James McMurtry at North Shore Point Downtown -- The Virginia Arts Festival

440 Bank Street,Norfolk VA 23510

17 September, 2021

Description

No one writes better Heartland songs that James McMurtry, one of our best storytellers in song. One critic says that James McMurtry writes as though he has spent time eavesdropping on conversations in every Dairy Queen in America. Stephen King, who owns a classic-rock station in Maine, has written that he "may be the truest, fiercest songwriter of his generation." Longtime critic Robert Christgau declared McMurtry's "We Can't Make It Here" the best song of the 2000s. The proof is in the songs. Check out: "We Can't Make It Here Anymore" "Choctaw Bingo" "Just Us Kids" "No More Buffalo" "Copper Canteen" McMurtry creates short stories in song, stories about how the political affects the personal, stories that ultimately are about relationships. Take "Copper Canteen" from his album, "Complicated Game." When The New York Times Magazine picked “25 Songs That Tell Us Where Music Is Going,” the editors featured that McMurtry composition. “Honey, don’t you be yelling at me while I’m cleaning my gun,” McMurtry sings in the opening line. “Though that line about the gun got a big laugh when McMurtry played it in Dallas,” Ruth Graham writes, “I still don’t know whether to hear it as a joke or a threat, and McMurtry has never been one to offer the easy comfort of a straight answer.” While McMurtry doesn't shy from the political (“We Can’t Make It Here Anymore,” “Cheney’s Toy”), Graham notes that he’s actually more concerned with the effect of policy on personal workaday matters. “McMurtry often writes about how seemingly distant political concerns nudge his characters’ choices and prod their psyches,” she says, “the stretched budget of the Veterans Affairs Department or the birth of a new national park’s consuming the neighbors’ land through eminent domain.” Bonnie Whitmore opens the show. VIP doors at 7:15 p.m GA doors at 7:30 p.m. Show at 8 p.m.