James McMurtry

Description

Often both funny and sad, McMurtry opens a new chapter in his incredibly long career. In collaboration with Don Dixon, who worked on the first two R.E.M. albums, McMurtry processes traces of his past into new songs. He collects small ideas and preserves them for years, sometimes even decades. Eventually, these become precisely thrown character sketches, accompanied by rolling guitars, barroom harmonies, banjo fragments, and string arrangements. A mechanic lies among spare parts on the garage floor, pondering whether he can still afford his girlfriend. The title track takes its name from two hallucinations of the dementia-stricken Larry McMurtry. James combined these delusions into a song with tight guitar riffs and a fictional narrator who hallucinates about a black dog and a wandering boy while "Weird Al" songs play in his head. "South Texas Lawman" is about a horseback-riding, quail-hunting, chronically unfaithful sheriff and originated from a line of poetry by a friend of the McMurtry clan: "Dwight lived with us in the 70s when we were in Virginia. During a visit, he wrote this poem about his father's attitude towards South Texas. He wrote it on a cardboard box that I stumbled upon some time ago. It had a line about hunting quail on horseback, which was the seed for the song. I've since lost the poem." Like his hard-working, unlucky characters in their third act of life (McMurtry's sharp eye for sympathetic assholes!), the sensitive and imaginative storyteller McMurtry doesn't always know what will happen next: "You follow the words wherever they lead you. If you find a character, you might be able to tell their story. If you can put it into a verse-chorus structure, you might get a song." And that can take time. Six years, as with "Complicated Game" (2015), his 9th masterpiece. "I’ve got a cup of black coffee so I don’t get lazy / I’ve got a rattle in the dashboard driving me crazy // If I hit it with my fist, it’ll quit for a little while / Gonna have to stop to smoke in another mile / Headed into town gonna meet you at the mercantile / Take you to the Sonic get you grinning like a crocodile."

Highlights

• Live performance by James McMurtry
• Venue: El Lokal, Zürich
• Unique storytelling through music

General Information

James McMurtry, known for his poignant lyrics and engaging melodies, will perform at El Lokal in Zürich. The concert showcases his latest work, blending humor and sadness while exploring themes from his extensive career.

Location

Gessnerallee 11, 8001 Zürich, Switzerland

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