Anyone that knows me knows how much I love music. I've never played other than a couple lost years of piano lessons as a child. For as long as I can remember, though, I've loved to listen to music.
Charlie Watts - legendary drummer for The Rolling Stones - died yesterday at 80. My enduring image of Charlie Wats is from the Stones' "Start Me Up" video during MTV's heyday in the mid-1980's. Clear as day, I can see Charlie playing drums, smiling bemusedly, and shaking his head as Mick Jagger cavorts around the stage, acting like a an idiot, and Keith Richards plays guitar and laughs. For some reason, that image always has stuck with me.
RIP, Charlie Watts. The greatest living drummer. The unlikely soul of The Rolling Stones.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/arts/music/charlie-watts-rolling-stones.html
Over the weekend, I learned that my guy, James McMurtry, had released a new album for the first time in six years. For me, it's like Christmas morning when I get a new album from McMurtry. Other than Tom Petty, James McMurtry has been my guy for more than three decades. I've seen him play many times in many venues, from the Cannery in Nashville to an indoor/outdoor motorcycle bar somewhere outside Knoxville - now that was a night!
Amazing guitar player but what really sets him apart is his songwriting. His dad, Larry McMurtry, was a Pulitzer Prize winning writer who died this year and is one of my favorites. James McMurtry writes songs like his dad, Larry, wrote novels, screenplays, and memoirs. Beautifully. Stories about real people.
This album - The Horse and the Hounds - is like all McMurtry albums for me. Solid all the way through. I'll find one song I like, wear it out, then move on to another song, and wear it out. Deep cuts on every album, for me, anyway. Right now, it's the first song on the album, Canola Fields. Every line exquisitely written and achingly, hauntingly beautiful. That's a McMurtry song.
That's every McMurtry song.
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