1
"Cashin' in on a thirty year crush
You can't be young and do that
You can't be young and do that"
James McMurtry was once the young buck making his statement supported by Columbia Records. Back when getting a record deal was everything, when the stars were still big and the record industry was still a thing, before it all blew up into a million pieces where it's every act for itself and only a very few get major label money and even if they break have a fraction of the impact of those from the days of yore.
McMurtry made two LPs with the Mellencamp camp. And especially the first was magical, but McMurtry does not have a radio friendly voice, and neither does Bob Dylan, but at the turn of the decade, from the eighties to the nineties, it was all about your look and your voice and if you possessed neither, as in you weren't beautiful with a pleasing voice, not only did you get little MTV/VH1 airplay, but little radio play either, in an era where Top Forty on FM playing the video hits eclipsed a dying AOR which was challenged by R.E.M. and ultimately Nirvana which they were late to if they played them at all and after languishing in a backwater they either flipped format or went classic rock.
In other words, there was no place to hear James McMurtry. In an era very unlike today, when it was truly all about the hit and without one good luck whereas today if you're not in the Spotify Top 50 hits are not really a thing although you do need a track to catch people's ears as you build your career brick by brick into an edifice that will support you as long as you stay on the road and harness the power of your fans. This is the new paradigm and if you don't make Spotify Top 50 music you must hew to it.
Then leaving the Indiana crew for South Carolina McMurtry made an album with Don Dixon (where's he been lately?), which had a softer but equally intriguing sound and then after its release in 1995 James was promptly dropped from Columbia and thrown into the land of the independents, where a label might give you money to make a record, and then deals a small amount of promotion and takes the lion's share of the income if there is any. And at this point acts of this vintage put their albums out themselves, they have to pay to make them they might as well get all the revenue if there is any and so many of the old label people lost their jobs and have hung out their shingle and can be hired to get the word out for you. But don't expect to make a big impact, once again the most important thing is to know who your fan base is, be able to reach all of them in e-mail, and then deliver blistering live shows and hope the word spreads.
So James McMurty has lived through this entire epoch, into today when many of his contemporaries do house concerts, when most don't even bother to put out new music, they just can't get a jones to do it to little acclaim.
And the truth is if you're not a fan of McMurtry you're probably not going to cotton to "The Horses and the Hounds," because all of the trappings have been excised, you've got James and his songs and some noisy guitars and an occasional organ and backup vocal and that's it, it's the opposite of the Columbia albums, it's like McMurtry is wearing blinders, just going forward, irrelevant of what anybody thinks, irrelevant of whether anybody's paying attention.
And I must admit the first time through I did not get "The Horses and the Hounds," but then the above lines from "Canola Fields" stuck with me. A thirty year crush? No one in the Spotify Top 50 can sing about that, they're not old enough. You have to have some miles on you. From your high school days to the shenanigans of college to playing the field to getting married and divorced and then thinking back to the way it used to be. I can't tell you the number of guys I know fantasizing about thirty year crushes, even though if they make contact it never works, but the fantasy keeps them going.
"There's not much movin' on the romance radar
Not that I'm cravin' it all that much
But I still need to feel every once in a while
The warmth of a smile and a touch"
2
"We're nearly twenty years older
It's not like what we thought it'd be
We never talked this over
You can't lay it all on me"
Back when we used to buy albums one by one, when you laid down too much cash to feed your addiction, you played the LPs until they revealed themselves, until a track stuck out, and "What's the Matter" is the track on "The Horses and the Hounds."
I was lying on the couch listening on headphones as I surfed the net on my iPad, I certainly wasn't paying attention to the lyrics, but the changes felt so good, like driving alone in your car with the top down and your hair blowing in the wind knowing your life is far from perfect but this one moment is bliss.
"Blood pressure's up, I gotta take pills
If the food don't kill me, the alcohol will
I know it ain't healthy but this is what I do
Same thing I was doing back before I met you"
They marry you and then they want you to change, even though you never said you would. Suddenly you're the enemy when you used to be God.
Not that it's easy being home with the kids when your significant other is gallivanting on the road, having the time of their life, at least you think so.
So if you want to check out "The Horses and the Hounds" start with "What's the Matter," it's the most palatable, the track that is most easily understood, musically anyway.
But if you go deeper, you should check out the track that comes before, "Ft. Walton Wake-Up Call."
"She woke up mad, she's trying to pick a fight
Got a phone to my ear 'cause I'm trying to book a flight
And she's crazy as a goddamned loon
And the airline's drowning in the belly of the beast
And they're all bogged down from the weather in the east
And we're not going anywhere soon"
It's a story, you can see it in your mind's eye. But is it politically correct? Well we expect our acts to tell their story in the lyrics but McMurtry is not the protagonist in all these songs, and the truth is people are flawed, or at least they're not worried 24/7 about how they come across.
But the chorus is the piece-de-resistance:
"I keep losing my glasses
I keep losing my glasses
I keep losing my glasses
I keep losing my glasses"
He can't see his phone, he can't see the menu, he's over forty, over fifty, and he needs those damn reading specs, or bifocals. You won't find this refrain in anything in the Spotify Top 50, and that's the magic of "The Horses and the Hounds," it's written from an adult perspective, and this is extremely rare, almost nonexistent, the last time I encountered it was on Emitt Rhodes's final album, "Rainbow Ends," where he was finally old enough to own his faults, to tell his truth, just like taking those blood pressure pills in "What's the Matter."
In a country where youth is exalted, McMurtry is singing for the rest of us, who are not on the verge of death but are definitely over the hill in the eyes of the media, it's almost like we don't exist, the classic acts dye their hair and get plastic surgery to resemble who they once were while you look out into the audience and see a lot of gray hair, if you see any hair at all. As for appearance...it can never truly cover up biology, what's going on inside.
So just like the generation it's made for, the spotlight is not shining on James McMurtry's "The Horses and the Hounds," there's no way it'll be ubiquitous, so you can either compromise in a futile effort or own your identity and play back your insights to people who will get them, create that fan base you hope will keep you alive.
You're not a star, you're a musician. Channeling truth is your goal. Sure, the music must be palatable, but no one is interested in the ditties of the Gen-X'ers and baby boomers. Yet it seems too big a risk to own the miles on your body and mind, but the truth is in low moments that thirty year crush is what's keeping you alive, isn't it great to have art that reflects your inner feelings, where you are today? YES!
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