James McMurtry: The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy - Spectrum Culture

James McMurtry: The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy - Spectrum Culture

James McMurtry has said that he writes partly out of fear of becoming irrelevant. Given his career output, that may be an unfounded concern, but the characters on his new album, The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy, might be able to relate. Across these 10 songs, people age (often poorly), they lose the things that matter and they see the worst parts of our culture come into ascendancy (that last point feels especially contemporary, but it probab…