September 4, 2026
James McMurtry @ DWNTWN 312
James McMurtry & BettySoo
“THE WANDERING BOY NEVER FLINCHES – James McMurtry’s 11th LP is a solid smorgasbord of aging, Americana, and arrested development”
“Local critic asks another: ‘How’s the McMurtry?’ Answer: cut-above songs and then the clutch killers.”…The Austin Chronicle/Raoul Hernandez • October 31st, 2025
https://www.austinchronicle.com/music/record-reviews/the-wandering-boy-never-flinches/
James McMurtry released The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy on June 20th via New West Records. The 10-song collection was co-produced by McMurtry & Don Dixon (R.E.M., The Smithereens) and is his first album in four years. It follows his 2021 acclaimed new West debut, The Horses and the Hounds, which UnCut Magazine said “lifts storytelling-in-song to meticulous new levels” and Pitchfork awarded an 8.0, saying “James McMurtry stands out even among the Lone Star State’s finest songwriters…” The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy features appearances by Sarah Jarosz, Charlie Sexton, Bonnie Whitmore, Bukka Allen and more, alongside his trusted backing band, THE MARTIAL LAW REVIEW, Tim Holt on guitar and accordion, Cornbread on bass and Daren Hess on drums.
As varied as they are, McMurtry’s new story-songs find inspiration in scraps from his family’s past: a rough pencil sketch by Ken Kesey that serves as the album cover, the hallucinations experienced by his father, the legendary writer Larry McMurtry, an old poem by a family friend. A supremely insightful and inventive storyteller, McMurtry teases vivid worlds out of small details, setting them to arrangements that have elements of Americana but sound too sly and smart for such a general category. Funny and sad often in the same breath, The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy adds a new chapter to a long career that has young songwriters like Sarah Jarosz and Jason Isbell cite him as a formative influence.
For this Dancing Rabbit Spotlight Show, McMurtry brings the full band to DWNTWN 312 in McAlester — an intimate room for an artist who fills every line with a lifetime of watching and listening.
Artists
James McMurtry
James McMurtry is one of America’s most incisive songwriters — a storyteller whose novelistic detail and unflinching social eye set him apart. The son of novelist Larry McMurtry, he grew up surrounded by narrative, and it shows: his songs are populated by fully realized characters and hard small-town truths, delivered in a plainspoken Texas drawl. He arrived fully formed with 1989’s Too Long in the Wasteland, produced by John Mellencamp, and spent the decades that followed building a catalog admired by critics and fellow writers alike. Stephen King once called him “the truest, fiercest songwriter of his generation.” Albums like Childish Things (2005), home to the slow-burning anthem “We Can’t Make It Here,” and the road-worn epic “Choctaw Bingo” cemented his reputation as a chronicler of American life at its margins. Across later landmarks — Just Us Kids (2008), Complicated Game (2015), The Horses and the Hounds (2021), and The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy (2025) — he has remained as sharp as ever, pairing literary lyrics with the muscle of a road-tested band. For this Dancing Rabbit Spotlight Show, McMurtry brings the full band to DWNTWN 312 in McAlester — an intimate room for an artist who fills every line with a lifetime of watching and listening.
Made Possible By
Joey Clark Family
