Back then, James McMurtry was principally known as novelist Larry McMurtry’s boy, and perhaps one of John Mellencamp pals. He, of course, has risen well beyond that level of next-door importance. Still, both actually played a key role in McMurtry’s second record.
Not surprisingly, any child of Larry’s could write – though (as with other challenging vocalists like, say, Bob Dylan or Tom Waits) James is perhaps an acquired taste. McMurtry’s singer-songwriter style can sometimes come off as flat, like Delta turnrows or a piece of Texas backroad, yet similarly it’s by no means featureless. His easy, prairie-long gaze is as sharp as it is specific, both here and on his debut, 1989’s terrific (but perhaps less musically developed) Too Long in the Wasteland.
Mellencamp, who was involved with both of McMurtry’s initial recording sessions, also released Big Daddy in 1989, exploring twang-and-roll as well as themes that were again very far removed from whether Jack was still dating Diane. It might have initially felt like a hard left when Mellencamp (nee Cougar) spruced up his stuff with Lisa Germano’s fiddle in the mid-’80s, but he was completely inhabiting this new phase by the time Candyland arrived – and in a great position to help introduce newer voices in the genre like James McMurtry.
Thing is, McMurtry immediately makes this sound his own, collaborating from the beginning like hand in glove – or, I guess, more precisely: foot in boot. He writes in a way that John Mellencamp still only occasionally aspired to at this point, speaking plainly and directly about simple concerns.
Former Mellencamp drummer Kenny Aronoff and sometime guitar-collaborator David Grissom also show up, and give weight to these acoustic-based musings. Aronoff is a one-whomp metronome, something that eventually led to his ouster from Mellencamp’s band, but Grissom is reliably revelatory.
McMurtry, for instance, ruminates on the haves and the have nots around a loping riff on “Safe Side”: “Down in Piedras Negras, you gotta watch yourself. There’s a whole lotta hungry people, lookin’ to share some wealth. And when the oilfield’s busted and the peso takes a dive, stay off the side streets if you wanna come back alive.” “Good Life,” as you might imagine, is about every-day pleasures, and the way lives slowly build into a legacy. Later, on “Dusty Pages,” McMurtry looks back on that life, trying to hold on to treasured memories.
The result is a quietly intriguing album, with insights that drift up to the surface. James McMurtry, we know now, had only just begun making steel-toe tapping records that take a while to sink in.
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