James McMurtry – The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy (New West)

For over 35 years, 63 year old James McMurtry has been one of America’s most literate and quietly powerful songwriters. The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy, his eleventh studio album, and his first in four years, is further proof of his enduring craft.

Built on understated, unhurried arrangements that sit squarely within the country-Americana tradition, the album trusts in what McMurtry and his long-standing band do best: create space for the songs to live and breathe. This is music where texture matters and words carry weight.

The musical palette is familiar and expansive, a wide variety of acoustic and electric guitar tones, measured percussion, and flourishes of banjo, harmonica, cello, accordion, and even a Turkish cümbüş (played by Charlie Sexton on Sons of the Second Sons) deepen the atmosphere. McMurtry’s voice is dry, conversational, and plainspoken to perfectly suit the material’s tone and shape. Across the album the songs hone in on small, specific truths that resonate widely.

His core trio Cornbread on bass, Tim Holt on guitar, and Daren Hess on drums play with instinct and restraint, making every note feel necessary. Long-time collaborator BettySoo adds warmth and dimension, with accordion and harmonies that enrich tracks like Back to Coeur d’Alene and Pinocchio in Vegas. Sarah Jarosz, a younger artist who has cited McMurtry as a formative influence, joins him on Annie with banjo and harmonies, further threading generational connection into the fabric of the album.

At the heart of The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy lies the writing. McMurtry, the son of novelist Larry McMurtry and part of a milieu that included family friends like Ken Kesey (whose pencil sketch of a young James graces the album cover), has always written songs with a short story writer’s eye for detail, tone, and rhythm. His lyrics breathe with lived experience, implied history, and emotional ambivalence.

In South Texas Lawman, he sketches a character in moral and emotional decline: “I used to be bold, nobody bothered me / I can’t stand getting old, it don’t fit me.” The lawman is both archetype and individual, a fading, flawed embodiment of once-dominant masculinity. The lines land with quiet force because they don’t shout what we already know.

Elsewhere, the title track The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy evokes the confusion of mental deterioration, refracted through a narrator who is both aware of and trapped by his condition: “There’s something hiding in that space beneath the stairs / I say I’m frightened, but these old folks just don’t care.” McMurtry lifts the painful image from a real conversation about his father’s dementia and places it within a fictional framework that is funny, surreal, and painfully truthful.

His storytelling works through inference, repetition, and emotional residue; the television left on, the offhand insult from a parent, the locked Camaro door. Back to Coeur d’Alene offers elliptical, dreamlike vignettes of ambition and estrangement, held together by the hypnotic refrain “gotta get known, gotta get known.” In Pinocchio in Vegas, he conjures a surrealist satire of inheritance, fame, and identity, singing: “Pinocchio’s in Vegas with his eye on the prize / He’s a real boy now, his dick grows when he lies.” It turns the fable inside out into something profane, absurd, and oddly insightful.

The album opens and closes with covers: Laredo (Small Dark Something) by Jon Dee Graham, and Broken Freedom Song by Kris Kristofferson. Their inclusion feels deliberate, placing the record within the continuum of great American songwriting. Laredo is a haunted portrait of addiction; Broken Freedom Song is a hushed lament for lost purpose and frayed belief. Their presence speaks to McMurtry’s respect for other songwriters, and his skill at curation and interpretation as well as creation.

The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy does not chase novelty or innovation, and that is a strength. It allows the lyrics to stand, uncluttered and resonant. This is a serious, beautifully crafted record, made by musicians who serve the work rather than themselves. In an era when nuance is often trumped by noise, James McMurtry offers songs with patience, pathos, and moral weight. He is writing and singing thoughtful, essential songs that help us make sense and reflect on the the challenges of current times.

Indeed, McMurtry might be the missing link between John Prine and Jason Isbell, an artist who marries the plainspoken, humane humour of one with the emotional and political precision of the other. The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy is another triumph by an artist who ages with grace, grit, and purpose and reminds us that clarity and compassion matter. It has masterful songwriting, delivered with precision, depth and emotional truth.

John Bradbury

The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy is released June 20th on New West Records

www.JamesMcMurtry.com    www.NewWestRecords.com

John Bradbury
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