Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 31, 1993                   TAG: 9303310236
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 6   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: JIM STRADER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: PITTSBURGH                                LENGTH: Medium

JAMES MCMURTRY SERVES UP A CYNICAL SLICE OF TEXAS

There's a familiar cadence to the lines he recites for the sound crew's benefit, but the words aren't quite right.

"Give us this day hors d'oeuvres in bed," rises out of his deep Texas mumble at one point. Seconds later comes, "as we forgive those who have dressed up against us."

Clever details, peppered with sarcasm, fill the songs McMurtry played on a tour promoting his second rock album, "Candyland."

The tour - 30 dates in seven weeks, half as Joan Baez's opening act - is part of the business McMurtry chose. But that doesn't mean he has to like it.

"You forget that you're in a different town, and people don't know you just drove six hours," he said soon after such a trip from Philadelphia. "It's not apparent by looking at you that you drove six or 12 or however many hours, and so you're already mad at 'em before you meet 'em.

"That leads to irrational behavior on my part," he said.

His departure from reason this night - at least all that was apparent - was limited to the way he introduced himself to the audience.

"I'm James McMurtry, and I'm running for president," he deadpanned.

McMurtry's songs often tell the tales of solitary losers and lonely outcasts. One is Johnny, a former A student who won trophies and girls easily but got lost on the way to his 30s. Another is an old man watching afternoon shadows crawl across his floor, remembering his days as an Old West bandit.

Life is not sweet in "Candyland."

"I write a lot of cynical kind of stuff, 'cause it's easier to write that way. People believe it," McMurtry said between sips from a can of beer.

McMurtry, now 31 with a dozen or so years writing music behind him, dismisses the suggestion that his own life is the basis for any of the songs. Maybe a snatch here and there about somebody he knows, but nothing personal.

Storytelling may come naturally to the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Larry McMurtry, who wrote "Lonesome Dove" and "The Last Picture Show."

"I make stuff up, mostly, 'cause that's what I do. That's what creating is," he said. "My father says the same thing about his novels. People are always looking for real people in them."

After two records (the debut was "Too Long in the Wasteland") and a third on the way, McMurtry is not a star and he knows it.

"I wanted to sell a bunch more records and make a bunch of money," he said. "I still want to do that . . . I just try not to push it.

" `Candyland' I wrote mostly because `Wasteland' had quit selling, and the only way to keep the ball going was to get back in the studio. So I went in there with a bunch of really half-written stuff and had to do some things totally from scratch."

Finding a place on the radio to get his music played is harder than McMurtry would like. He sees rock stations passing up new songs in favor of 20-year-old Doors and Jimi Hendrix tracks and 10-year-old Rolling Stones cuts.

That kind of deterrent wasn't around a decade ago, he said.

"You wouldn't have as many dead guys on the radio," McMurtry said.