JAMES MCMURTRY

09/07/2025

Visulite Theatre (16+ (Must have ID) - Under 16 with Parent Only)

Doors open at 07:00 PM / Show starts at 08:00 PM

Tickets are $30.00 advanced / $30.00 day of show

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“James McMurtry may be the truest, fiercest songwriter of his generation” - Stephen King

James McMurtry will release The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy on June 20 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—BettySoo on accordion & backing vocals, Cornbread on bass, Tim Holt on guitar, 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 the 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 enjoyed a resurgence as young songwriters like Sarah Jarosz and Jason Isbell (who is namechecked on the new album) cite him as a formative influence.

Today, Rolling Stone shared the album’s rumbling title track, calling him “one of America’s greatest living songwriters.” A kind of squirrely blues, it features two mysterious figures who appear only to those slipping from reality, yet it’s never grim nor especially despairing. Instead, McMurtry namechecks a “Weird Al” deep cut and depicts a tortured soul who doesn’t have to work a nine-to-five. McMurtry says, “The album title and that song comes from my stepmother, Faye. After my dad passed, she asked me if he ever talked to me about his hallucinations. He’d gone into dementia for a while before he died, but hadn’t mentioned to me anything about seeing things. She told me his favorite hallucinations were the black dog and the wandering boy. I took them and applied them to a fictional character.” Speaking to Rolling Stone, McMurtry added, “I stole one line from the late Keith Ferguson, who played bass in the Fabulous Thunderbirds back in the day. I didn't know Keith, but Ronnie Johnson, our longtime ex-bassist, used to hang out with him some. Ronnie remembers Keith stirring his drink on the front porch as the sun came up and saying, 'I like to sit up and watch the squares go to work.'"

For The Black Dog & The Wandering Boy, McMurtry called on his old friend Don Dixon, who produced his third album, Where’d You Hide the Body?, back in 1995. He says, “A couple of years ago I quit producing myself. I felt like I was repeating myself methodologically and stylistically. I needed to go back to producer school, so I brought in CC Adcock for Complicated Game, and then Ross Hogarth did The Horses & The Hounds. It seemed natural to revisit Mr. Dixon’s homeroom. I wanted to learn some of what he’s learned over the last thirty years.” McMurtry and his band worked to create something that sounds spontaneous, as though he’s writing the songs as you hear them. They were open to odd experiments, weird whims, and happy accidents. In addition to his original compositions, the album features a pair of covers as bookends, “Laredo (Small Dark Something),” an opioid blues & testimony from a part-time junkie losing a weekend to dope by Jon Dee Graham, and Kris Kristofferson’s “Broken Freedom Song.”

McMurtry says, “Kris was one of my major influences as a child. He was the first person that I recognized as a songwriter. I hadn’t really thought about where songs come from, but I started listening to Kristofferson as a songwriter and thinking, How do you do this? Kris had just passed not too long before we recorded ‘Broken Freedom Song.’” Once the album was mixed, mastered, and sequenced, McMurtry recalled a pencil sketch he had found a few years earlier in his father’s effects. It seemed like it might make a good cover. “I knew it was me, but I didn’t realize who drew it. I asked my mom and my stepdad, and finally asked my stepmom, Faye, who said it looked like Ken Kesey’s work back in the ‘60s. She was married to Ken for forty years.” The Merry Pranksters—Kesey’s roving band of hippie activists and creators—stopped by a couple of times to visit Larry McMurtry and his family. “I don’t remember their first visit, the one documented in Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. I was too young, but I do remember a couple of Ken’s visits. I guess he drew it on one of those later stops. I remembered it and thought it would be the perfect art, but I had to go back through the storage locker. It’s a miracle I found it again.” It’s a fitting image for an album that scavenges personal history for inspiration.

Known for his powerhouse performances, McMurtry tours year-round. He’ll be in Iowa City tonight and his initial tour dates in support of the new album feature stops at the legendary Troubadour in Los Angeles, Tractor Tavern in Seattle, The Bluebird Theater in Denver, and more. Please see tour dates, with more to be added, below.

“You follow the words where they lead. If you can get a character, maybe you can get a story. If you can set it to a verse-chorus structure, maybe you can get a song. A song can come from anywhere, but the main inspiration is fear. Specifically fear of irrelevance. If you don’t have songs, you don’t have a record. If you don’t have a record, you don’t have a tour. You gotta keep putting out work.”

James McMurtry’s The Black Dog & The Wandering Boy will be available across digital platforms, compact disc, and standard black vinyl. A limited khaki color vinyl edition, as well as a limited compact disc edition, both signed by McMurtry will be available via Independent Retailers. A limited blue color vinyl edition, as well as a limited compact disc edition, both signed by McMurtry are available for pre-order NOW via NEW WEST RECORDS.

jamesmcmurtry.com

BONNIE WHITMORE

Start time: 08:00 PM

BONNIE WHITMORE TAKES CENTER STAGE WITH

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT, TO BE RELEASED OCTOBER 2, 2020

The accomplished sidewoman aims to inspire big conversations

with lush, catchy songs.

AUSTIN, Texas — Bonnie Whitmore is not new to the music business. For the last two decades, she’s played bass and sung with some of the biggest artists in the Americana genre: Hayes Carll, John Moreland, Eliza Gilkyson, Sunny Sweeney, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock, to name a few. She’s also maintained a weekly residency at the legendary Continental Club Gallery in Austin, where she lives.

Her 2016 release F*** With Sad Girls turned heads, but with Last Will and Testament, Whitmore has turned a corner in her own artistry that may just catapult her to the top of the Americana heap.

As someone who’s never shied away from the issues, she’s not afraid to be direct. Her record is full of topical songs, tackling suicide, rape culture, loss, and the great American divide. It’s not easy to talk about heavy subjects without weighing the music down, but Whitmore pulls it off without difficulty. It’s like she’s used to talking about serious matters in casual conversation — which she is.

“I’ve definitely been told to shut up and sing,” she says, referencing the phrase that became commonplace after it was directed at the Dixie Chicks. In such divided times, many artists have become hesitant to share their opinions for fear of being ostracized or losing fans. But Bonnie took “shut up and sing” literally. “I thought, fine, I’m just going to sing what I want to talk about.”

“My goal for this record is to inspire people to have hard conversations,” she explains. “But I definitely subscribe to writing pop music, with catchy lyrics and repeating phrases.”

The depth and candor of the record conveyed through Whitmore’s pop sensibilities make it a pure pleasure to listen to. Instead of telling you how it is, she often poses questions in her songs.

“Who do you want to be?” she asks in the song “Right/Wrong.” “What do you want to say?” “What’s the point of liberty in the land of the free, without you and me?” It feels like a Tom Petty anthem, and, not unlike Petty’s writing, carries a message of justice and true patriotism beneath an all-American jangle of guitars.

“None of My Business” was written after the 2015 terror attacks in Paris. Whitmore’s gorgeous vibrato is the star on this lush, vibey track. “Day in and day out, all we really do is scream and shout, missing what it’s really all about. Instead of melody, let’s find the harmony, love forwardly, don’t let our fears defend us.”

She wrote the title track, “Last Will and Testament,” after losing yet another member of the music community to suicide. “Asked for It” uses a punk rock attitude and driving rhythm to get the listener take a hard look at the nature of rape culture. “So go on and blame the victim. Why should violence have consequence? And each time you silence them, recreates the same event. She’s the kind of girl you said asked for it.”

Her intention is never to preach, but rather to have her songs inspire discussion and reflection.

“I’ve always had the drive to participate and use my voice. I feel it is our responsibility to use our voices to challenge authorities if we want to make things better,” she says. “We’re seeing a resurgence of the ’60s civil rights movement, and it is so inspirational right now to see so many people willing to protest things that are wrong, to live up to what we stand for, which is equality for all.”

The album isn’t all topical, though; it gets personal too. “Fine,” a track clearly destined to be a radio favorite, is an upbeat country rocker about the cycles of relationships, co-written with rising star Jaimee Harris. “Love Worth Remembering” is about the meaning of unconditional love, set to a throwback ’60s R&B feel. And “George’s Lullaby” is a beautiful tribute to her friend and mentor, bassist George Reiff, who recently passed.

Bonnie grew up steeped in music and flanked by strong women. She toured in a band with her parents, Alex and Marti, and older sister Eleanor (now one-half of alt-country outfit the Mastersons with husband Chris Masterson) from an early age. A professional pilot, Alex Whitmore would fly the family to gigs at remote Texas bars and crowded festivals. Fun fact: Bonnie is a licensed pilot as well.

Bonnie’s mother has been a big influence on her. Marti is not only a classically trained opera singer, (“an actual diva,” says Bonnie, “and with that, there’s real power — as a soprano, she could overpower a whole choir”), but has also always been very outspoken, and that rubbed off on Bonnie too. Whitmore never thought of “feminism” as a bad word.

Whitmore co-produced the record with Scott Davis, who also co-wrote one of the album’s standout tracks, “Right/Wrong”. They recorded at Ramble Creek Studio in Austin with engineer Britton Biesenherz. Craig Bagby (drums), Trevor Nealon (keys), and BettySoo (backing vocals, accordion), all members of Whitmore’s band the Sad Girls, are fixtures throughout the record.

Whitmore has spent the last few years polishing these songs on the road opening for James McMurtry. “Bonnie’s been first call support on my tours for a while now, because she kicks ass consistently,” says McMurtry, “Sometimes I forget who’s opening and wander back into the venue after I eat, thinking, “Damn, chick can sing, opening band sounds like money, oh . . .” He first asked her to open a tour for him a few years ago, after hearing her sing “F*** With Sad Girls” at the Continental Club Gallery. She’s a songwriter’s songwriter, and a musician’s musician, a fact made evident by artists like McMurtry wanting her as an opener, and artists like Hayes Carll wanting her in their bands.

When the Austin-American Statesman’s music critic Peter Blackstock received an advance copy of Last Will and Testament he named Whitmore Austin360’s June Artist of the Month. “Whitmore still enjoys the supporting role,” he notes, “but these days, she has too much to say to stay in the shadows.”

bonniewhitmore.com