JAMES McMURTRY RETURNS WITH THE BLACK DOG AND THE WANDERING BOY JUNE 20, 2025 VIA NEW WEST RECORDS
FEATURING SARAH JAROSZ, CHARLIE SEXTON, BONNIE WHITMORE, BUKKA ALLEN, AND MORE
ROLLING STONE COUNTRY PREMIERES TITLE TRACK TODAY
“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—Cornbread on bass, Tim Holt on guitar, Daren Hess on drums, and BettySoo on backing vocals.
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 Country shared the album’s rumbling title track. 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.'"
SHARE JAMES McMURTRY’S “THE BLACK DOG & THE WANDERING BOY”
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 it.”
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 often 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.
The Black Dog & The Wandering Boy Track Listing:
1. Laredo (Small Dark Something)
2. South Texas Lawman
3. The Color of Night
4. Pinocchio in Vegas
5. Annie
6. The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy
7. Back to Coeur d’Alene
8. Sons of the Second Sons
9. Sailing Away
10. Broken Freedom Song
James McMurtry On Tour:
(CLICK HERE for dates)
“James writes like he's lived a lifetime.” —John Mellencamp
"One of America's greatest living songwriters" - Rolling Stone
“The most vital lyricist in America today.” —Bob Harris, BBC 2 RADIO
“James McMurtry is a true Americana poet – actually he is a poet regardless of genre” —Michael Nesmith
“McMurtry might be the best topical writer performing right now and (Just Us Kids) finds him at his finest.”
—Patterson Hood, Drive-By Truckers
"America's fiercest songwriter" - CNN
“James McMurtry writes songs filled with characters so real that you're sure they're going to climb out of the speakers and look you in the eyes.” —VOICE OF AMERICA
“The songwriting conscience of America,” —FOLK WAX
“As the years pile on, James McMurtry sings with ever more authority and deserved cynical grace...With each album, (he) finds more to say and a stubborn, uncompromising way to say it.” —iTUNES
“Music that's haunting but familiar, much like the struggles he depicts.” —WASHINGTON POST
“brave, smart, and pithy music that captures James McMurtry at the top of his game.” —ALL MUSIC
“more energized than ever.” —TEXAS MONTHLY
“His songwriting is clear and precise, and he proves once again that he is not afraid to take on the powers that be.” —VINTAGE GUITAR
“McMurtry’s songwriting is in a class by itself.” —METROMIX
“Texastentialist panorama of gray-sky lucidity and neon highway jungles...” —VILLAGE VOICE
“The veteran Texas songwriter’s new album, Just Us Kids, features the slow burner ‘Cheney’s Toy,’ one of the sharpest musical indictments yet of George Bush.” —ROLLING STONE
“emboldened by the reception to 2004’s acerbic (and increasingly relevant) ‘We Can’t Make it Here,’ McMurtry ramps up the polemics on Just Us Kids.” —USA TODAY
“One of the best protest singers working today.” —TIME OUT CHICAGO