in performance: james mcmurtry and justin townes earle
How ironic that James McMurtry, in deflecting conversation about the assumed literary inspiration of screenwriter/novelist dad Larry McMurtry at last night’s Kentucky Theatre taping of the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour, would reference the father of the program’s other guest, Justin Townes Earle.
So came this quote from Americana renegade Steve Earle: “Songs are just literature you can digest while driving.”
True to that notion, and despite a few, very atypical WoodSongs broadcast glitches (the fortunes of war in any live radio setting), the tunes of McMurtry and Earle served as expert vehicles for tales set in the very wild, bluesy yonder.
McMurtry stuck entirely to the darker rural material from his new Just Us Kids album. He turned Dylan-esque phrasing into swampy retribution on Hurricane Party before courting the stark Texan storytelling prowess of Townes Van Zandt while singing for all the world like Lou Reed during the downward crackhead spiral of Fire Line Road.
Crisp, wiry support by McMurtry’s Heartless Bastards band (funny… no one mentioned that moniker on the air) came to a head on Just Us Kids‘ title tune, which, in keeping with the show’s unintended family theme, the singer dedicated to his teenage son. The more worldly dismay of You’d a Thought (Leonard Cohen Must Die), the closing song on Just Us Kids, was served as an encore.
The younger Earle (yes, his middle name is a tribute to Van Zandt) sounded less like his father and more like Hank Williams. When matched with the mandolin, banjo, and very serviceable vocal harmonies of co-hort Cory Younts, Earle’s unadorned country musings fueled the hootenanny Hard Livin’ and the swing-savvy turns in an update of Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith’s Chitlin’ Cookin’ Time in Cheatham County.
Topping it all was The Ghost of Virginia, an encore tune pulled from Earle’s Yuma EP disc that reveled in the cherished country imagery of a train running like a lost soul in the moonlight with cold steel tracks as its only companion.
The imagery may have been cold, but the performance couldn’t have been cooler.
I am a native Kentuckian and freelance journalist who has been writing about contemporary music for the Lexington Herald-Leader since 1980. I have not a lick of honest musical talent myself, just a pair of appreciative ears for jazz, folk, blues, bluegrass, Americana, soul, Celtic, Cajun, chamber, worldbeat, nearly every form of rock 'n' roll imaginable and, when pressed, the occasional tango and polka.