How a Wrong Turn Led to a Resonant James McMurtry Song

Give credit to the songwriters who can look beyond obvious song topics and find inspiration in surprising places. For James McMurtry, one of the best songwriters of this era, even a traffic jam can spark something special.

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James McMurtry’s 2015 song “Long Island Sound” emanated from that moment. It allowed the artist to get way inside the head of a fictional character. The song speaks eloquently about the distance, emotional and physical, between our childhood origins and where we end up as adults.

James McMurtry’s Magic Touch

Ever since his 1989 debut album Too Long In The Wasteland, James McMurtry has occupied a hallowed place in the singer-songwriter pantheon. And we’re happy to report that the guy is still doing it at an elite level. His just-released album The Black Dog And The Wandering Boy proves as much.

He often gets labeled as uncompromising and rebellious, and there’s certainly something to that in many of his songs. But you’ll also find that his character sketches come laden with sweetness and empathy. McMurtry usually doesn’t miss when he takes aim for the heart of his listeners.

You really can’t go wrong with any of McMurtry’s albums, but Complicated Game, released in 2015, is especially fine. “Long Island Sound” stands as one of its many highlights. It might be somewhat surprising to some in terms of its setting. The Texas-born McMurtry explained in an interview with The Patriot Ledger how he entered that Eastern US head space:

“How that song came about is that my son graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, and I went up to New York for his graduation. Coming back, our Google maps thing sent us over the Whitestone Bridge by mistake, and sitting there in traffic, I just began playing with those lines, imagining this guy’s life. It all just kind of fit together, this story of someone who had to go for a corporate reload up north.”

Examining the Lyrics of “Long Island Sound”

“Long Island Sound” begins with a kind of skewed nursery rhyme song that the narrator once wrote. That leads us into the theme of life’s changing outlook, epitomized at first by the childish pursuits that this guy has put on the back burner: “My old guitar sits in the back bedroom closet/Next to the shotgun I got when I was nine.”

In the third verse, he alludes to the urban traffic. “It’s not for the squeamish or the gentle of heart,” he explains. When he’s in that gridlock, he muses on the sights that he sees: “Watchin’ the boats with their snowy white sails / Watchin’ the sun sinking over the projects/Laundry hung out off the balcony rails.”

That, in turn, leads him to ponder a youthful romance that’s much further back in his rear view than the surrounding cars and trucks. We then find out that he’s crossed the country from Tulsa to these Eastern suburbs after his company relocated him. It means his kids don’t have the same Southern roots. “My grandmother says we’re just lettin’ ‘em fall through,” James McMurtry sings. “They don’t go to church and we’re not gonna make ‘em / They all drop their ‘r’s’ like the islanders do.”

He then drifts back to nostalgic memories of his grandparents, before he gets distracted by some discoveries in his glove compartment. “Found a couple old picks and a twenty-gauge shot-shell,” he notes. “Left from a dove hunt a couple years back.” It seems his past still clings to him, as far from it as he might believe he is from it.

In the chorus, he celebrates his newfound life while acknowledging that the people around him are still “strangers”. “Long Island Sound” displays James McMurtry’s mastery of the narrative song, as he explores the disorienting feeling of making a fresh start when your actual beginnings still make their presence felt from time to time.

Photo by Erika Goldring/Getty Images for Americana Music Association