Few songwriters working today can build an entire American life inside four minutes the way James McMurtry can — the failing farm, the long-haul driver, the small town that the interstate forgot. Rolling Stone counts him among the country’s great living songwriters, and his latest record, The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy, only sharpens the case. It’s his first album in four years, a ten-song set co-produced with Don Dixon (R.E.M., The Smithereens) and built from scraps of family memory: the title comes from the hallucinations his late father, novelist Larry McMurtry, described near the end of his life — the black dog and the wandering boy.
On Wednesday, June 24, McMurtry and his band, the Martial Law Review, bring The Black Dog & the Wandering Boy Tour to The Hangar on the Hudson in Troy, with Austin singer-songwriter BettySoo opening and lending her voice through the night. Doors-to-close runs roughly 8 to 11 PM.
The Martial Law Review is the same trio that backed McMurtry for years as the Heartless Bastards — guitarist Tim Holt, bassist Ronnie “Cornbread” Johnson, and drummer Daren Hess — now rechristened with a name that says plenty about where McMurtry’s head is at these days. Live, that band is the whole point. The studied calm of the records gives way to a road-tested rock outfit that lets the long story-songs stretch and breathe, McMurtry’s deadpan baritone riding over guitars that grind harder than the albums let on.
The Hangar on the Hudson is one of Troy’s most reliable rooms for exactly this kind of show — close quarters, a crowd that comes to listen, and the kind of sightlines where a lyric actually lands. It sits in the Capital Region, an easy night out from Albany, Saratoga, or anywhere in the Capital District.
Tickets are on sale now: $25 in advance, $30 at the door. This is a songwriter’s room and a songwriter’s record, and BettySoo is no throwaway opener — get there for her set.
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