James McMurtry Announces 1st Album In 4 Years ‘The Black Dog And The Wandering Boy’

James McMurtry detailed his first album in four years, The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy, arriving on June 20 through New West Records. The Texas troubadour previewed the LP with the title track.

James McMurtry welcomed several guests on The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy including Sarah Jarosz, Charlie Sexton, Bonnie Whitmore, Bukka Allen and more. The album also features McMurtry’s band BettySoo on accordion/backing vocals, Cornbread (bass) Tim Holt (guitar) and Daren Hess (drums). The singer-songwriter reunited with Don Dixon (R.E.M., The Smithereens) to co-produce the LP. Dixon helmed McMurtry’s 1995 record, Where’d You Hide the Body?.

The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy is a 10-song collection with eight originals and two covers, including one from the late great Kris Kristofferson, “Broken Freedom Song.”

“Kris was one of my major influences as a child,” McMurtry said. “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 ‘Broken Freedom Song.’”

The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy sees McMurtry in his element, spinning yarns set to music. For the new LP, James drew inspiration from his past with the album’s title track tracing hallucinations his father, famed novelist Larry McMurtry, experienced.

“The album title and that song comes from my stepmother, Faye,” McMurtry said. “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.”

In Rolling Stone’s look at “The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy,” 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.’”

The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy’s artwork is also a past reflection, a pencil sketch by novelist and counterculture icon Ken Kesey, who was married to James’ stepmother Faye for forty years.

“I knew it was me, but I didn’t realize who drew it,” McMurtry said of the sketch. “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.

Kesey brought his famed Merry Pranksters to visit the McMurtry family and Kesey would return to visit over the years.

“I don’t remember their first visit, the one documented in Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” James said. “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.”

Preview The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy with the title track below:

Catch James McMurtry live. Scroll down for his tour routing and ticket info.

The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy Tracklist:

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