Two Texan songwriters, James McMurtry and BettySoo, joined Midday Music host Evan Miller this week for a live interview and studio session. The pair are on tour together, and visited WYSO ahead of their September 26 performance at the Woodward Theater in Cincinnati and BettySoo's September 25 wsolo performance at the Brightside in Dayton. James and BettySoo performed several original songs on Midday Music, and also spoke with Evan about their songwriting processes, life on the road, and meeting each other in Austin, Texas.
In the interview, BettySoo and James McMurtry spoke bluntly about the challenges, and rewards, of life as a touring musician. Since James released his debut album in 1989, Too Long in the Wasteland, he said he has watched the music industry change around him.
“When I was first signed in 1989, the deal was, you toured to support record sales and hopefully you sold enough records that you got enough artists royalties you could live. That never really worked out for me; my records cost too much to make, and didn’t sell enough to ever recoup their production costs. So I learned to tour cheap, and that came in handy later when Napster and Spotify came along and wiped out everybody’s record sales. So the money is from the road.”
James said he doesn't expect to make much money when he records an album, but writing new songs is still essential, because they provide fresh material for his live performances. “I like having written, don’t like writing,” he said, “It’s like we’re fashioning tools to get through a set—you wear your old tools out, you need new tools.”
While staying on the road demands a steady influx of new songs to perform, the experiences of touring also provide material for new songs. “We’re going in and out of motels and restaurants and diners and dives,” BettySoo told Evan, “Even just standing at the merch table, the stories you collect from people are endless,” The singer talked at length about writing the songs she performed on the program, including “Henry and Me,” which tells a story of gambling, stolen cars, and ill-fated romance. She conceived of the song after seeing a box of stuffed animals on the side of the highway.
“We were traveling one stretch of highway that I swear no Boy Scout troop has ever adopted, because it’s got so much garbage in it, the ditches are just full of trash. And at one point I saw all these stuffed animals and a big cardboard box. Immediately I had a song come into my head about a jerk who stole some family’s car and threw all their stuff out.”
While she later concluded that the toys may have been misplaced for innocent reasons, the seed “Henry and Me” had already been laid.
James also writes using images and characters drawn from life on the road, and, after more than three decades of touring, he’s said not ready to quit. He told Evan that during the COVID pandemic, he was surprised to find how much he missed the rhythms of touring.
“I didn’t think I missed it. During Lockdown, when we first locked down for a couple months, I thought, ‘What’s that weird feeling? Oh, that’s my back not hurting from riding down the road in a van.’ So I didn’t think I’d miss it that much, but then we started back up, and when I get back home, I come uncentered. I don’t know what to do.”
BettySoo will perform at the Brightside in Dayton on September 25 with local artists Amber Hargett and Eleanor Dakota. James McMurtry and BettySoo perform together on September 26 at the Woodward Theater in Cincinnati. Tickets are available at CincyTicket.com. More information about the artists, including tour dates and releases, can be found on their websites, JamesMcMurtry.com and BettySoo.com.
Text by Peter Day, adapted from an interview by Evan Miller.
