15/02/2026
Texas storytelling royalty comes to Union Chapel!
James McMurtry brings The Black Dog & the Wandering Boy to London on Tuesday 13 October, joined by BettySoo.
Get Tickets đïž https://tinyurl.com/DMPmcmurtry
A master of sharply drawn characters and wry, world-weary Americana, McMurtry returns with songs that are funny, haunting and deeply human â adding another chapter to a career that continues to influence a new generation.
đ” https://youtu.be/L-D824LHti4
đ www.jamesmcmurtry.com
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A Lone Star sheriff hunts quail on horseback and keeps a secret second family. A mechanic lies among the spare parts on the floor of his garage and wonders if he can afford to keep his girlfriend. A troubled man sees hallucinations of a black dog and a wandering boy and hums âWeird Alâ songs in his head. These are some of the strange and richly drawn characters who inhabit Austin legend, James McMurtryâs eleventh album, The Black Dog & the Wandering Boy on New West Records. A supremely insightful and inventive storyteller, he teases vivid worlds out of small details, setting them to arrangements that have the elements of Americanaârolling guitars, barroom harmonies, traces of banjo and harmonicaâbut sound too sly and smart for such a general category. Funny and sad often in the same breath, the album adds a new chapter to a long career that has enjoyed a resurgence as young songwriters like Sarah Jarosz and Jason Isbell cite him as a formative influence.
As varied as they are, these new story-songs find inspiration in scraps from his familyâs past: a stray sketch, an old poem by a family friend, the hallucinations experienced by his father, the writer Larry McMurtry. âItâs something I do all the time,â he says, âbut usually I draw from my own scraps.â As any good writer will do, McMurtry collects little ideas and hangs on to them for years, sometimes even decades.
What was different this time was the presence of his old friend Don Dixon, who produced McMurtryâs third album, Where Youâd Hide the Body?, back in 1995. âA couple of years ago I quit producing myself. I felt like I was repeating myself methodologically and stylistically. I needed to go back to producer school, so I brought in CC Adcock for Complicated Game, and then Ross Hogarth did The Horses & the Hounds. It seemed natural to revisit Mr. Dixonâs homeroom.
Working with McMurtryâs trusted backing bandâCornbread on bass, Tim Holt on guitar, Daren Hess on drums, BettySoo on backing vocalsâthey worked to create something that sounds spontaneous, as though heâs writing the songs as you hear them. They were open to odd experiments, weird whims, and happy accidents, such as the cover of Jon Dee Grahamâs âLaredoâ one of a pair of covers that bookend The Black Dog & the Wandering Boy, the other being Kris Kristoffersonâs âBroken Freedom Song.â
Once the album was mixed, mastered, and sequenced, McMurtry recalled a rough pencil sketch he had found a few years earlier in his fatherâs effects. It seemed like it might make a good cover. âI knew it was of me, but I didnât realize who drew it. I asked my mom and my stepdad, and finally I asked my stepmom, Faye, who said it looked like Ken Keseyâs work back in the â60s. She was married to Ken for forty years.â The Merry PranksterâsâKeseyâs roving band of hippie activists and creatorsâstopped by often to visit Larry McMurtry and his family.
The album has gone on to be one of Jamesâs most successful with multiple year-end top twenty of Rolling Stone, MOJO, No Depression, SPIN, Pitchfork etc getting McMurtry offers across Europe for his first tour there in ten years.
by arrangement with Decor Booking & Records.
