{"id":11215,"date":"2016-08-03T05:30:05","date_gmt":"2016-08-03T09:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=11215"},"modified":"2016-08-03T08:18:50","modified_gmt":"2016-08-03T12:18:50","slug":"james-mcmurtry-its-complicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2016\/08\/03\/james-mcmurtry-its-complicated\/","title":{"rendered":"James McMurtry: It’s Complicated"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"james_mcmurtry02\"Many of the songs on James McMurtry<\/strong>‘s albums feel like vignettes from larger stories. The listener can feel that he or she is coming in on the middle of the story. If he wanted to, McMurtry could probably revisit his songs’ characters at other points in their lives, creating yet more compelling stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, it never occurred to me to do that.\u201d he chuckles. \u201cBut that might be a good tactic for me when I need to get another song written.\u201d But so far \u2013 across more than a dozen albums \u2013 the Austin-based singer-songwriter has never had any trouble coming up with new tunes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI start with a couple of lines and a melody,\u201d McMurtry tells CP<\/i>. \u201cI hear that, and I think, ‘Who said it?’ Maybe I can get a character from that, somebody who once said those lines. Then I can work backward from there and get a story.\u201d There’s often a sense of world-weariness, melancholy and regret in his drawn-from-life songs, and that remains true on his latest album, Complicated Game<\/i>. \u201cMost of the people I know are struggling in one fashion or another,\u201d McMurtry says. \u201cAnd that’s just part of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though McMurtry’s lyrics are a strong component of his music, he differs from many singer-songwriters in that he doesn’t view his music primarily as a vehicle for his words. \u201cThe last three or four records before Complicated Game<\/i> were pretty much riff-rock; there’s a lot more electric guitar on those,\u201d he says. For him, the album as a whole is \u201cmostly about vibe and groove; It’s about dynamic flow. I don’t think much about thematic flow.\u201d<\/p>\n

McMurtry released his first album in 1989 and had been performing for years before that; his current run of concert dates is billed as the \u201cBack At It\u201d tour. As a longtime touring musician, he has seen a lot of changes in the music business. Back before Napster and Spotify,\u201d he observes, \u201cwe toured to promote record sales. Now we make records to promote tour dates.\u201d So does he think things are tougher for a musician today than decades ago?<\/p>\n

It really hasn’t changed my life, because [making music] is what I was doing anyway,\u201d McMurtry says. Then as now, standard industry recording contracts place the expenses associated with making a record upon the artist; those costs are charged before paying anything to the musician. \u201cMy early records on Columbia didn’t recoup, so I never saw the back-end on those records,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

I was just making it on the road,\u201d McMurtry recalls. \u201cThere was a brief time, right about 2006 or so, when Childish Things<\/i> was out: \u201cWe Can’t Make it Here\u201d kinda rang the bell in Americana with that one.\u201d That topical song was named the best song of the decade by noted music critic Robert Christgau<\/strong>. \u201cIt was cheap enough to make, and sold enough to recoup, so I did get some back-end mailbox money off of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

These days McMurtry records for his own label, Complicated Game Records. After a string of self-produced albums, for his latest, McMurtry handed the reins over to outside producers. \u201cI had gotten tired of producing myself,\u201d he admits. \u201cI ran out of tricks; I felt I was starting to repeat myself. I thought it was time to bring in new blood, so I got C.C. Adcock<\/strong> and Mike Napolitano<\/strong>. They have a much different approach.\u201d<\/p>\n