Please note: Advance sales to both 7 pm and 9:30 pm sets are closed; limited tickets will be available at the door.

“One of America’s greatest living songwriters.” (Rolling Stone) Texas-based songwriter and guitarist James McMurtry is a supremely insightful and inventive storyteller whose fans include everyone from Stephen King to John Mellencamp. Funny and sad often in the same breath, McMurtry teases vivid worlds out of small details, crafting searingly honest lyrics set against a rock/Americana backdrop.

His Ypsilanti Freighthouse debut draws from his 2025 album The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy. The story-songs on that album find inspiration in scraps from his family’s past: a rough pencil sketch by Ken Kesey that serves as the album cover; the hallucinations experienced by his father, the legendary writer Larry McMurtry; an old poem by a family friend. “A solid smorgasbord of aging, Americana, and arrested development.” (The Austin Chronicle)