It takes some stones to appropriate Bob Dylan’s flinty folk-rap attitude, to say nothing of pairing it with a crunchy, distinctly modern cadence. You’ll need a way with words, the ability to find the kind of resonant image or serrated insight that makes everything new again.
And, James McMurtry does. We join him, six long years since his last music, rattling along in an interstate fever dream, fumes roiling up through a hole in the floorboard, a scary hitchhiker receding in the rear view. And with every fist coming down on the dash, meant to get rid of a persistent rattle, he unfurls another twist of the tongue, another twist of fate.
He searching for a lost love, or something bigger – just as he always has. But “How’m I Gonna Find You Now” (due on February 25, 2015 as part of a new album called Complicated Game) is anything but a throwback to 2008’s Just Us Kids, to say nothing of rootsier turn-of-the-1990s triumphs like Too Long in the Wasteland and Candyland. Instead, James McMurtry has never sounded more visceral, more close up and present.
Maybe it’s this song’s contemporary setting, maybe it’s the way inspiration arrived. Turns out, an actual rattle in the dashboard, during a ride to his grandfather’s Texas ranch, provided the entry point to this narrative. With “How’m I Gonna Find You Now,” you can almost feel the hot wind hitting your face as he rolls down the truck window.
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