf medicine, bovine and equine d warmer, and you

bother to get into it with him. No, So once again, you know there's a long there's a big stand right now amongst the right wing and the white nationalists, etcetera. Even though the country is going more multi colored, shall I say, in the whites are decreasing in percentage of population, but certainly in Florida there are a lot of people Latinos who voted Republican and you're living in Texas. I mean, is it just gonna go on this way or is

there going to be an inflection point? It'll it'll go on this way as long as they can keep it going on. I mean, they've always preached that the white men is outnumbered. Well maybe now he actually is. So they're freaking out. You know, they're losing their minds. We had a black president that freaked him out. I remember seeing a sign in in Utah or no it was in it was in Idaho. It's just on the outside of loww Pass, a big sign by this cabin in

the middle of the woods. Congratulations, Jimmy Carter, you are now the second worst president in US history. There's another line in your new album talking about you know they're gonna need the Mexicans to actually build the wall. Yeah, that's the last an idea that's been battered around. And Tom Russell wrote a song Who's Gonna Build Your Wall? I just I just made a different spin on it. So what is the backstory of the Glasses song? Uh?

We Uh. There's a festival in the Florida Panhandle called the thirty A Festival and it takes place in January and multi stage, multi venue, a lot of bands coming in and out, and it all takes place along Florida Highway thirty Alternate, which runs from runs Pensacola out through Destin, Fort Walton Beach, goes all the way over Mexico Beach,

Panama City. Um, but if I've played it a number of times yet to get in and out of that festival without freezing to the bone at some point, because when the wind blows out of the north in North Florida, it's the same north wind that goes through Texas, and it gets cold, especially when you know right there by the Gulf you got that damp cold, it just goes

right to you and it can be miserable. So I don't know why I just started messing with words about you know, she woke up mad, trying to pick a fight. I got the thing going, UM written most of the song for it. The glasses was just supposed to be a placeholder, you know, I heard it in my head while I'll put that in there until I get to where I can write a real chorus. But then I hadn't finished the song. When I sang it. It sound

checked just for a lark, and and it's stuck. Just you know, it seemed to sing okay, and it wasn't hurting the song. And you know everybody that heard saying, I'll just leave that in there. It's fine. Now there's a line there where you talk about the woman being in the shower and she's a lude. You know, we live in the meat too. Era. Needless to say, you've established that this is fiction. You're writing again characters. But do you ever internally blink saying, oh, I'm gonna write

this and I'm gonna get blowback. Maybe I should maybe I shouldn't. Ah, Yeah, I mean I get some some places, I get a little twinsies singing Choctaw bingo and I wrote that a while back before the Meat Too era. Um, there may come a day I don't get to sing that anymore. Things mean different things in different eras, So I don't know right now. I'm still taking my chances and about what's the matter? Which I find the catchiest song and a great song on the album even though

it's close to the end. How'd you come up with that? Uh? Decades of riding along listening to people talking on cell phones in a van, Yeah have been. I've been listening to that since the cell phone came about pretty much. And uh, how did you decide on the order of the record? The track listing? That is always always tricky. Um, yeah,

you find one to start and you follow it. You don't want to be you have too many songs in the same key or the same groove, so you have to separate everything out that's going to cancel itself, you know. And this record was really tricky because I had three songs and six. Don't ever put three songs and six on the same record. You know. If I had it to do again, I'd have written one more song and bumped one of those sixes. But but we got it done. And how much of the record was written in the studio.

How much the songs were pretty much finished? How do you do it? I probably had six really complete songs and all I finished decent. Man at that uh, that roadway in in Culver City. Um, i'd come rattling, and I've driven out there without the band. I was just driving a van full of gear and I came in. I got I got in just before rush hour, so I was just kind of tense and I got in.

I got off the freeway, and first thing I did is fill up my tank because being from Texas, I assume when I go to California there's gonna be an earthquake. Sitting on a freeway for four hours trying to get out of there after the ground stopped shaking, so I better have a full tank. I filled up. Remember it

was four dollars and nine cents for gallant regular. Um. I went down the street, checked into the motel, went next door and there's a pizza place that had a decent glass of all back and so just kind of

recovering from that freeway. And then but I said that they're playing on the sound sets and they're playing all the most obnoxious hits from the seventies and eighties, and I can't enjoy it, and I'm just about to leave and just leave the wine on the counter and leave, and hear Freddie Mercury, You're saying, Mama, I just killed him man like. And then I remembered that decent man song that I started ten years ago and thought, Okay, now I gotta go back and finish that thing. So

I did. That's that's how I wounded up on the record, because that the story, that song story came from a short story by Wendell Berry called Pray Without Ceasing, and I had read that and for some reason I started putting it the song from a different point of view. I put it from the murderer's point of view, and but basically just changed the season of the year and the chambering of the pistol. Otherwise, that's Wendell's story. And I actually I sent him a letter later saying, Hey,

you want song credit on this. You want to write a credit because it's your story, And he said, no, it's a different medium. He left me. He left me a real nice voicemail about it. Cool. Now, anybody you've seen you live with the band knows you're quite a lead guitar player. Ultimately, David Grissom is brought in by Ross on this record. What was the backstory there and how much of the playing was you and how much was playing with somebody else? Very little of the playing

was me. Um, it's not I'm not used to trying to track as a four piece, and the songs are so fresh that you know, I was just getting in the way. So I just put the guitar down and just sang to lead the session. And you know, and I'm not not that great in the studio, and I say, you know, if you're slowing a session down, you gotta cut out whatever slow You gotta keep the session moving as the main rule. And Grissom's the studio guy, so

you know, he played most of the guitar. I played that that little hook on uh Glass on Fort Walton, the own thing on the right, and a little bit of acoustic guitar on Conola Fields, and I did the solo on I'm About Cattle. But now it's a studio record, you know, So when you're at home, when you're not on the road, do you pick up the guitar or you're checked out? When you're home. I do now, it's weird. For a long time I didn't touch a guitar if I wasn't getting paid too. It was like, at some

point the guitar became work. I'm starting to come out of that mentality now. Or I'll pick up a guitar and just you know, play for twenty minutes, half hour. And I always feel better after I do it. But for a while there, I'd have to force myself to start. And if you have to do it all over again, would you choose this career path? Yeah? I believe I would. And how do you feel about your body of work? I I don't think about it much. It's the work

in front of me that matters. Really, it's maintaining the ability to keep creating. Well, do you have a peak that you can mentally conjure you say, I want to I want to push the envelope a little bit more here, reach a certain height. I just want to continue And that usually means improving, at least slightly as you go. And what have you improved that as you're going on for thirty years, I've improved it singing a good bit,

and that in turn has improved my writing Um. There was a point in the nineties when I would go, I'd start out on the road and we do a couple of days, and usually the third gig I would lose my voice entirely and I have to just kind of croak through the set somehow make it there and then somehow would come back forth or fifth gig. Well, my bass player at the time, Ronnie Johnson, said, James,

you know, I know a good vocal coach. Just go get some vocal training so you get some some exercises so you don't lose your voice anymore and you don't have to struggle like that. So I did, and uh, I went. I went to Maydi case she's actually credited on this record, because I went back for a tune up so I could hit some of those high notes that I was clamming. And but one of the things I learned from Maydie is looking for vowels and consonants

that sing well. If you know what sings easy, you will write better because you will write for a singer. You know, it doesn't matter so much in poetry or anything spoken word, but if you're writing for for the vocal instrument, then you want to pick your words you want. You want to pick words that roll off the tongue, that don't tongue tie you or hang you up or choke your voice off in any way. So yeah, it say vocal training has really improved my songwriting more than

anything else. So you stated earlier you're not much of a reader, but then you quote Tennis and you quote the other person you based the song on. You talk about reading the wappo. How do you spend your time when you're not working? Oh, I do a lot of staring into space. But I used to hunt and fish a lot. I'm trying to get back into that. UM lately evans spending a lot of time cooking for appraisers. I'm sort of the wagon Boston Wagon wagon cook on the appraisal crew. And then, uh, how much TV do

you watch? I don't watch any TV. UM. TV frustrates me. In the cabal era, in the satellite era, there's just too much. I was an avid watcher of Johnny Carson. When Carson went off the air, I just kind of never reconnected with the TV set. And how about all these streaming TV shows? The new era of television starting with the Sopranos. Some of that I did catch some

of the Sopranos in various hotel rooms. I never I don't think I ever watched the whole episode all the way through, because it would always be you know that, flip it on and we got a half hour or four we gotta go to sound check that sort of thing. Um, but that's that was good TV. And then some of the uh and my son will will set me down and make me watch stuff every now and and I thought Justified was amazing some of those episodes. So you'll check into a hotel and you'll stare into the distance

and let your mind come up with stuff. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Or I'll catch up on emails that sort of thing. And then spending a life in hotel rooms. You know, the roadway in is not the four seasons, as long as there's a bed, or do you have a certain level you don't like to go below, or you just see this pain of being on the road. Um, well, there are certain regions where the roadway ends about what we can afford. L A is a roadway in town for us. Now, I didn't used to be. We used

to stay at the farmer's daughter. Farmers daughters went four dollars a night. Now you know we're not gonna do that. Um. There there was a great period where I could do I got real good at price Line, but then price Land took away the name of your own price function that put them on the map initially. So I don't really bother with that anymore. But price Land was great for a while. The main thing for me is proximity

to the gig. If a nice hotel is going to add a half hour in a van back and forth, maybe a full hour after you've already driven a while, I don't want that. I want to limit the van time. Uh. Of course, like this tour here, this is a COVID tour. We're not doing hotels, we're basing out of airbnbs. So do you view yourself as suey generous just off on the landscape, Were part of the American scene or part of the continuum? Where do you see in terms of context?

I don't think about it. And it's nice if there is a category somebody can put me in, because that usually sells more records, gets you a little more exposure. Um, it would probably be nicer if I were if I could make my own category like Willie Nelson, you know, somebody like that. But I'm kind of ambivalent about the whole thing right now, because you know, one of the problems with it, with with any kind of artistic field,

is you gotta get famous. And um, the meager level of fame that I have attained up to this point can be as enough of a pain in the ass if I if I got bigger, it might be a problem for me. One thing about today, it's very hard to make new fans. Are you conscious of trying to make new fans? Do you think you're making them? How do you get them? What's your viewpoint on that. I'm not consciously trying to get them, because I wouldn't know how.

But I have been lucky that my crowd is multi generational, and I'm playing to the grandchildren of people that were in my crowd thirty years ago, some of them. Um, and I've seen that. I've had people tell me that, oh yeah, my parents turn me me onto your stuff, So um, yeah, we need that. That's probably why we're still going down the road. And as you still go down the road, I'm gonna let you go here, James, thanks so much for giving us the backstory. And the

insight and taking the time. Well, thank you, Bob, thanks for your help over the years. I'm a big fan. I mean, you know you're we met back in that was the complex, and we met at the Complex, and we also met at McCabe's one of your acoustic gigs. Yeah, I remember you were doing candy Land at the Complex. I was definitely there with Mike, Yeah, Mike and Ross right, But then you know you're stuck with those guys. You know you're a loyal dude. But you know, I'm a

big fan. I'm always interested in what you have to do. And it's hard to listen to new music, not so much because I'm baked into the old. The people tend to either be repeating themselves or resting on their laurels. And when I found amazing about your new problem is you're speaking from an adult perspective, whereas so many people from your generation and older refused to do that. They want to say, well, if I don't get old, you know, I can fool people and you can't relate to him.

And I couldn't fool the kids my way. They're too sharp. Okay, thanks again, until next time. This is Bob Left. SIDS,