I’m starting something new around here, and my catchy title for the moment is “Dad’s Shop Tunes”. I’m sure you can tell I put a lot of time into that title. Anyhow, I hope to post these each Friday, and they’ll just be a short post on some music that I’m currently into while I work on my projects. Music is very important to me, and I hope to spread the love on the artists that I’m into. Hopefully it’ll introduce some new tunes to you that you can jam out to over the weekend while you work on projects.
So I’m starting with one of my all-time favorites: James McMurtry. For my money McMurtry is the greatest songwriter alive, and he’s a damn fine singer and guitar player, as well. I got into his music about 16 years ago, but his library goes back over thirty years. James was Americana before Americana was a thing. And he would likely scoff at the idea of Americana as a category, but his music speaks to what America is. It’s rock, but at its heart it’s folk, as it tells stories of everyday life of regular Americans. While that might sound boring, he has a knack for making the regular sound extraordinary when he puts his words into music; certainly much better than I could ever do in trying to describe it.
His latest album, Complicated Game, is already six years old, but I still find myself listening to it on a regular basis. And all of his work is stuff that I always turn on when I’m doing home renovations or woodworking projects in the shop. It’s just good “get stuff done” music. During productivity time I especially turn to his 1995 album, “Where’d You Hide The Body” and my favorite track off that record “Off and Running.”
You’ll likely see me post about McMurtry again this year, as he has a brand new studio album coming at some point in 2021. But in the meantime, I definitely recommend checking out the two digital EP’s he recently released to benefit the Continental Club in Austin, TX, where he does regular shows when he’s not on tour.
He also does livestreams twice a week: Wednesdays at 8 pm, and Sundays at 1 pm on his Facebook page.
On one of those EP’s, you get a solo acoustic version of Peter Pan, one of my all-time favorites that just never gets old.
Anyways, if you’ve never heard of him, now you know, and go check him out. Have a great weekend everyone! Let’s GO!
Cheers,
Grant