[00:00:07] Speaker A: I'm Aaron Nathans.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: And I'm Michael Ronstadt and this is the Nathans and Roncast.
Okay, I'm still here.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: It's season three, it's starting right now. You can't sleep through this.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Happy 2026, folks.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Woo hoo. And boy, do we have a treat for our listeners and our viewers too. We now have. We're now on YouTube as well and you can see us.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Oh, I'm gonna wave at you.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: Hi, Michael.
So we interviewed the great James McMurtry, who is a fantastic songwriter. And we're gonna talk to you about that in just a moment. But first, if you're in the mid Atlantic area, Aaron Athens and Michael G. Ronstadt will be performing at Musical Lairs. It's a house concert in Villanova, Pennsylvania on January 17th. And we'll be playing at the Listening booth in Lewis, Delaware, that's coastal, near Rehoboth beach on the 24th of January, 2026. So for more information, go to our website, nathanzenronstadt.com but yeah, James McMurtry, I love his songwriting. I first heard him in the car when I was just starting out as a songwriter and I was really amazed by his ability to paint a story.
He's Dylan esque, but he's got more of a Texas approach.
Of course, he's the son of Lar McMurtry, the celebrated author of books like Lonesome Dove, so you know, the poetry runs in the family, but he's got an approach all his own.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Yeah, and one of the things I always wonder with people who have had success in the songwriting world is I ask what drives you, what makes you want to create? And he said he was driven by the fear of not having a job and always relied on live performances for income rather than record sales. And sometimes as a non musician or as a not as successful musician, you wonder. Well, the famous people, they make money from their music, you know, and we're all doing the same thing. And I really feel that connection as a fellow songwriter, you know, no matter what level you're at, sometimes we all feel the same way and we're driven.
[00:02:14] Speaker C: By the same stuff.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: So we hope that some of that connects with you as a listener. And if you are a creative, artistic person going out there and just trying stuff out, maybe it'll give you some ideas.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: All right, well, without further ado, here is our interview with James McMurtry.
So, James, thank you for taking a moment to chat with us today. It's an honor to have you on the podcast.
[00:02:40] Speaker D: Thank you all let's see.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: So the new album is the Black Dog and the Wandering Boy. Is there a theme that holds this album together?
[00:02:48] Speaker D: No, I don't work that way. I write. I'm motivated by fear of not having a job.
And so I record whichever songs I happen to finish in time for the session.
[00:03:00] Speaker C: That answers what a question I had for later. So everyone has a different process. And I know it's a generic question, but it's nice to know how a fellow musician works, you know, in this.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Day and age with no diminishing record sales, album sales across the board, there's, you know, the money mostly comes from live performance. Right. Why do you feel the pressure to write and record new material?
[00:03:24] Speaker D: Well, because it's advertising for the tours. We put a record out. You guys will want me to talk on your podcast. The radio guys will let me talk on the radio, sometimes play live. Print journalists will write about it. People will know I'm coming to town and they'll buy it. Ticket, some of them. So it's upside down from the old business model where, you know, we used to tour to try to support record sales to generate revenue off of royalties. Well, you know, that doesn't exist anymore. So now. Now we put out records to promote tour dates.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: Does it feel any different for you with this model?
[00:03:56] Speaker D: No, because I never sold any records to start with. It was always from the road.
[00:04:00] Speaker C: You went to the University of Arizona, which is where I went for my undergraduate, and. And then you ended up performing there.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: How.
[00:04:07] Speaker C: How did you. Had you already been performing before you went to college for Spanish?
[00:04:12] Speaker D: No, that's. That's really where I cut my teeth. There was a place called the Sawmill Cafe right by the main gate. U of A main gate there that would give you $10 in free beer.
[00:04:21] Speaker C: Perfect.
[00:04:21] Speaker D: And that was pretty good for an 18 year old. And then I was hanging out with people with some. There was. There was an organization called the Arizona Old Time Fiddlers Association.
[00:04:32] Speaker C: Oh, okay.
[00:04:32] Speaker D: It was a lot of old guys that some of them knew fiddle tunes that nobody else knew, but they would have these. These fiddle contests and they needed backup guitarists for it. So I learned how to do the boom shook kind of old time fiddle backup. And that was actually a good experience.
I recommend you play with old people whenever you can.
[00:04:52] Speaker C: Absolutely. I mean, Tucson being my hometown, but also being a place where I cut my teeth, essentially. Performing on fourth Avenue and downtown and around University of Arizona campus and all over.
I ended up mostly playing with people about 40 years older than me. And it was really good for me.
[00:05:12] Speaker D: That's a good thing. Well, there's people in those trailer parks down there that just, you know, some of them were in their 80s back then, and this was in the 1980s.
[00:05:19] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:05:20] Speaker D: So, you know, they'd been out there, and they'd actually done the things that were in the songs they were playing.
[00:05:24] Speaker C: Ah, yes.
[00:05:25] Speaker D: You know, they plowed with mules. They knew that stuff.
[00:05:28] Speaker C: Then you ended up going, I guess, moving to Texas after that?
[00:05:33] Speaker D: Yeah. Drifted into San Antonio. Friend of mine was renovating an old bar down there, so I lived upstairs in the bar for a while. Just like General Gopher.
[00:05:42] Speaker C: I know that we all have different ways when we move to different places, but what was your go to way to connect and network with people early on?
[00:05:49] Speaker D: Drink. I go to bars and drink.
[00:05:52] Speaker C: That's a good way to meet people. You know, everyone's really open then, you know, which is good.
Did you also. Were you usually gigging at the same place eventually?
[00:06:03] Speaker D: I never gigged at the Liberty Bar. They didn't really have a. They didn't do that. But I did have some gigs around San Antonio, and that's where I heard about the Kerrville Folk Festival, and they had that new folk contest up there, and I was among the winners of the 1987 New Folk, which that got me a few gigs in Austin. And, yeah, I got. Expanded my scope a little bit.
And then my dad took a job for John Mellencamp, writing a script for him. So I pitched John a tape.
My plan at that point, I met these Nashville guys that would come down to Kerrville and try to teach us how to write songs. And a lot of them were staff writers in Nashville and had pitched their songs to established artists. And I thought, well, I can do that. I know people that do it. I didn't know anybody that had their own record deal. And so I pitched John a tape, hoping that he would want to cut one of my songs. That way, when I get to Nashville, someone will rent me an apartment. Because, you know, the first thing they ask you up there is, what do you do? And you say, I'm a songwriter. And they say, no, what do you do?
Everybody in Nashville is a songwriter. So I thought I'd get a leg up that way. And John didn't want to cut my songs, but he had some time on his hands and calls up, so, you want to make a record? And I said, sure. He says, you got enough songs? I said, no. I said, well, can you write them by February? I'll give it a shot. That's kind of how it got going.
[00:07:22] Speaker C: Wow. How do you feel about that first record today?
[00:07:25] Speaker D: The vocal is abysmal. I played okay, decent guitar a couple of places. The band was great.
You know, all those first three records, my vocals continued to get worse for a while, but after. After a while on the job, I learned. I learned on the job, I learned how to sing. Yeah. Actually, probably the best thing for my songwriting was taking vocal lessons, voice lessons, because I went to a voice coach named Matey K in Austin. She's still working, and she taught me that the voice is an instrument, and you want to write for that instrument. You don't want to write words that will tongue tie you. You want to write stuff that'll roll off the tongue. I think that's why hillbilly vernacular works so well in song.
You know, ain't is your friend. It rolls right off. It doesn't choke you down.
And so thinking that way, really, that improved my writing more than anything.
[00:08:17] Speaker C: And I think it's an amazing skill when people can tell a story and you feel like that songwriter is talking to you and that. I really feel that from your music.
I feel like I'm getting to know you or at least the content of.
[00:08:31] Speaker D: What you're telling me stuff. No, I'm a fiction writer.
Don't take that bait. That's the thing.
Most of my songs are from the point of view of fictional characters, some of whom don't agree with me, some of whom are female. You don't get that because you're hearing it in my voice.
You know, for a guy to write from a female point of view, you kind of usually have to spell it out. Like John Prine did with angel from Montgomery. He starts out, I am an old woman named after my mother. You know, somebody wrote Ballad of Penny Evans. I know Steve Goodman covered it, but I can't remember who wrote it. But it starts out, my name is Penny Evans and I've just turned 21. Doesn't matter who's singing it, you know, the character's female.
I tend not to spell it out that clearly. You're going to have to listen a while.
[00:09:17] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:09:17] Speaker A: At what point did you decide that you were gonna be a Texas songwriter or that you were gonna be based in Texas?
[00:09:25] Speaker D: Well, I just happened to live here. You know, I didn't come to Texas to be a songwriter.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: Is there a difference between a Nashville songwriter and a Texas songwriter? Cause there's a really strong tradition.
[00:09:36] Speaker D: There is a difference. Because in Nashville, it's your job.
People clock in to write songs. And you have to write a song that's gonna get on the radio. That's the whole deal. And it was that way in pretty much all. Any recorded music for a long time now. You know, radio is not the thing it used to be for most of us. I think for country artists, it still is. So, you know, those guys, they go into tree or, you know, whatever publishing house they work for, and they go in there at 8 in the morning, and they stay in that office all day till, you know, five of them working together sometimes until they come up with something that sounds like last week's big hit. And that's why it tends to be, you know, everything sounds a lot the same because they, you know, they find a formula that works and they go for it. That's their job. It's not evil. It's just. But that's how the Nashville thing gets shaped.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: How did that wear on you if you ever tried to do that?
[00:10:26] Speaker D: I never would have made it there, I don't think. And if I had, I wouldn't be able to write the stuff I write now. I got lucky, which is not saying, you know, some of my best good friends. Fred Kohler had a great run in Nashville.
You know, there's nothing wrong with it. I just. I don't think I would have been good at it.
[00:10:43] Speaker A: Do you think that Texas is a good fit for your sensibility?
[00:10:47] Speaker D: Anywhere should be a good fit for it. You know, I live in Texas. My. My dad's from Texas, you know, a lot. Most. Half my family.
So I have it as a point of reference and it did shape my style. But I don't specifically write. I'm not a Texas songwriter and that. I don't write specifically Texas songs all the time. My songs are there as apt to be set in Maryland as they are in Texas, you know, Deckhand's daughter or not decan. But yeah, Deckhand's daughters, Missouri.
But Rachel's song Back to the Female Point of View, that began when I was a kid and I was in the back of somebody's station wagon facing backwards. And we were coming south across the Maryland panhandle, and we crossed into Virginia at the.
That point of rocks. And there's a tunnel, railroad tunnel off the side of the road. And I happened to glance out that way and there was a coal train coming out of that tunnel with snow on the top of the coal. And there wasn't any snow where we were. But the weather comes from the west.
That train was coming from the West Virginia Coal fields. And I thought, well, there's going to snow tomorrow. We'll get out of school. That'll be great.
Didn't happen, but that became the first line of that song many years later.
I grew up in Northern Virginia. We moved there when I was seven years old.
[00:12:09] Speaker C: I grew up in Tucson, Arizona. The desert. I feel like sometimes, you know, whether it's Texas or Arizona or Utah, big skies, you know, like, it's. It's kind of. For me. I remember hearing a lot of the cowboy tradition and that storytelling but kind of snuck its way into my writing.
Is there something about, like, the arid dryness of the desert or. Or anything that. That you've really taken to within your songwriting specifically, ever?
[00:12:38] Speaker D: I don't know that it's got into my writing. I like open areas like that. I understand why my father nearly went crazy back east, because he always said when he would drive home, he'd go down 81 to Knoxville to 40 to. He said he always felt a lot better when he got to Memphis because the sky would start to open up and it would start to feel Western, like he knew it. It didn't bother me one way or the other. I was used to.
I like getting out in the woods and hunting squirrels, whatever. Woods are okay with me. Plains is okay with me. I don't mind.
[00:13:12] Speaker A: I was in Austin about a week ago. I went to Southwest Regional Folk Alliance. I was following up on my. I was at Curva last year doing New Folk. I didn't win.
Do you remember the songs that you played during your new folk?
[00:13:28] Speaker D: Well, yeah, I submitted Crazy Wind and a song that eventually became Talking at the Texaco. It was called Small Town, and it didn't have the bridge that I put in it on the recording because, you know, first thing, when I got to Indiana to make that record, Mellon Camp says, you know, your songs are pretty linear. That's hard to do on a record. You can carry that off live because you got your face. You can, but, you know, on a record, you need. You need to, you know, change up your structure a little bit. So. So I wrote that bridge for Texaco, and that made it doable.
But, yeah, the. The songs I submitted for New folk were crazy when Small town. And then when it turned out I was among the winners and I had to do that Winners concert, I had to write several more songs. I wrote Terry, I think I wrote Storekeeper.
And, yeah, there was a song called Dancing in Starlight, which I don't think I did. It never got on a record. I think you can. I did a solo version of it on Austin city limits in 90. January 1990. That's the only place that exists.
[00:14:35] Speaker A: Was it just like the next week that you had to go back and play?
[00:14:39] Speaker D: Did you have to like, write it might have been two weeks. I can't remember.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: That must have been.
You must have been both happy and maybe a little intimidated by the work in front of you.
[00:14:49] Speaker D: No, that's what I found. That a deadline really helps me because I don't finish songs till I got studio time booked. Usually, you know, I'll generate scraps of songs as on in the course of a normal day, but I don't sit down and really try to finish them until first. No, the first step is that the tour draw starts to fall off.
So. Okay, I need to make a record. So, you know, I figure out when everybody can do the record. I get the time booked, and then I sit down and cram for the exam, as it were. Finish the song so we can have something to record.
[00:15:23] Speaker C: I think we have a mutual friend who introduced us to you, Tishy Nahosa. And she. She's always had, I guess her. Her guitar player that has been with her for a lot of years. Are there any musicians you've worked with over the last few decades that have been kind of.
I don't know if they've been, you know, pretty. Pretty commonly just on stage with you while you travel or.
[00:15:46] Speaker D: Yeah, my road band has been. I mean, well, Tim Holt and Darren Hess have been with me for over 20 years.
And Kornbread, bass player, he's. He's only been in the band about 15 years now. Okay. Betty Sue's been touring with us the last three or four years and she's kind of.
She sits in on four or five songs during our set. Darren and I sit in on a couple songs on her set. So the whole thing is growing. But, you know, we've all got some history.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: I know Betty, she's great. He's a great writer. Guy Clark's old number one turns 50 this year.
What effect did that album have on your craft? And what was it like to be a friend of Guy Clark?
[00:16:26] Speaker D: Well, I didn't know Guy well enough. I guess we were friendly, but he and my son were friends. They actually wrote together a good bit in his later years.
Curtis lived in Nashville for a while. Yeah, one of the last times I was in Nashville, when I had nothing to do, I just went up there to see Curtis, and Curtis was going over to Guy's house to co. Write on Something. And I wanted the car because Nashville had changed since I'd been there. There was an East Nashville that you could go to even if you didn't want drugs. You know, in the 80s, you didn't go to East Nashville unless you were Steve Earl. But.
So, yeah, I wanted to find the new Nashville, so I dropped him off at Guy's house. You know, y' all have fun. I took off.
But, yeah, Guy was. He was always friendly. And that record really did strike me. A friend of mine had it. I went to visit this old friend of mine that was living in San Francisco, and he said, did you ever see this? And he holds up that record and played it, and just. There's something about his voice was just. And I knew some of the songs because Jerry Jeff Walker had covered them, and I was a big Jerry Jeff fan. But I realized. I heard old number one. I realized this is how you're supposed to do. Desperados Waiting for a train.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: Can you think of any songwriters today that. That have impressed you? Anybody you've seen out in the. In the world, someone who's making less than a million dollars a year?
[00:17:47] Speaker D: It's been a while. Yeah, I don't really listen to much. My son's good. Curtis has got a couple of great records out. You can find his
[email protected]. i think you can get it on band camp, too.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: He's in Nashville?
[00:18:02] Speaker D: No, he was in Nashville for a couple of years. He lives in West Austin now.
Yeah.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Did he have that?
[00:18:08] Speaker D: His wife, Diana Burgess, is a really good cellist. And they. They do. And they're. They're actually all over this record. You can hear them on the song Pinocchio.
[00:18:17] Speaker C: I. I found that when I was listening to it, I was like, oh, there's a beautiful cello part. And as a cellist, I. I told.
[00:18:23] Speaker D: Aaron, I'm like, Curtis does the harmony vocal and the banjo on that track.
[00:18:28] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:18:28] Speaker D: And then Diana does. She does cello all over that record. She's on, you know, five or six songs there. So.
[00:18:34] Speaker C: Yeah, it's wonderful cello work. It's beautiful work.
[00:18:38] Speaker D: His last record's called the Pollen and the Rot, and as the lead track off, it was Last In Line. It's about billionaires, which he doesn't much like billionaires, so. Yeah.
[00:18:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
Do you. What kind of tour schedule do you like to keep up? What's the magic number?
[00:18:54] Speaker D: You know, as much as the market will bear, which usually means we're out for about half the year, and when we're home we're doing. We got our residency gigs at the Continental Club and.
And local weekends, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, weekends until the touring starts up again.
That's about how much the US will bear. You don't want to go back to a market too many times and oversaturated because you'll be looking at empty seats.
[00:19:19] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:19:20] Speaker D: So. And we're. We're starting to get more offers in Europe. I haven't worked in Europe since before the shutdown lockdown. At the end of this month, we're going to the Netherlands for the Take Reap Festival.
And then next August we got a. We got the Tonderfest in Denmark and they're going to put some dates around that. And then I think we're going back again in October for the uk.
I'm leery of going over there because the expense is so high, but, you know, if we run out of road in the States, might as well go over there and try to try to develop a market.
[00:19:55] Speaker C: From what I've observed and experienced, it's a high. It's a. Sometimes a high cost or loss to start building, but once you hit a certain stride. I've noticed people have. Not myself, I've almost gotten to that point with some markets, but I've noticed some people come back and they have their ducks in a row as it is.
[00:20:14] Speaker D: Yeah, you gotta get a system down, find out what works.
[00:20:17] Speaker C: Yeah. And it seems like a lot of people when I've played overseas tend to be happy to connect you with new folks. And I always enjoy making those connections. Do you find that happens or are you not like them? Main booking, brain on stuff?
[00:20:33] Speaker D: No, I go where the agents send me. I let them do the network.
[00:20:38] Speaker C: Have you, have you toured with our mutual friend Tishina Hosa out across.
[00:20:43] Speaker D: I have not toured with Tish.
We've done dates together off and on over the years.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: How did you two meet each other?
[00:20:50] Speaker D: I had just moved to San Antonio. I walked down the street, around the corner onto St. Mary street, and I heard her singing outdoor on a patio, a place called Tycoon Flats.
And there weren't very many people there, so I helped her load the gear into her old. She had an old Toyota, Toyota or Datsun pickup, New Mexico plates, beat to hell.
And she was carrying her own pa. So I helped load those EV speakers into the back of that thing. And that was before I'd ever even finished a song. And I was just trying to scrape up some gigs around there and I'd try to do the most obscure covers I could find.
But you had to do one or two Jimmy Buffett songs so the food and beverage guy would hire you because they want something they can drink too.
[00:21:33] Speaker A: Tish told us some of her Linda Ronstadt stories.
Do you ever cross paths with.
[00:21:39] Speaker D: No, I was that she was in. She left Tucson long before I got there. I knew people that had known her then but you know, I've never met the lady. But I did buy a big pruning saw at Ronstadts Hardware. Oh you did Tucson.
[00:21:54] Speaker C: Ah yeah.
[00:21:55] Speaker D: My dad used to cut up driftwood. I'd pick up driftwood out of the rito back before the rito banks were paved. And you could drive a four wheel drive pickup off the side in there and pick up all that drifted up mesquite and firewood.
[00:22:08] Speaker C: Did you work with my dad, Michael J. Ronstadt? Did he hook you up with some stuff?
[00:22:13] Speaker D: I don't remember him.
[00:22:14] Speaker C: Yeah, my dad ran it for a lot of years and he would. He always said that they sold anything from tractors to teaspoons and they had good stuff.
[00:22:27] Speaker D: That was a real hardware store. Yeah.
[00:22:29] Speaker C: That's. Wow.
Of all the people we've spoken to, no one has actually had a story about visiting the hardware store. So thank you for telling me.
[00:22:37] Speaker D: Yeah, that was back before. Back when Hotel Congress was a transient flop. You know, wasn't open at all. Yeah.
[00:22:44] Speaker C: Now they call the Ronstadt Transit center has a nickname the Ronstadt Transient center. Sometimes in Tucson because of the homeless population there.
[00:22:53] Speaker D: And I'm glad they still got somewhere to go.
[00:22:55] Speaker C: Yeah, me too. And the weather's. You know, I always, you know, I guess if you're going to be without a home, the weather in the west is a little better to survive because Southwest.
[00:23:05] Speaker D: Yeah.
I like to hunt Gamble's quail. That was my favorite thing in Arizona. I'd go up there by Oracle Junction and just walk off in the hills. Now there's some subdivisions up there now but back then you go to the power the transformer station there where you turn off to go to Oracle and just drive out to the west of that and head into the hills.
[00:23:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:25] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:23:26] Speaker C: My dad wrote a song called the Mill of Oracle. You can always find it online. But it's would be Ronstadt Generations would be the recording. But it's about a Ronstadt company or F. Ronstadt Hardware company windmill that was bent over like a sunflower and my dad wrote this beautiful story about it and I've spent some time gigging out in Oracle even though it's kind of tiny.
[00:23:49] Speaker D: Yeah. There was a place that did, like, spoken word stuff and solo acoustic stuff. I never played it, but I used to go up there. I had friends that go up there to hang out.
[00:23:57] Speaker C: Yeah. It's more populated, but still a lot of beautiful areas there these days. Do you get back to Tucson? Tucson or Club Congress or.
[00:24:04] Speaker D: I get back three. Tucson. I play the Congress every. Every year, every night. I think one time we played Plush on. On Fourth Avenue. Didn't draw so well over there, but that was earlier.
[00:24:14] Speaker C: So my brother Petey Ronstadt plays Congress fairly often, and it's.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: I've.
[00:24:20] Speaker C: Whenever I'm back in Tucson, I'll be playing kind of.
[00:24:23] Speaker D: You live in Cincinnati? I was just through Cincinnati. I bought a hat there at.
What is. I got. Oh, is that the.
Yeah.
[00:24:30] Speaker C: Oh, nice.
[00:24:32] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. Gus Miller, great old guy. Got a real nice Italian hat.
[00:24:37] Speaker C: Oh, that's wonderful.
[00:24:38] Speaker D: Oh, from Cincinnati.
[00:24:40] Speaker C: Hey, you know, it's nice to know that there's some places to get good hats in in Cincinnati. Yeah.
[00:24:46] Speaker D: He's been there since 1951. He said he still speaks with a Greek accent.
[00:24:50] Speaker C: Oh, okay. There you go.
[00:24:51] Speaker D: Pretty heavy.
[00:24:52] Speaker C: Yeah, that's, well, wonderful. Are there any.
Are there any songs on your new album that. That you would like to just kind of tell people about or that you're really proud of?
[00:25:04] Speaker D: I don't know. The one I had some of the most fun with was it was called Back to Coeur d', Alene, which I mispronounced it on the record. I didn't know the regional pronunciation, so you really have to be Steve Earl to get it to rhyme with gasoline. Oh, but so I did it wrong. But it's a fun little song. There's a character in it named Mikey that I named after one of my dogs. We have two rescue dogs and Mikey's rescue dog from Houston. And he always seems to wake up. He wakes up thinking he's in trouble, it looks like. And I could relate. So I had this line in it about Mikey come to visit in the morning, says we're not in trouble anymore. And that kind of started the whole. Somehow envisioned this story of this bunch of knuckleheads trying to get something going in la in the film business. And I guess where it connects to me is it makes the point that we don't want our kids to be artists for some reason, probably. It's practical. We don't want our kids to be poor, so we'd rather they went to school and were doctors and lawyers, whatever. There's a bridge in the song that Kind of gets that point across. And I wrote that bridge shortly after Kris Kristofferson passed away.
[00:26:11] Speaker B: Hey, we're giving just a small little break so we can ask you to, like, subscribe. All the things you do in this digital media world.
I don't like asking, but it's necessary.
[00:26:22] Speaker C: For us to survive.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: So this is the season three of a podcast you've never heard of, and we hope you hear of it and tell someone else. So thank you so much for listening to the Nathan's and Ron cast. Let's go to the next part of our interview with James McMurtry.
[00:26:38] Speaker D: Starfishman was really the first. First individual that was ever identified to me as a songwriter. I was about nine years old when my stepdad got ahold of me and Bobby McGee and turned me on to it. And I never thought about where songs came from up to that time. Well, what I didn't know until after he died was that after Christopherson died was that Christopherson's family disowned him when he resigned his military commission to go to Nashville to be a songwriter. His mother wrote him a long letter about what a disappointment he'd always been. This, that, and the other. You want? Yeah. You wonder why he drank a fifth of bourbon every day.
They were a military family. They did not want Chris to be any kind of artist, but. But, my God, he did it anyway.
[00:27:21] Speaker A: You're kind of sandwiched in between, you know, your dad was obviously an artist and your son is an artist. How did it work when your dad figured out that you were going to be a musician? And how did you feel when your.
[00:27:35] Speaker D: Son made a music? Well, he didn't kick up a fuss about it because he'd already broken the mold. He'd been through, that his parents were happy that he found a way to make a living because he knew he wasn't going to make it as a cowboy or a rancher.
He didn't like that and wasn't good at it, but they didn't understand what he was doing, really. And Last Picture show caused a big stir in that little town. And both my grandparents got in Larry's face, like, how could you write this? Well, I just had to pay the doctor bills for the boy.
He wrote that book to pay the hospital bill for my delivery.
Wow. Huh?
[00:28:17] Speaker A: I've seen the movie. I didn't. Didn't read the book, but I can see what you mean.
[00:28:21] Speaker D: Well, actually, I stole a line out of the book. There's that. The song South Texas Lawman, where he's Talking about, I can't stand getting old. It don't fit me.
Those are Larry's words for the character, Sam the Lion. Right.
It's in a scene where they're out fishing, and he just goes on this tirade, says, you know, God damn it, I don't want to get old. It don't fit me. I never would have used the word fit if I hadn't read it. It's not in the movie. The scene's in the movie, but the line's not.
But actually, I do think it's a better movie than it was a book. Okay. You can kind of tell he's in a hurry writing that book. It's got great parts in it, but.
But the movie is better.
[00:29:01] Speaker A: The title track to your new album. I've read somewhere that that you based it on a hallucination.
[00:29:07] Speaker D: Larry's hallucination. Larry, had.
He suffered from dementia towards the end, and after he passed, my stepmom's face asked me, did Larry ever talk to you about his hallucinations? I said, no. He said, well. She said, did he ever talk about the black dog and the wandering boy? And I said, no, but I'm going to use that. So I did.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: So that was secondhand.
[00:29:29] Speaker D: Yeah. And I just applied it to a fictional character. You know, messed up. Grown kids still living with mom can't really function because brain's not wired together.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: So on the song Annie, you talk about 9 11.
I've got two questions about that. But first, I mean, you talk about how everything you write is mostly fiction. Was that fiction or was there anything?
[00:29:49] Speaker D: Well, no. Annie itself refers to Ann Compton, who was a reporter for ABC News, who was on Air force one on 9 11. She was following Bush around, doing his educational push, and was there in the classroom when he's just sat there frozen, while they figured out what to do. And then they herded everybody back on the plane while she was on Air Force One all day long, flying around, you know, evading what they thought might be missile attacks and not knowing where they're going. And finally they sat down and she didn't know where they are. She gets off the plane. They're off at Air Force Base in Nebraska. She calls into the headquarters, and they put her on Live with Peter Jennings. So she says, peter, can you hear me? And he says, yes, Annie, I can hear you. What are you doing in Nebraska? So that's where that whole line. That's where the song comes from.
Oh, wow. And that is fairly autobiographical.
It's My thoughts on It.
It's like turning in your term paper 20 years late. All American songwriters are supposed to have their I will never forget 9, 11 song, or we will never forget. One of the things I'll never forget is that we heard from Yassir Arafat before we heard from our own president. You know, the much reviled Jimmy Carter. And Rosalind put on hazmat suits and walked through Three Mile island right after it melted down to show us that their government was in control. We can handle this.
We didn't hear from Bush all damn day.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: There's a line in one of the songs, it might have been that one where you say, we've seen worse.
[00:31:15] Speaker D: Yeah, that's that song.
[00:31:16] Speaker A: What is it about the Bush years that has such a grip on you now that we have. Clearly, you know, there's a lot of drama nowadays with this current administration.
Why do you return to that subject?
[00:31:30] Speaker D: I just hadn't got the song written yet. You know, I'm still clearing it out.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: You think it's still coming?
[00:31:35] Speaker D: What do you mean? The Bush stuff?
[00:31:37] Speaker A: The current.
[00:31:38] Speaker D: The current stuff's gonna get a lot worse. Yeah.
[00:31:40] Speaker A: Is it just that it's too soon to write about?
[00:31:43] Speaker D: Well, I just haven't. I don't know why I write about what I write about when I write about it, just because it triggers something. I've been working on that Annie song for a long time before it came together.
You don't know when a song is going to come together.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: Yeah, that one grabbed me.
[00:31:59] Speaker D: I don't really want to write about Trump specifically because I don't want to spend any time on him. I'm not even sure the problem.
You know, it looks to me like Stephen Miller is feeding him stuff to look at. You know, he thinks the footage of 2020 Portland is current.
People are pulling his strings just like a puppet. You know, I'm not interested in Trump. I'm a little bit interested in what's going on behind the scenes. But the real problem is not Trump. The real problem is there's a market for Trump. We got all these people out there that want to believe that shit. That's your problem. Trump's nothing.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: Is it hard to live in a place like Texas right now at a time like this?
[00:32:36] Speaker D: Yeah, it's bothersome to know that we have this mindset.
My representative is a guy named Michael Cloud from Corpus Christi who's a straight out insurrectionist. If I lived a half a mile east, I'd be in Lloyd Doggett's district.
[00:32:53] Speaker A: And so what's the Role of a songwriter at a time like this. I mean, do people need to address this or is it okay to just sort of.
[00:33:03] Speaker D: Oh, yeah, it needs to be addressed.
It needs to be addressed. But the main thing, you gotta write good songs first. And nobody's gonna listen to em. You gotta be careful. I mean, Annie does get a little preachy, just riding the line there, you know. It's not my best song, but it is my best effort at that time.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: That's a great line there, a great thought about, you know, that's my best effort on a particular subject. What is it about a song?
I think I saw it written somewhere that you have a hard time these days having someone else's song grab you. What is it about a song that does grab you? What qualities does it have in terms of the songwriting?
[00:33:44] Speaker D: It can be more than the sum of its parts.
You can write a song with really great lines in it, good groove, great melody. But if you don't have that Dr. Frankenstein, it's alive moment, then it's just filler, you know, you might put it on a record if you need length, but you don't really need that anymore.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: How do you know a song is.
[00:34:03] Speaker D: Alive when I can sing it without cringing.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: What do you do to make sure that you get to that point?
[00:34:08] Speaker D: You can't make sure of it. Some of them, you have to toss. Tear them down for bare parts and try again, you know.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: So when you're listening to someone else's song, and we have a lot of songwriters who listen to this podcast, what makes a song come alive to your ears?
[00:34:22] Speaker D: You never know. There's no set rule about it.
[00:34:26] Speaker A: Is it like an internal feeling? Do you. Do you feel your hair stand on end or.
[00:34:30] Speaker D: Yeah, there just has to be a lift and a connection. I mean, I think what makes a hit song is all the listeners out there hear themselves in it, you know? That's why I had more success with We Can't Make It Here than I did with Chaney's Toy.
Chaney's Toy should never been the lead track off that record. But by then I had already put out We Can't Make It Here. So I was supposed to be the next Woody Guthrie, the next political songwriter. So they picked the political song off that record, which was never going to be any kind of hit. That was just McMurtry Ren. It's not a bad rant, as rants go, but it, you know, there's nothing for the listener to really see himself.
[00:35:05] Speaker C: In when you're presenting these new songs. At shows. Do you have.
Do you have a set list that you usually go with, or are you kind of impromptu about reading the audience and choosing songs?
[00:35:18] Speaker D: No, we have a set list that. That usually works, and I'll vary it. You know, I'll change out a song or two some nights just to keep us on our toes a little bit.
If you do the exact same set list forever, then the sixth night in, you start flubbing lyrics because you can't remember which part of the song you're in because you just sang it five nights before. Over and over. Sometimes that'll happen anyway. Fatigue will get to you on the road.
[00:35:45] Speaker C: That's true.
[00:35:47] Speaker A: Do you have any thoughts on artificial intelligence? Have you dipped into that at all? Have you given that any thought?
[00:35:53] Speaker D: No, I really haven't. I mean, until artificial intelligence can get in the van and drive around playing clubs, I'm not too worried as a writer.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: Are you worried that it's going to diminish somehow? Diminish the craft?
[00:36:08] Speaker D: There will always be songwriters. I don't know if people will care whether their songs come from AI or from human songwriters. I don't have any control over that. That there will always be people who can write, and they will be in the minority for the most part.
[00:36:22] Speaker A: Is there something about being human? I mean, your songs have such a.
You're talking about, you know, it's alive. I mean, the people, the characters in your songs are alive. They are very flawed.
You could see, you know, the mistakes that they make. And, I mean, how important is it to be in touch with that part of your being if you're gonna be a touch?
[00:36:47] Speaker D: That's important for any art. I mean, my father would talk about that in prose. If your characters aren't interesting, there's no point in reading the book.
Doesn't matter how good a plot it has.
It's the character that engages the reader, and it can be the character that engages the listener as well.
[00:37:06] Speaker A: I've heard it said that poets hurt a little bit more. Do you feel like you're more vulnerable?
[00:37:14] Speaker D: That's ridiculous.
[00:37:15] Speaker A: Is it?
[00:37:16] Speaker D: Yeah.
Yeah. Humans hurt just like, you know, we're allowed to express it, and we're lucky in that way.
[00:37:27] Speaker C: Are there any songs specifically in your catalog that you feel like got you through a really difficult time, helped you process?
[00:37:34] Speaker D: Songs are tools that I write. You know, I make these tools to make the records and to get through the sets. I don't really think of them as therapy. For me, I have been.
I'm finally coming around to the fact that they seem to be therapeutic for some of the listeners. People are coming up and saying, yeah, this got me through something. And for a long time I didn't know how to process that. Now I'm thinking, well, maybe what I do is worth something beyond the ticket price.
[00:38:03] Speaker A: What do you take comfort from?
[00:38:05] Speaker D: When times get hard, the best thing is just to walk around out in the brush, you know, in the woods or in a pasture somewhere. Just get away from things that hum, if you can. I can't really escape anymore. My tinnitus is so bad. Anywhere I go sounds like a machine shop if there's nothing drowning it out. But still, you know, deer hunting is good for that. Deer hunting, quail hunting, fishing.
Fishing's good.
[00:38:31] Speaker C: It reminded me of when I was playing in the border of Utah and Nevada at the border end. And you could just walk in the middle of the night for miles in the sagebrush. And I would do that every night I was there because it was just peaceful. It's so quiet, so dark. The stars were bright enough to light your path. It was, you know, those are some peaceful moments.
[00:38:53] Speaker D: Yeah, man, if you can get to even a state park anywhere, just get out of the house and go walk around. That's the best thing for me.
[00:38:59] Speaker A: How has the tinnitus affected your ability to perform life?
[00:39:03] Speaker D: I don't know that it has because I play much louder than my ears ring, but they probably come hand in hand. The ringing in my left ear drowns out the ringing in my right. I think it's because for many years we were a trio, and I was set up a little bit stage right, so that snare was banging in my left ear. It's like a pistol shot all night now.
[00:39:22] Speaker A: How about when you're playing solo?
[00:39:23] Speaker D: I can't. I don't think about the ringing. I don't. When I'm playing solo, I'm still amplified for the most part. So for. There's one song I do Unplugged, I do BlackBerry Winter.
You know, if the room is less than a thousand seats or if it's a theater that's designed for operatic acoustics, then I can get away with just unplugging and walking out on the apron and walking around. But even then I'm belting it. I'm singing as loud as I can, trying to carry.
So I don't. I don't notice the ringing when I'm playing.
[00:39:50] Speaker C: Every musician I know at some point has some tinnitus. I have a little bit. And, you know, you just hope that the Note is in tune in your ear sometimes.
[00:39:59] Speaker D: Yeah, well, you gotta get a good monitor mix.
[00:40:03] Speaker C: Nature, I think is such a good place to get out into. And I think we don't do that as much as, you know, just in our technologically filled space. I even had a friend.
[00:40:13] Speaker D: Most of us can't afford to it.
[00:40:15] Speaker C: It's true. Well, I. I knew someone who lived, grew up in Detroit and they said they didn't see the stars until they were 18.
[00:40:22] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:40:23] Speaker C: And that was.
It blew my mind growing up in Tucson and, you know, a place where you see a lot of stars.
[00:40:29] Speaker A: You know, I saw a documentary with Bruce Springsteen recently where he said, we're gonna play until the wheels come off. Do you picture yourself continuing to do this as long as you're physically able or.
[00:40:42] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, I don't. I mean, what else would I do?
[00:40:47] Speaker A: What parts of the craft do you need to do for yourself and how much of it is just making a living and getting to the end of the day?
[00:40:55] Speaker D: I need to drive.
There's something about. And specifically American interstate highways.
I don't so much like working in Europe because the rhythm is different.
And I tend not to do my own driving over there. I'd rather have somebody that knows how they drive. It's not so much the.
The roads themselves and the infrastructure, but just the mindset. I understand the mindset of the US Interstates and it's kind of. It's, in a way, it's both hectic and soothing to me. If I get out and drive three or four hours a day, I can play a show. It's just part of it. They're linked. And when I come off the road, it takes. It's an adjustment for a little while. I don't know if I don't.
You get into a rhythm on the road, like you get up, you leave the hotel, you try to time it, or you get to the next town at 3 o' clock because that's check in time.
You check in, you get everybody situated, you're down, you take an hour and a half off and just shut down. And then 4:30, go to the gig, load in, sound check, try to get something to eat, play your show, load out, repeat the same for six days, and on the seventh day you just travel. And I really like that seventh day because I can just drive. I don't have to sing, nothing. Not that I mind singing, but by that sixth day, you're ready. Give your voice arrest.
[00:42:18] Speaker C: Do you. Do you take. Is that kind of a rule when, when your agent's booking, you say, I need a day off every six, every nobody. That's true, that's true.
[00:42:27] Speaker D: You know, Mondays are generally off because it's going to be. It's going to be a slow day.
[00:42:31] Speaker C: Yeah. I see so many people booking, just, you know, a whole month, no day off. And it's. It's amazing.
[00:42:37] Speaker D: In Europe, they do it. That's another thing I don't like about working in Europe because we've done like 33 days straight over there, and it shreds your voice.
[00:42:44] Speaker C: Do you write when you're driving? This one songwriter I work with, he's a. He's a trucker and.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: He made a.
[00:42:51] Speaker C: Comment to me, he said, oh, I need to remember to write down my lyrics at some point. And do you write in your head? Do you relate to that? Or is it more like with a pen and paper?
[00:43:00] Speaker D: No, a lot of times I'll be turning over verses as I'm going down the road. And if we get to the hotel with an hour off, the first thing I do before I crash is write down what I've been working on at the wheel.
[00:43:11] Speaker A: When you're driving and something comes to you and you know you're not going to be able to stop for a while, what's the safest way to get that out of your head?
[00:43:18] Speaker D: And paper. It usually takes a while to wear it down because you go along and you constantly think, can I improve this? Can I make it more singable?
Is there a better rhyme? Is there a syllable that falls in the pocket? Better? That'll make it punch. So I don't just get it complete in one thought. So it'll stay with me usually till check in time.
[00:43:42] Speaker A: Is it fun to write songs?
[00:43:43] Speaker D: It's fun to start songs. It's not fun to try to finish them.
[00:43:46] Speaker A: Thank you, James McMurtry, for spending time talking with us today. Hey, it's an honor.
[00:43:51] Speaker C: Thank you so much.
[00:43:52] Speaker D: Me, too. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you both.
[00:43:55] Speaker B: Thank you, James, for being a part of our podcast.
Thank you, James. Yeah, it was so good to learn more about what you do and what drives you to do what you do.
[00:44:04] Speaker A: Amen, brother. All right, well, this has been the Nathan's and Roncast. Come back soon because we've got a wonderful interview with the great Vance Gilbert that's on tap. But for now, we're gonna say goodbye.
[00:44:16] Speaker C: See you later, Pe.
Sam.
