James McMurtry and the Heartless Bastards w/Ronny Elliott Band, 8 p.m. Fri., Dec. 5, Skipper's Smokehouse, Tampa, $17 advanced, $20 door. Photo Craig Seth.
James McMurtry might not be a name on par with, say, fellow Texans Lyle Lovett or Steve Earle, but the singer/songwriter and bad-ass guitarist is still a revered act in the Americana world. McCurtry's latest album, the outstandingly incendiary, darkly humorous, wonderfully emotive and rustically rocking Just Us Kids, has garnered glowing write-ups in glossies such as Blender, Mojo and Entertainment Weekly, the latter of which showered the disc with superlatives like "brilliant," "hilarious" and "poignant" in giving it an A- grade. Just Us Kids is selling, too. It has reached a very respectable No. 18 on Billboard's Top Independent Albums chart.
So it's surprising when I'm given McMurtry's mobile phone number and instructed to ring him in the afternoon. Any afternoon. Easy as that, the PR person says. But I'm skeptical. Usually when dealing with an artist of McMurtry's status there's a set time, date and minute count to which, you, the interviewer, are supposed to stick. Twenty minutes is the norm.
I dial the digits and hear a gruff "hello" that could only be James McMurtry's. "Give me a moment to pull over," he says. "I've got a manual transmission." He steers his automobile into a nearby parking lot to grant an interview on a recent Tuesday afternoon. McMurtry has been driving around his hometown of Austin, running the same mundane errands you or I might conduct on an off day. He good-naturedly refers to the interview as just another duty after I apologize for interrupting his daily routine.
The Americana music icon speaks slowly. His voice is deep. His answers are straightforward and marked by an economy of words - and a drawl that reflects both his native Virginia and decades spent in the Lone Star State. You get the sense he's incapable of feeding you bullshit, and it's the same way with his music. Whether recounting the machinations of a crystal meth cooker in the fan favorite "Choctaw Bingo," or telling me how his world-famous father Larry McMurtry's one shortcoming as a novelist/screenwriter is that "he always gets firearms wrong," the younger McMurtry's words smack of integrity.
