By Diana Finlay Hendricks
THE BLACK DOG AND THE WANDERING BOY
James McMurtry
New West Records
Rolling Stone calls James McMurtry “one of America’s greatest living songwriters.” When James McMurtry released his highly anticipated eleventh album, The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy in June, he held his ground as a premier American poet. His hand-carved, hardscrabble characters tell their stories with resignation, uncertainty, disappointment, and occasionally, even a little hope. His lyrics resonate with a truth that hangs in the air long after music ends.
At his live show at the KiMo Theatre in Albuquerque last month (with Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Dave Alvin), McMurtry introduced a new song from the album, “Sons of the Second Sons,” and the audience held fast to every word, exploding into applause as the song faded to an end. In the old-world tradition when the father died, the wealth went to the eldest son, leaving the second son no option for prosperity but to set sail for the promised land.
The story develops as he fast-forwards to modern times:
“For a while we did okay—or looking back, it seems that way, trying to put our best foot down. We left tracks in the lunar dust, did away with the meaner stuff, all could ride at the front of the bus. Didn’t need no Jim Crow car, and we thought we’d come so far, Sons of the Second Son….”
“South Texas Lawman” is a portrait of the dark but long-accepted culture of the mythical Texas Ranger, who was not the white hat hero portrayed in the movies. The lawman is steeped in tradition but not all traditions are favorable. He “hunts quail from horseback, and cheats on both his wives.” He is “old time in his ways… his years are empty bottles now, tossed off in the ditch…”
The lawman laments the good old days when you could “clock ’em good if they called you any names,” and regrets the changing world.
“Sailing Away” is another honest look at aging. McMurtry’s wordplay is never more present than in the four lines early in this song:
I won’t forget your birthday ’cause you don’t forget the score,
I won’t forget that chorus like I did the night before
When I was trying to remember did I lock the front door
And have I any business being in this business anymore
And I’m sailing away, feeling faded and I’m not okay
Sailing alone, And I’m steering by the stars, and I can’t get home.
I received the album on June 21. I was listening to “Annie,” as the news blew up my computer, TV, and phone that Donald Trump was claiming success after U.S. bombs hit three nuclear sites in Iran.
Timing is everything.
“Annie” resonates with a timeliness as McMurtry sings the story of a housewife in Nebraska who hasn’t been paying any mind to the news on 9/11, until someone calls and leaves a voicemail overnight, telling her that the World Trade Center is gone and 3,000 people are dead. McMurtry chronicles a day that we all clearly remember, with Annie wondering what will become of the country she has loved—and taken for granted—for so long. “I guess we’re going to war. I guess we’re going to war.”
And here we go again.
A new James McMurtry album is an event around here. I listen once, all the way through and then go song by song, listening to each song multiple times—absorbing the nuances and rhymes, rhythms, and wordplay, and feeling the story. The characters come alive as the stories settle into truths.
Each component of the album tells a story. The title is derived from images in his father’s mind as dementia set in during his final days, with blurred visions of a black dog and a wandering boy. The sketch on the cover was a scrap of paper in Larry’s effects. It was probably created by Ken Kesey on one of his frequent Merry Prankster bus stops at the McMurtry house on his way through Texas back in the ’60s, according to James’s stepmom, Faye, who had been married to Kesey for forty years. Yes, everything is a story waiting to be sung.
Oh, and did I mention that as Jimmie Dale Gilmore played, James danced with his opener, songwriter Betty Soo, on stage in Albuquerque? The times, they are a-changing. – Diana Finlay Hendricks
