
James McMurtry Tour Dates and Upcoming Concerts
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On tour
Yes
Followers
119,543
Category
Alternative Country, Singer, Songwriter, Folk, Country
Concerts
Jul
02
The Continental Gallery
Austin
Tickets
Jul
08
Continental Club
Austin
Tickets
Jul
12
John T. Floore Country Store
Helotes
Tickets
Jul
24
James McMurtry with BettySoo
Houston
Tickets
Aug
15
Fitzgerald's
Berwyn
Tickets
Sep
04
Proud Larry's
Oxford
Tickets
Sep
05
Saturn
Birmingham
Tickets
Sep
06
40 Watt Club
Athens
Tickets
Sep
07
Visulite Theatre
Charlotte
Tickets
Sep
11
Bijou Theatre
Knoxville
Tickets
Sep
13
The Athenaeum Theatre
Columbus
Tickets
Sep
14
The Magic Bag
Ferndale
Tickets
Sep
16
Horseshoe Tavern
Toronto
Tickets
Sep
17
Thunderbird Café & Music Hall
Pittsburgh
Tickets
Sep
18
Birchmere
Alexandria
Tickets
Sep
19
World Cafe Live
Philadelphia
Tickets
Sep
20
James McMurtry (Band) w/ BettySoo
New York
Tickets
Sep
23
Charleston Pour House - Main Stage
Charleston Heights
Tickets
Sep
24
Capitol Theatre
Macon
Tickets
Sep
26
Hattiesburg Saenger Theater
Hattiesburg
Tickets
Sep
27
Chickie Wah Wah
New Orleans
Tickets
About James McMurtry
A Lone Star sheriff hunts quail on horseback and keeps a secret second family. A mechanic lies among the spare parts on the floor of his garage and wonders if he can afford to keep his girlfriend. A troubled man sees hallucinations of a black dog and a wandering boy and hums “Weird Al” songs in his head. These are some of the strange and richly drawn characters who inhabit James McMurtry’s eleventh album, The Black Dog & the Wandering Boy. A supremely insightful and inventive storyteller, he teases vivid worlds out of small details, setting them to arrangements that have the elements of Americana—rolling guitars, barroom harmonies, traces of banjo and harmonica—but sound too sly and smart for such a general category. Funny and sad often in the same breath, the album adds a new chapter to a long career that has enjoyed a resurgence as young songwriters like Sarah Jarosz and Jason Isbell cite him as a formative influence.
As varied as they are, these new story-songs find inspiration in scraps from his family’s past: a stray sketch, an old poem by a family friend, the hallucinations experienced by his father, the writer Larry McMurtry. “It’s something I do all the time,” he says, “but usually I draw from my own scraps.” As any good writer will do, McMurtry collects little ideas and hangs on to them for years, sometimes even decades. “South Texas Lawman” grew out of a line from a poem by a friend of the McMurtry clan, T.D. Hobart. Driven by gravelly guitars and a loose rhythm section, it’s a careful study of a man whose feelings of obsolescence motivate him to take drastic action in the final verse. “Dwight’d stay at our house way back in the ‘70s, when we lived in Virginia. During one visit he wrote this poem about his father’s attitude toward South Texas. He wrote it down on cardboard, and I came across it recently. There was a line about hunting quail on horseback, and that was the seed of the song. I’ve lost the poem since then.”
The rumbling title track, a kind of squirrelly blues, 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. He finds a defiant humor in the situation at odds with the gravity of the source material. “The title of the album 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.”
Soon McMurtry had enough of these songs for a new record. “It happened like all my records happened. It’d been too long since I’d had a record that the press could write about and get people to come out to my shows. It was time.” What was different this time was the presence of his old friend Don Dixon, who produced McMurtry’s third album, Where You’d Hide the Body?, back in 1995. “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.” During sessions at Wire Recording in Austin, McMurtry observed firsthand Dixon’s grasp of digital recording technology as well as his instinctual approach to tracking. “What Don’s really good at is being able to sense when it’s happening. He can hear when it’s going down. If I’m producing myself and I don’t have him, I have to do three takes and then go in and listen to them. Listening to those three takes can take about 15 minutes. So Dixon’s ability to know when it’s happening is crucial, because it can cut 15 minutes out of the day. That can really save a session, because you only have so many hours in the day and only so much energy.
Working with McMurtry’s trusted backing band—Cornbread on bass, Tim Holt on guitar, Daren Hess on drums, BettySoo on backing vocals—they 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, such as the cover of Jon Dee Graham’s
“Laredo” that opens the album. It’s an opioid blues: testimony from a part-time junkie losing a weekend to dope. “We were playing a benefit for Jon Dee at the Hole in the Wall there in Austin, and we thought it’d be good if we played one of his songs. We rehearsed the song in the studio, and it sounded good. The drums were ready. We’d already got the sounds up. Might as well record it.” “Laredo” is one of a pair of covers that bookend The Black Dog & the Wandering Boy, the other being Kris Kristofferson’s “Broken Freedom Song.” “I did that one a few weeks after our initial sessions. It was just me and BettySoo, then we added drums and bass later on. Kris had just passed not too long before we recorded it. I guess that’s why I was thinking about him.” Like Hobart’s poem, it’s a bit of inspiration excavated from deep within his own life. “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 came from, but I started listening to Kristofferson as a songwriter and thinking, How do you do this? He was actually the second concert I saw. I was nine. He and the band were having such a good time, and that really solidified for me that this was what I wanted to do with my life.”
Once the album was mixed, mastered, and sequenced, McMurtry recalled a rough 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 of me, but I didn’t realize who drew it. I asked my mom and my stepdad, and finally I 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 Prankster’s—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 that I found it again.”
It's a fitting image for an album that scavenges personal history for inspiration. Even the songwriter himself doesn’t always know what will happen or where the songs will take him. “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.”
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Genres
Alternative Country, Singer, Songwriter, Folk, Country
Photos










What fans are saying
John
Waited 15 years to see McMurtry but it was worth the wait. Show was awesome all the way through. The intensity picked up as the show ended with some amazing guitar jams. Glad I made it this time around. Well worth the price of admission.
20th Century Theater
Cincinnati, OH
Nov 09, 2018
Cliff
Wonderful time at the Plaza. James McMurtry and his band play non-stop and put on one hell of a show. He even came back and performed a solo encore that blew our socks off. He is welcome back to Santa Fe anytime. Thanks Lensic 360 and sponsors.
Santa Fe Plaza
Santa Fe, NM
Jul 19, 2023
Steve
Show was awesome! Bettysoo was a wonderful complement to McMurtry, and they sang together when he first came on and later, as the show was ending. He didn't miss a note all night and the sound was incredible. Like perfect, seriously. So glad I went.
Rams Head On Stage
Annapolis, MD
Mar 07, 2025
Andy
I love his albums and his songwriting, wasn’t sure how the live show would be, but it was excellent! For a guy who doesn’t smile and doesn’t move much he’s got a natural ability to engage an audience, and his band is tight!
Skipper's Smokehouse
Tampa, FL
Jan 27, 2025
Paul
Great show. James continues to be one of the best singer/ songwriters in the land. his show was right and tight. James soloed as much as his roadie lead did. I must get to the rancid hippie town callled Austin. pax
Hotel Congress Plaza
South Tucson, AZ
Oct 10, 2022
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James McMurtry Tour Cities
Philadelphia, PA
Hattiesburg, MS
Ferndale, MI
New Orleans, LA
Knoxville, TN
Berwyn, IL
Charlotte, NC
Alexandria, VA
Austin, TX
Columbus, OH
Athens, GA
Birmingham, AL
Oxford, MS
Pittsburgh, PA
Macon, GA
Toronto, ON
Houston, TX
New York, NY
Helotes, TX
Frequently Asked Questions About James McMurtry
Concerts & Tour Date Information
Is James McMurtry on tour?
Yes, James McMurtry is currently on tour. If you’re interested in attending an upcoming
James McMurtry concert, make sure to grab your tickets in advance. The James McMurtry tour
is scheduled for 21 dates across 19 cities. Get
information on all upcoming tour dates and tickets for 2025-2026 with Hypebot.
How many upcoming tour dates is James McMurtry scheduled to play?
James McMurtry is scheduled to play 21 shows between 2025-2026. Buy
concert tickets to a nearby show through Hypebot.
When does the James McMurtry tour start?
James McMurtry’s tour starts Jul 02, 2025 and ends on Sep 27, 2025.
They will play 19 cities; their most recent concert was held in
Austin at The Continental Gallery and their next upcoming concert
will be in Hattiesburg at Hattiesburg Saenger Theater.
What venues is James McMurtry performing at?
As part of the James McMurtry tour, James McMurtry is scheduled to play across the following
venues and cities:
2025 Tour Dates:
Jul 02 - Austin,
TX @ The Continental Gallery
Jul 08 - Austin,
TX @ Continental Club
Jul 12 - Helotes,
TX @ John T. Floore Country Store
Jul 24 - Houston,
TX @ McGonigel's Mucky Duck
Aug 15 - Berwyn,
IL @ Fitzgerald's
Sep 04 - Oxford,
MS @ Proud Larry's
Sep 05 - Birmingham,
AL @ Saturn
Sep 06 - Athens,
GA @ 40 Watt Club
Sep 07 - Charlotte,
NC @ Visulite Theatre
Sep 11 - Knoxville,
TN @ Bijou Theatre
Sep 13 - Columbus,
OH @ The Athenaeum Theatre
Sep 14 - Ferndale,
MI @ The Magic Bag
Sep 16 - Toronto,
ON @ Horseshoe Tavern
Sep 17 - Pittsburgh,
PA @ Thunderbird Café & Music Hall
Sep 18 - Alexandria,
VA @ Birchmere
Sep 19 - Philadelphia,
PA @ World Cafe Live
Sep 20 - New York,
NY @ Le Poisson Rouge
Sep 23 - Charleston Heights,
SC @ Charleston Pour House - Main Stage
Sep 24 - Macon,
GA @ Capitol Theatre
Sep 26 - Hattiesburg,
MS @ Hattiesburg Saenger Theater
Sep 27 - New Orleans,
LA @ Chickie Wah Wah