Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: The horses and the hounds will bring James McMurtry back to northwest Arkansas later this month. Hi there. This is Monica Hooper for the what's up? Podcast. I'm excited today to speak with the incomparable James McMurtry, who will perform at Georgia's majestic Lounge on March 30 in Fayetteville. He'll be joined again by Betty sue, who joined him, and Aaron Ray earlier this year for an etown live podcast at the momentary. The music starts at 08:30 p.m. On March 30 at Georgia's.
Thanks for joining me today, James.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Well, good to be here.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: All right, well, I normally ask only my best friend this question, but what are you wearing to the show at George's majestic Lounge on March 30?
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Probably jeans and some kind of shirt.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Are you planning a dress for the encore?
[00:01:01] Speaker B: No, we kind of won that round. It seemed like.
I don't imagine they'll quit. I haven't put the dress away, but I probably won't be wearing it.
[00:01:11] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: So I noticed that you visit the area quite a bit, and I was just wondering what keeps bringing you back to northwest Arkansas.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Well, it routes pretty good if you're going to Memphis or if you're going to St. With us, either one.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Do you have any ties to the area, since you're not too far away?
[00:01:32] Speaker B: No, man. George's is a stop. It's a major venue for all the touring acts, so we're going to go through there because they do a good job.
[00:01:41] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: All right.
And last year, my colleague Philip Martin interviewed you, and you told him that you were hoping to get another record out before the elections. And so I was wondering, how is that going?
[00:01:54] Speaker B: Well, I've been looking at studios.
I have this fantasy that I'm going to get all the songs written before it's time to record, and it just never happens. I always wind up kind of booking the time and doing my homework on the school bus, as it were. So that's where I am now. I'm about to book some studio time. I've been talking to Don Dixon about producing.
He says he can work in early May. I don't know. We'll see.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: Okay.
Are you working on any new songs right now about the towns that you see from your dashboard while you're out there on tour?
[00:02:33] Speaker B: Probably.
I can't trace an influence, really. It goes in my ears or in my eyes, and eventually I might write something about it.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: How does that process look like for you? Do you take a pen and a paper on the road with you, or is it just something that you hum to yourself until you can sit down and work. I mean, what's your songwriting process?
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Quite often, I get a couple of lines and a melody, and I follow it wherever it leads.
A lot of times that'll happen. Driving down the road, I'll keep just turning a verse over in my head until we get to the hotel, and then I check everybody in and go up to the room and write it down before I forget it.
Between then and sound check. And several of the songs on the last record were that way where I wrote them the last couple of tours before we did the tracking.
[00:03:23] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: I'd get a verse one day, and then I might get a second verse the next day. And the choruses are always a hard problem for me.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: How do you work through that?
[00:03:36] Speaker B: I just keep fishing till I find something. Well, it's weird, though.
In recent times, I've been writing the chorus first, and that's even harder. It's really hard for me to build a verse into an existing chorus, but we got to keep learning.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: It makes me think of how, with streaming, they're saying a lot of people put their choruses at the beginning of their songs to try to kind of hook listeners in that way. Do you ever think about writing a song like that, or is that just not your thing?
[00:04:06] Speaker B: I just kind of follow the lyric. I haven't worried too much about trying to hook people, because I've been doing this 30 years and I hadn't had a hit yet, but I'm still going.
[00:04:19] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: I know a lot of people ask you about your dad and the influence of fiction on your songwriting, and you've said before that those are two different muscles.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: And so I'm wondering, crows and verse are different muscles. They're both fiction.
[00:04:32] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: All right.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: My songs are total fiction. They're made up.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: How do you know that you've got a song rather than just kind of like a story to tell?
[00:04:44] Speaker B: When I can sing it without cringing, it works.
[00:04:50] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: And I was wondering, too, how important is it for you to get out on the road when you're writing a song? Because you seem more like a road warrior than a studio musician to me.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: Well, the road is only a real income stream for musicians right now.
Radio play doesn't make anything. There's no real record sales. The road is our living, so it's not so much songwriting. It's just how we pay the rent. And it's getting even worse. I know guys that did pretty well pitching songs for HBO series trailers and things like that. Well, now they got know much easier to use an AI program to write a theme song because you don't have to pay them a, you know, that's pretty much eliminated the last major revenue stream besides turing.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: With your next album that you're working on, what are you hoping will come from that one? Do you just plan to keep working and keep doing the show?
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Yeah, that's the whole game.
Don't get knocked out of the game and stay in business. Keep going down the road. It's really the only thing we can do.
[00:06:05] Speaker C: Okay. Right.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: And for the show that you're bringing us on March 30, who will be joining you in your band?
[00:06:16] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a band run. So that'll be cornbread on bass and Darren Hess on the drums. Tim Holt, he plays guitar and accordion. And Betty sue has been joining us for a couple of songs. And she actually recorded one of my songs. So I've been going out there, know, doing a song with her during her set.
[00:06:34] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: All right. Are you planning to have her on your new record that you're thinking of?
[00:06:43] Speaker B: Yeah, she's on the last record too. She and Akina Adderway were the background vocal on a couple of songs there.
[00:06:50] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: All right. And will people be able to pick up the horses and the hounds at your show here in March?
[00:07:00] Speaker B: We usually carry it, yeah.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Okay, great. Well, in the meantime, how can people keep up with you?
[00:07:07] Speaker B: Well, they can follow. I do have a Facebook page that I don't really use for anything but business. If I friend you, it's not me because I don't friend anybody.
I don't do Instagram. If I instagram you or Google chat you, it's not me. I do have some imposters.
Last time I was up your way was at etown up in Bentonville. And a woman came up to the stage after the show, gave me her name. And I looked kind of blankly and she looked really confused and said, well, we chatted on Google chat. I said, no, we didn't.
[00:07:45] Speaker C: Sorry.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: Now my father had real life in person imposters who would hang out in bars and pretend to be Larry McMurtry and sign autographs and try to pick up women, but nobody knows what an author looks like.
They could pull it off. He has some pretty good ones, but mine are mostly online.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: Did you ever expect that?
[00:08:12] Speaker B: No. I guess in some ways it means you've made it.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: What a weird way to make it.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: If you're big enough to impersonate. Maybe.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Done so well, we're looking forward to your show on March 30, and thank you so much for joining me for a quick chat.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: Thank you.
