From the my-how-time-flies category: James McMurtry, who plays a solo show at McGonigel's Mucky Duck Saturday, marks a quarter-century as a professional musician this year. He began his career in the late '80s by gaining recognition at songwriting events associated with the Kerrville Folk Festival, and managed to get a demo tape into the hands of John Mellencamp in 1988. At the time, Mellencamp was working on a movie with McMurty's father Larry, the author of such novels as Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture Show.

Too Long In the Wasteland, produced by Mellencamp, was a monumental, panoramic debut album that propelled McMurtry toward the front ranks of Texas singer-songwriters. Those who remember his earliest Texas tours will recall a young introvert struggling with the requirements and demands of the spotlight; it was not always comfortable to watch. With the brim of his trademark hat pulled down to shield him from close inspection by the audience, McMurtry won audiences over with his songs, his guitar playing, and his literate gravitas.

Along the way, he has built a reputation virtually on a par with such Texas storytellers as Robert Earl Keen, who gave McMurtry's career a shove when he covered his tune "Levelland" first live and then on Keen's 1997 album Picnic.

"Yeah, I'll always be grateful for Robert giving me that push," says McMurtry. "That exposure really helped me turn a corner as far as visibility. It put my name in front of his audience, and that moved things forward for me too."

McMurtry spent a few early years in Houston when his father was teaching at Rice University. The family rented a house at 2219 Quenby, and McMurtry still recalls a visit from novelist Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters that was immortalized in Tom Wolfe's 1968 bestseller The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

"They came twice, but I was only two the first time they came in 1964,"McMurtry recalls. "It caused quite a commotion in the neighborhood. That was really something to see, that psychedelic bus parked in front of our house.

"The second time they came was 1967," he continues. "I remember the neighbors kept coming out to look at it and all the weirdos that were on it. That was the visit where Ken Kesey set up what was supposed to be another acid test at Rice, but it all kinda fizzled. Recently some of the photos of all that, the bus parked at our house and the people who were on it, have been making the rounds on the Internet again."

"Lost in the Backyard" finds James McMurtry ruminating on his early Houston home

McMurtry spoke to us from Tuscon, where he'd stopped to visit his father after making a video and playing a showcase in Los Angeles. His new album, produced by Louisiana rocker C.C. Adcock, is complete and will be released soon on Francois Moret's Complicated Game label.

"I've done a couple of albums with Lightning Rod Records, but C.C. brought Francois to one of my gigs at the Continental Club in Austin and he immediately said he'd sign me to Complicated Game," says McMurtry.

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