(BLAIRSTOWN, NJ) -- Roy's Hall presents singer-songwriter James McMurtry on Saturday, April 4, 2026 at 8:00pm. He's been called "one of this generation's most unflinchingly potent and powerfully erudite recording artists" by American Songwriter.
McMurtry gained national airplay with his 1989 debut Too Long In The Wasteland, which featured the radio hits "Painting By Numbers" and the title track. His latest album is 2025's The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy.
McMurtry's father was the novelist Larry McMurtry who received the Pulitizer Prize for Lonesome Dove. When his father died in 2021, James went through his effects and discovered a rough pencil sketch of himself as a child.
“I knew it was of me, but I didn’t realize who drew it. I had to ask my stepmom, and she said it looked like Ken Kesey’s work back in the ‘60s.” The Merry Pranksters—Kesey’s roving band of hippie activists and creators—stopped by often to visit Larry McMurtry, his wife Faye, and his very young son James.
He held on to that drawing as he worked on a new album, The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy, his eleventh. It’s a collection of rough-hewn story-songs and richly drawn character sketches that have elements of Americana—rolling guitars, barroom harmonies, traces of banjo and harmonica—but sound too sly and smart for such a generalized category. Funny and sad often in the same breath, it adds a new chapter to a long career that has enjoyed a recent resurgence as younger songwriters like Sarah Jarosz (who plays on the new album) and Jason Isbell (who took McMurtry on tour) cite him as a formative influence.
McMurtry’s characters face similar realizations, although theirs are harder, sadder, and arrive at the end of life rather than the beginning. Sometimes they find life savers, like a calling or a fond memory; sometimes they drown, like that South Texas lawman. Even the songwriter himself doesn’t always know what will happen or what will inspire 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."
Tickets are $52 and available for purchase online. Roy's Hall is located at 30 Main Street in Blairstown, New Jersey.
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