Review: James McMurtry’s “Blasted from the Past”

By Paul T. Mueller

Austin’s Continental Club helped sustain James McMurtry over the years. For two decades McMurtry played regular Wednesday night gigs at the Austin club when he wasn’t touring elsewhere. Now the Texas-based singer-songwriter is returning the favor. The Continental, a longtime fixture on Austin’s live-music scene, is closed due to coronavirus restrictions – as are its Houston offshoot and many other live-music venues. McMurtry is responding by donating all proceeds from sales of a recently released digital EP to the club.

Blasted from the Past, recorded live at the club in 2006, features McMurtry and his longtime bandmates Ronnie Johnson on bass, Tim Holt on guitar and Daren Hess on drums. The five-song collection spans a decade’s worth of McMurtry albums – “Rachel’s Song” from Where’d You Hide the Body (1995); “Saint Mary of the Woods” and “Out Here in the Middle” from 2002’s Saint Mary of the Woods, and “See the Elephant” from 2005’s Childish Things. The closing track is “Laredo,” an ominous rocker written by one of McMurtry’s Austin contemporaries, Jon Dee Graham.

Blasted, which McMurtry calls “whiskey-soaked cowpunk from a bygone era,” is an interesting time capsule from an earlier phase of his career. It chronicles a tight band of seasoned road warriors, playing and singing with the kind of intensity that’s sometimes needed to hold the attention of a rowdy bar crowd. McMurtry’s guitar playing (all electric) is ferocious, and his voice has a roughness and an urgency shaped by years of near-constant gigging (and probably some whiskey along the way).

McMurtry these days is performing solo, streaming his shows live from his home in Lockhart, not far from Austin. Drawing from his extensive catalogue, he comes across as relaxed and relatively folksy. His incisive lyrics and brilliant guitar playing (on an impressive collection of six- and 12-string acoustics) are on full display, but McMurtry projects the ease of a man playing for friends in his living room. It’s a more than excellent experience, but it doesn’t include the rock ‘n’ roll power of his full-band shows. Fans of that side of McMurtry will find plenty to love in Blasted from the Past.

The EP is available via download, in a variety of digital formats. via McMurtry’s website or that of the Continental Club.