The Lowdown:
November 5, 2014
#32 James McMurtry
by Jason D. 'Diesel' Hamad
McMurtry rocks the Kent Stage after our interview. The man, it seems, is a bit of an enigma to many music fans, and this image seems to capture that facet of his personality perfectly. Photo by Jason D. ‘Diesel’ Hamad, No Surf Music.
Sitting down to talk with legendary alt country songwriter and musician James McMurtry is always an adventure. You might think you’re going to talk about his upcoming studio album, the first in six years, but before long you find yourself meandering into a discussion of Walter Cronkite’s role in ending the Vietnam War and how Reagan's invasion of Grenada sounded the death knell of the liberal media. But then while that may seem like a tangent, he’s really just trying to explain why he feels that every once in a while he has to put a soldier in a song, doing his part to even history out a little bit.
So if you wanna know about the changing state of the music industry and why it’s still nice to have a label, McMurtry’ll tell you. And if you wanna know about German truck stop bratwurst and how it’ll be affected by the coming ice age, that’ll somehow make it into the mix, too. And if you want to know about his new album Complicated Games due out in February (not October as was originally planned) and how it represents a pivot from political writing to more personal stories, well, somewhere along the line, we even managed to fit that in there, too.
So grab yourself a seat, pour some red wine, and try to keep up with James and Diesel as they go bottoms up in an effort to see just where the conversation might take them.
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