James McMurtry Papers

James McMurtry is an award-winning singer-songwriter born March 18, 1962 in Fort Worth, Texas. As of 2022, he has recorded nine studio albums (beginning with 1989’s Too Long in the Wasteland) and two live albums. He is the son of author and screenwriter Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove) and English professor Jo Scott McMurtry, and the father of singer-songwriter Curtis McMurtry. He resides in Lockhart, Texas.

McMurtry grew up in Fort Worth (up to age 7) and Leesburg, Virginia, and studied English and Spanish at the University of Arizona in Tucson. It was in Tucson that he first began performing his original songs in public. After college and a brief stint living in Alaska, he moved back to his native Texas, first to live with his father in Archer City but then to San Antonio, where he worked as a house painter, bartender, and occasional actor but also started pursuing local gig opportunities more regularly. In 1987, he entered the Kerrville New Folk songwriting competition at the Kerrville Folk Festival and was picked as a finalist, and soon after a demo of his songs caught the attention of performing artist John Mellencamp, who was beginning work on his directorial and acting debut with Falling From Grace, written by Larry McMurtry and released in early 1992. Mellencamp ended up co-producing James McMurtry’s debut album, Too Long in the Waste Land, released on Columbia Records in 1989, and McMurtry also appeared on the soundtrack to Falling From Grace (and briefly in the film) as a member of a band called the Buzzin’ Cousins with Mellencamp, John Prine, Dwight Yoakam, and fellow Texan Joe Ely.

McMurtry’s debut was well-received critically, as were his next two albums, also on Columbia: 1992’s Candyland (also produced by Mellencamp) and 1995’s Where’d You Hide the Body. But the warm reviews never translated to mainstream success, and from his fourth album on McMurtry would work with smaller independent labels, building a strong national and international cult following as a highly literate songwriter (and often ferociously outspoken politically, too, especially in response to the War in Iraq and the George W. Bush administration). He released three albums on the North Carolina-based Sugar Hill (1997’s Where’d You Hide the Body, 1998’s Walk Between the Raindrops, both produced by Lloyd Maines, and 2002’s Saint Mary of the Woods, which McMurtry produced himself). Saint Mary of the Woods marked the debut of “Choctaw Bingo,” one of McMurtry’s best-known songs, later covered by Texas outlaw-country legend Ray Wylie Hubbard.

“Choctaw Bingo” also appeared on 2004’s Live in Aught-Three, a live album showcasing McMurtry’s veteran road band, the Heartless Bastards. Both Live in Aught-Three and 2005’s Childish Things (featuring “We Can’t Make It Here,” a seething state-of-the-nation address that solidified McMurtry’s reputation as one of America’s most uncompromising modern protest singers) were released on Compadre Records. Childish Things won “Album of the Year” at the Americana Music Association’s 2006 Americana Music Honors & Awards, with “We Can’t Make It Here” winning “Song of the Year.” Noted music critic would later pick “We Can’t Make It Here” as his favorite song of the decade in a poll conducted by Rolling Stone.

After his two-album run on Compadre, McMurtry would change labels again, moving to Lightning Rod Records for 2008’s Just Us Kids and 2009’s Live in Europe, followed by 2015’s Complicated Game (on a Los Angeles-based independent label of the same name) and 2021’s The Horses and the Hounds (for New West). Included on The Horses and the Hounds was the song “Vaquero,” McMurtry’s tribute to family friend Bill Wittliff, who died on June 9, 2019. Wittliff wrote the screenplay for the miniseries adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s novel Lonesome Dove. (By the time of Larry McMurtry’s own passing, on March 25, 2021, The Horses and the Hound album was already completed.)

Bio by Richard Skanse